Perhaps the fallout of the Germanwings A320
airplane crash in France
caused by a depressed and psychotic co-pilot on prescription drugs should be a
wake up call to America
Over the years, I have closely followed
the relationship between "isolated" cases of extreme violence and
prescription drugs, and more often than not, the perpetrator of the crime was
on some type of prescription drug, just like the pilot who killed 150 people.
From mass murders in schools to suicide
airplane crashes, the world has gone crazy and we need to know the role
prescription drugs are playing in this nightmare.
It was forty-five years ago when then Vice
President Spiro Agnew declared that America was on a collective national trip
because of the increasing abuse of prescription drugs along with the use of
illegal drugs.
Jun 17, 1971
Nixon Begins War on Drugs
President Richard Nixon coins the phrase, "War on
Drugs," promising in a major speech to defeat "public enemy number
one in the United States . If we cannot destroy the drug menace, then it
will destroy us."
That was forty-four years ago that America
launched a war on drugs, both illegal drugs, and the pre-occupation of
Americans with legal prescription drugs.
Drug statistics, conveniently, it may seem, run about five
years behind in reporting.
Prescription drug use
Percent of persons using at least one prescription drug in
the past 30 days: 48.5% (2007-2010)
Percent of persons using three or more prescription drugs in
the past 30 days: 21.7% (2007-2010)
Percent of persons using five or more prescription drugs in
the past 30 days: 10.6% (2007-2010)
Source: Health, United States, 2013, table
92[PDF - 9.8 MB](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus13.pdf#092)
Physician office
visits
Number of drugs ordered or provided: 2.6 billion
Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 75.1%
Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes:
Analgesics
Antihyperlipidemic agents
Antidepressants
Hospital outpatient
department visits
Number of drugs ordered or provided: 285.1 million
Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 74.4%
Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes
Analgesics
Antidiabetic agents
Antihyperlipidemic agents
Hospital emergency
department visits
Number of drugs ordered or provided: 286.2 million
Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 80.3%
Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes
analgesics
Antiemetic or antivertigo agents
Minerals and electrolytes
The report -- titled "Health, United States 2013" -- found the percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs has increased dramatically. During the most recent period, from 2007 to 2010, about 48% of people said they were taking prescription medication, compared with 39% in 1988 to 1994.
Prescription drug use
increased with age. About one in four children took one or more prescription
drugs in the past month, compared to nine in 10 adults 65 and older, according
to the study.
"This is really
not earth-shattering news. There's an increasing number of people with chronic
illnesses, and the primary management tool available for dealing with chronic
illness is medication," said William Lang, vice president of policy and
advocacy for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
One in 10 Americans
said he or she had taken five or more prescription drugs in the previous month.
That raises concerns about potential drug interactions, said Anne Burns, senior
vice president for professional affairs at the American Pharmacists
Association.
"We know that the
number of adverse drug events a patient is likely to experience increases as
the number of medications they are taking increases," Burns said.
"You've got everything from potential interactions between medications to
timing issues taking a variety of medications throughout the day."
People who took five
or more drugs in the past month tended to be older. Only 10.8 percent of people
taking that many drugs were between 18 and 44, while 41.7 percent were between
45 and 64 and 47.5 percent were 65 and older.
Drugs to manage
cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney disease are the most
widely used medications among adults, the CDC report found.
In particular, the use
of cholesterol-lowering drugs among people 18 to 64 has increased more than six-fold
since 1988-1994, due in part to the increased use of statins. Also, nearly 18 percent of adults 18 to 64
took at least one cardiovascular drug during the past month.
The CDC report noted
some headway in efforts to combat the development of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. Prescriptions of antibiotics for cold symptoms during routine medical
visits declined 39 percent between 1995-1996 and 2009-2010.
But the report also
found a tripling of overdose deaths due to prescription narcotics. Painkillers
taken among people 15 and older caused 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 people in
2009-2010, compared with 1.9 deaths per 100,000 in 1999-2000.
