Here are the leading causes of death in the U.S and Canada
1. Cancer,
2. Heart disease,
3. Strokes,
4. Prescription Drugs.
"Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.
"'The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly,' said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
(Lindsey Tanner
and Mike Stobbe, "Drug Overdose Deaths up
for 11th Consecutive Year," Associated
Press, February 20 2013)
In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths
nationwide.
Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.
(Journal of the American Medical Association)
As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.
Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs. They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.
Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.
Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.
The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.
My View
Very little is spent to alert the
people of the US about the hazards of prescription medication. Few in
Washington talk about prescription drug deaths. There are no sobbing
victims shown on the evening news. This "chemical massacre"
happens quietly, behind closed doors.
Yet
By
2014, the global market for pharmaceuticals is expected to reach $1.1
trillion.
US Pharmaceutical Launches: Marketing Spend and Structure reveals that the average blockbuster brand in the U.S. allots 49% of its budget to fulfill advertising needs.
Billions are spent in marketing and lobbying for tweaking the system to maximize profits for Big Pharma' employees and shareholders at the expense of these lives.
* Direct advertising to doctors: Big Pharma spends more than $20 billion a year promoting their products to American physicians.
* The distribution of free drug samples: the United States has 81,000 pharmaceutical representatives or 1 for every 7.9 physicians.
* And the sponsorship of symposiums and medical conventions by the drug companies: drug and medical-device makers spend $2 billion every year for more than 300,000 medical seminars and “training opportunities”, often in sun-splashed, exotic locations.
GlaxoSmithKline employee and whistleblower Blair Hamrick helped make medical history in 2012. Together with his colleague Gregory Thorpe, Blair blew the whistle on criminal practices taking place inside GlaxoSmithKline which have now led to the largest criminal admission and financial settlement in the history of western medicine. GSK is paying a $3 billion fine while pleading guilty to felony crimes.
According to court documents, GlaxoSmithKline alone had a speaker's bureau network of 49,000 paid speakers who knowingly and willfully accepted kickbacks and bribes to push GSK propaganda in the form of “medical education.” A massive network of bribery and corruption, tens of thousands collected “speaking fees” while taking fully-paid vacations as long as they continued to write an appropriate number of prescriptions for the pharmaceutical industry.
Those are 49,000 doctors and physicians who knowingly and willfully accepted kickbacks and bribes to push GSK propaganda in the form of "medical education." This was a massive network of institutionalized bribery and corruption. Tens of thousands of doctors were in on the deal, collecting obscene "speaking fees" while taking fully-paid vacations as long as they continued to write an appropriate number of prescriptions for the pharmaceutical industry.
The following are quotes from Blair Hamrick about the kickbacks, as found in a "Health Ranger Report" interview with Mike Adams.
“These revelations discredit the entire institution of conventional medicine. What has been billed as a system of so-called "evidence-based medicine" where intelligent, informed doctors make compassionate decisions about the welfare of their patients has turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of M.D. pharma whores pimping out their souls for a quick buck. Through their actions, they cost Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies billions of dollars in overpriced prescriptions just so they could cash in at the Big Pharma feeding trough.
“These are the licensed, M.D.s, the "doctors" that state medical boards certify as the only people who can discuss disease treatment with a patient. These bribery-accepting unethical medical practitioners have been granted medical treatment monopolies by state medical boards, but they turn out to be some of the most dishonest, selfish "professionals" working today...
"I was promoted when I was with Glaxo, after about two years with Glaxo, to a specialty position, I was called a therapeutic area specialist. So one of my jobs was to recruit local speakers, to become trained on the drugs to go and speak to other physicians. You're taking them down the primrose path of payoffs.
"First, they have to start writing the drug, and if they're not writing the drug enough, you have to get on them about that, then when they do a speaking program at $2,000 for 30 minutes -- anywhere from $500 to $2500 for a half-hour talk -- then if the message they are sending is not exactly the way you want it to go, then you coach the doctor about here's our marketing message, this is the point we want to get out to other physicians... so yes, I saw it firsthand.
"I even had doctors who, when I walked into their office and they found out I was the therapeutic area specialist, they were like hey, can you set me up with the speaking program? Because it's extra money. There are even doctors out there, they make so much money on the speaking tours, they start hiring nurse practitioners or other doctors to see their patients, and they may only go into the office two or three times a month. Because they're out speaking. It's so lucrative. ...[they can make] $6,000 in one day to do three half-hour presentations. ...And most of the slide shows come from the company marketing departments.
This is what Hamrick said bout holding drug company CEOs criminally responsible for their acts:
"When will the public be outraged and say enough is enough? Because this kind of behavior will continue until somebody goes to prison. They're hurting our children. It's offensive, it's immoral, it's unethical, and for a company to have the slogan of letting people do more, and live longer and do better, and then hide behind that slogan [while] you're telling your sales reps to sell off-label to children... how evil does it get? It just doesn't get any more evil than that."
(Mike Adams, "Exclusive: Glaxo Whistleblower Goes Public with
Shocking Details of Bribery, Marketing Fraud and Other Pharma
Crimes," naturalnews.com, July 17 2012)
In all, 106,000 deaths per year occur from the "adverse effects" of FDA-approved prescription medications.
(Dr. Barbara Starfield
MD, Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA) Vol 284,
No 4, July 26 2000)
To reach this number, you would have to see:
* An Aurora Colorado Batman movie massacre take place every HOUR of every day, 365 days a year.
* A jumbo jet airliner crashing into the ground once a day, every day of the year.
I believe the American public must stop this "drug-induced" culture. This corruption is so institutionalized that people have fallen for the medical game of promoting and prescribing opioids that somehow better the health of the nation while relieving all pain.
In fact, Big Pharma, corrupt and greedy doctors, and cooperating pharmacies (pill mills) are killing thousands in state-sponsored homicides. This is a medical massacre that dwarfs the number of deaths by firearms. How can lawmakers continue to ignore this health epidemic?
While President Barack Obama is under pressure to tighten gun laws, he should rank priorities.
According to FBI Statistics in 2011,
the latest year for which detailed
statistics are available,
8,583 murders were caused by firearms.
Do the math --
your children are much more likely
to die
by the drug
than by the gun.
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