E-DRUG: New book: Worst Pills, Best Pills
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Public Citizen Releases Worst Pills, Best Pills
New Consumer�s Guide Helps Patients Navigate Drug Minefield
��� WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Preventable adverse drug reactions afflict more
than 2 million Americans, kill 100,000 and hospitalize 1.5 million every
year, partly because people do not know how to protect themselves from
dangerous drugs or drug combinations, consumer group Public Citizen said
recently.
��� Americans fill more than 2.3 billion drug prescriptions each year,
but weakened federal oversight and an onslaught of drug industry
advertising have left consumers treading through a pharmaceutical
minefield -- with nightmarish consequences for thousands of patients who
suffer adverse reactions to drugs, said the group.
��� "This is a national epidemic. The pharmaceutical industry has
succeeded in intimidating the Food and Drug Administration into
approving record numbers of drugs that either offer no significant
benefit over drugs already on the market or have dangerous side
effects," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen�s Health
Research Group.
��� To help patients use prescription and over-the-counter drugs more
safely, Wolfe and the staff of Health Research Group have produced Worst
Pills, Best Pills: A Consumer�s Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or
Illness.
��� The book includes in-depth profiles, including potential risks, of
456 of the most commonly used drugs, categorized by the type of
treatment for which they are prescribed. It also lists 160 drugs that
patients should not take at all -- either because they are too dangerous
or because they are ineffective -- and provides safer alternatives.
��� "The whole system is stacked against patients," Wolfe said. "Drug
companies, doctors and pharmacists are too often making decisions that
ultimately derive from what is best for the drug companies, doctors and
pharmacists -- not what is necessarily best for the patient. This book
has been written to help consumers come out ahead in the struggle with
our health care system."
Worst Pills, Best Pills includes separate chapters instructing readers
on how to protect themselves from preventable drug-induced injury and
how to save money on prescription drugs.
Wolfe blames the epidemic of adverse drug reactions on:
�The pharmaceutical industry, which spends $12 billion a year to promote
drugs to doctors and to consumers directly through advertisements on
television and in newspapers and magazines. The industry has pressured
Congress to weaken FDA reviews and approvals of new drugs, the
monitoring of drugs already on the market and the oversight of the
industry�s advertising claims.
�The FDA, which has bent over backward to approve new drugs. In 1996 and
1997 the agency approved more drugs than had ever been approved in any
two-year period. Thousands of people were injured or killed after taking
three of the drugs approved during that period -- Duract, Redux and
Posicor, all of which have been taken off the market. A recent Public
Citizen study showed that 19 FDA medical officers -- the officials in
charge of reviewing new drugs -- identified a total of 27 approved drugs
in the past three years that they reviewed that they thought should not
have been approved.
�Physicians who misprescribe drugs; prescribe drugs in dangerous
combinations; treat adverse drug reactions with more drugs; fail to
identify non-drug treatments for some conditions; or prescribe dangerous
drugs when safer alternatives are available.
��� Of the 2.3 billion prescriptions written per year, hundreds of
millions are simply not needed, Wolfe said. For example, 23 million
prescriptions are written each year for colds, bronchitis and upper
respiratory infections -- all caused by viruses but treated with
antibiotics that have no effect on the underlying cause. This accounts
for one-fifth of all prescriptions for antibiotics. Wolfe cites another
study showing that 47 percent of people admitted to a nursing home who
were taking the heart drug digoxin did not have the problem for which it
was prescribed.
��� More information can be obtained on the Internet by visiting
www.worstpills.org, where the book can be ordered with a credit card. It
also can be ordered by sending a check or money order for $16, made
payable to Public Citizen, P.O. Box 9140, Gaithersburg, MD 20898-9140,
USA.
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