There has been a
fourfold increase in antidepressant use among adults, but Holmes said that's
not necessarily a bad thing.
Seeking help for a
mental health disorder isn't as stigmatized as it once was, she noted. In
addition, companies have introduced more effective antidepressants, and
researchers have found that antidepressants also can be used to treat panic and
anxiety disorders.
"If
antidepressants enable people to function fully in their social roles, that's a
good thing," Holmes said.
All that said, prescription drug use has spiraled out of
control since 2010 as health officials now say antibiotics, antidepressants,
and opioids are used by seven out of ten people.
Drug overdose death rates have never been higher. In the United States
alone, 100 people die from drug overdoses every day, most of them caused by
prescription drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has
officially declared prescription drug abuse in the US an epidemic.
Antibiotics -
Number one on the list of prescribed drugs, we continue to
be subject to levels of antibiotics far in excess of our needs, and the shift
of antibiotics to animal feed from human treatment assures our contamination
for years to come, even if we stop taking antibiotics for a toothache, and for
many other reasons.
It is also important to note that antibiotics are frequently
used in settings where they will not provide any benefits. An example of this
sort of inappropriate use of antibiotics is for viral infections, such as the
common cold. In fact, there is a tendency for patients to believe that if they
are ill with an "infection", an antibiotic is the solution. Well,
it's not always.
As recently reported in the news, For The Love Of Pork:
Antibiotic Use On Farms Skyrockets Worldwide.
The love of meat is exploding in Asia ,
and with it, comes antibiotic consumption by chickens (top) and pigs (bottom).
Green represents low levels of drug used; yellow and orange are medium levels;
and red and magenta are high levels.
Pig farmers around the world, on average, use nearly four
times as much antibiotics as cattle ranchers do, per pound of meat. Poultry
farmers fall somewhere between the two.
That's one of the conclusions of a study published
Thursday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's the first
look at the amount of antibiotics used on farms around the world — and how fast
consumption is growing.
The numbers reported are eye-opening. In 2010, the world used about 63,000 tons of
antibiotics each year to raise cows, chickens and pigs, the study estimated.
That's roughly twice as much as the antibiotics prescribed by doctors globally
to fight infections in people.
"We have huge amounts of antibiotic use in the animal
sector around the world, and it's set to take off in a major way in the next
two decades," says the study's senior author, Ramanan
Laxminarayan, who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics Economics
& Policy in Washington, D.C.
In all cases, since we know the over-use of antibiotics
increases drug resistance in cells in our bodies, which make us susceptible to
many new mutant, drug-resistant bacteria and virus's such as staff infections
and others. It may also be a
contribution factor to increases in well known diseases like cancer.
Antidepressants -
Feel Good Medicine
Antidepressants Aren't Taken By The Depressed; Majority Of
Users Have No Disorder
Depression’s increase in the U.S. has been persisting for years,
and it’s going on decades. And while the increase in antidepressant use has
followed a predictably similar path, not all cases can be explained by the
parallel rise in disease. Many people, in fact, take antidepressants regardless
of a diagnosis.
A new study published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports
some 69 percent of people taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs), the primary type of antidepressants, have never suffered from major
depressive disorder (MDD). Perhaps worse, 38 percent have never in their
lifetime met the criteria for MDD, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic
disorder, social phobia, or generalized anxiety disorder, yet still take the
pills that accompany them.
In a society that is increasingly self-medicating itself,
capsules, tablets, and pills are turning from last resorts to easily obtained
quick fixes. Between 1988 and 2008, antidepressant use increased nearly 400 percent.
Today, 11 percent of the American population takes a regular antidepressant,
which, by the latest study’s measure, may be a severe inflation of what’s
actually necessary.
