What can we do to change adverse drug reactions being 6th - 4th biggest cause of death in USA?

Question

what can be done to prevent death from adverse drug reactions?

Quote from BMJ http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ar...

"When a drug is marketed little is known about its safety in clinical use because only about 1500 patients are likely to have been exposed to it. Thus drug safety assessment should be considered an integral part of everyday clinical practice since detection and diagnosis often depend on clinical acumen."

From JAMA

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprin...

Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions

in Hospitalized Patients:

Showed over 2 million hospital admissions and over 100000 deaths from adverse drug reactions.

This makes ADR's the 6th - 4th biggest killer in the USA.

I'd like to open this to serious discussion and maybe a forum. What can be done to improve the safet of drugs and who prescribe them?

Answer 1

Stop relying on conventional medical care and look more at alternatives !!??

Answer 2

If someone has cancer, and doesn't want to risk the side effects of chemo, no-one is forcing them to have it

Hopefully we will find effective, side-effect-free drugs for all conditions. (as opposed to ineffective, evidence-free "treatments" like homeopathy and acupuncture)

Until then a patient must weigh up the symptoms and prognosis of their illness against the potential side effects of medication, and make a non-whiney decision like an adult.

Lightnin: I viewed your "question" as a thinly veiled attack on evidence-based medicine from the perspective of a quack, as most of your comments are. If I was wrong to do this, then I apologise.

It's irrelevant that quack potions don't hurt anyone; no-one is hurt by eating a sugarcube, praying or following astrological advice either.

That's no reason for using any of it to treat patients with serious medical conditions.

Answer 3

There's some Alternative Medicine that many people knowing such as Herbal Medicine,Ayurveda,etc, but not many people using it, cause they want to get health quickly as soon as possible. Using Alternative Medicine may take time, but I am sure that is more natural than drug and not adverse you.

Answer 4

The studies are done - they're either buried or the FDA are negligent.

There's a simple solution and that's to make it law to publish all studies - with long prison sentences for burying studies.

There's almost no chance of the US doing this, so it would have to happen across the EU.

Answer 5

It'd be nice if further testing were mandatory. But people are so eager to get pumped full of medicine. Then, when they found out that medicine could have killed them, and made them ill, they want to sue.

The pharmecutical companies are constantly being sued. That definitley doesn't help with the cost of meds.

If people would accept that there must be testing phases, and be given the right to volunteer to test the drugs without holding the pharmecutical companies liable, we'd probably have cheaper meds done faster. Not to mention the people who can't seem to wait will satisfy their need to be impatient.