Opioids - Pain
Killers
Although many types of prescription drugs are abused,
prescription opioids take the
lead. Chronic pain is frequently treated with prescription opioids, the
clinical use of which nearly doubled from 2000 to 2010. This increase was
accompanied by a rise in opioid abuse; it’s estimated that over two million
people in the US
currently abuse prescription opioids. Nearly 75% of prescription drug overdoses
are caused by prescription opioid painkillers;
these drugs are involved in more deaths than cocaine and heroin combined. In
2010, pharmaceutical drug overdoses were established as one of the leading
causes of death in the US ;
drug overdoses were more lethal than firearms or motor vehicle accidents.
If you take any of the following you could be subject to
drug abuse.
Opioids include:
Fentanyl
(Duragesic®)
Hydrocodone (Vicodin®)
Oxycodone (OxyContin®)
Oxymorphone (Opana®)
Propoxyphene (Darvon®)
Hydromorphone (Dilaudid®)
Meperidine (Demerol®)
Diphenoxylate (Lomotil®)
Central nervous
system depressants include:
Pentobarbital sodium (Nembutal®)
Diazepam (Valium®)
Alprazolam (Xanax®)
Stimulants include:
Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine®)
Methylphenidate (Ritalin® and Concerta®)
Amphetamines (Adderall®)
The Most Popular Drug in America is an Antipsychotic—and No One Really
Knows How it Works
The Raw Story –
November 16, 2014
By Martha Rosenberg
Does anyone remember
Thorazine? It was an antipsychotic
given to mentally ill people, often in institutions, that was so sedating, it
gave rise to the term “Thorazine shuffle.” Ads for Thorazine in medical
journals, before drugs were advertised directly to patients, showed Aunt Hattie
in a hospital gown, zoned out but causing no trouble to herself or anyone else.
No wonder Thorazine and related drugs Haldol,
Mellaril and Stelazine were called chemical straitjackets.
But Thorazine and similar
drugs became close to obsolete in 1993 when a second generation of
antipsychotics which included Risperdal,
Zyprexa,
Seroquel,
Geodon
and Abilify
came online. Called “atypical” antipsychotics, the drugs seemed to
have fewer side effects than their predecessors like dry mouth, constipation
and the stigmatizing and permanent facial tics known as TD or tardive
dyskinesia. (In actuality, they were similar.) More importantly, the drugs were
obscenely expensive: 100 tablets of Seroquel cost as much as $2,000, Zyprexa,
$1,680 and Abilify $1,644.
One drug that is a
close cousin of Thorazine, Abilify, is currently the top-selling of all
prescription drugs in the U.S. marketed as a supplement to antidepressant
drugs, reports the Daily Beast. Not only is it amazing that an
antipsychotic is outselling all other drugs, no one even knows how it
works to relieve depression, writes Jay Michaelson. The standardized United
States Product Insert says Abilify’s method of action is “unknown” but it
likely “balances” brain’s neurotransmitters. But critics say antipsychotics
don’t treat anything at all, but zone people out and produce oblivion. They
also say there is a concerning rise in the prescription of antipsychotics for
routine complaints like insomnia.
They are right. With
new names and prices and despite their unknown methods of action, Pharma
marketers have devised ways to market drugs like Abilify to the whole
population, not just people with severe mental illness. Only one percent
of the population, after all, has schizophrenia and only 2.5 percent has
bipolar disorder. Thanks to these marketing ploys, Risperdal was the seventh
best-selling drug in the world until it went off patent and Abilify
currently rules.
More manipulations
Just as Big Pharma has camped out in Medicare and Medicaid,
living on our tax dollars while fleeing to England to avoid taxes, Pharma has also camped
out in the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
Arguably, no drugs have been as good for Big Pharma as
atypical antipsychotics within the military. In 2009, the Pentagon spent $8.6
million on Seroquel and VA spent $125.4 million—almost $30 million more than is
spent on a F/A-18 Hornet.
Risperdal was even bigger in the military. Over a period of
nine years, VA spent $717 million on its generic, risperidone, to treat PTSD in
troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet not only was risperidone not approved for
PTSD, it didn’t even work. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American
Medical Association found the drug worked no better than placebo and the
money was totally wasted.
.
