A New and Dangerous Word

Iatrogenic

Had a news note come across my page yesterday about the new study that shows that people in a cholesterol drug study had an association between very low numbers for “bad” cholesterol, and very slight increased risk of cancer. We all know there are swap-offs in drugs. In this case it seems that, “Statins … lower the risk of heart attack and stroke, and evidence also suggests unexpected benefits, such as a lowered risk of death from influenza, pneumonia and the effects of smoking.

Experts believe some of the beneficial effects may come from the drugs' effects on inflammation in the body. But people with extra-low cholesterol may have a higher risk of Parkinson's disease. Statin drugs can also damage the liver and muscles. This study renews concerns about cancer, as well.

It reminded me of a tag-line I had seen earlier on another page…. I was playing around looking at the Center for Disease Control pages, downloading some numbers, checking out statistics on the web…. just your typical exciting day for me, when I hit on a page headline that shocked me. The most common cause of death in the USA is from?????? Go ahead, make your guesses. You’ve heard all the regular candidates; surely one of them is right.

The official word from the CDC is that :

In the year 2004, there were 2,398,343 deaths. That is a rate of 816.7 deaths per hundred-thousand people. The leading cause, Heart disease accounted for 654,092 of these deaths, or about 222.7 deaths per hundred-thousand people, or about 27% of all deaths. Combined cancers came in a close second with 550,270 deaths, or 22.9 % of the total.

But this site claims an astounding 783,936 per year to another cause, and they have some pretty good statistics to back it up.

In 1958 when polymath economist J K Galbraith wrote “The Affluent Society”, he coined a term for those easy answers that are generally accepted by the public. He used “conventional wisdom” for such ideas. Some times true, and often not, they form a convenient framework for thinking about personal decisions and public policy. “We associate truth with convenience” he wrote, “with what most closely accords with self-interest… We also find highly-acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.”

So what is the conventional wisdom? Well, cancer and heart disease are the leading killers because we live in an aging society and so more and more old people die in spite of the best efforts of the best doctors. The CDC gives figures for the period 2002-2004 and it shows that of the 1,234,194 deaths in that period from heart disease and all cancers, 946,250 were to people sixty-five or over, or over 75% of all deaths from the two causes.

The counter view invokes the term “iatrogenic causes”. Iatrogenic comes from two Greek roots, Iatros meaning physician in Greek, and -genic, for induced by. Combined, iatrogenic simply means physician-induced.

Here is a part of what I found on the site, leading up to the conclusion that, “The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is ‘the leading cause of death’ in the United States .” :

Death by Medicine

By Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD

Something is wrong when regulatory agencies pretend that vitamins are dangerous, yet ignore published statistics showing that government-sanctioned medicine is the real hazard. Until now, we could cite only isolated statistics to make its case about the dangers of conventional medicine. No one had ever analyzed and combined ALL of the published literature dealing with injuries and deaths caused by government-protected medicine. That has now changed. A group of researchers meticulously reviewed the statistical evidence and their findings are absolutely shocking.4

These researchers have authored a paper titled “Death by Medicine” that presents compelling evidence that today’s system frequently causes more harm than good.

This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per

year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year.

The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the

number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5) We placed this article on our website to memorialize the failure of the American medical system. By exposing these

gruesome statistics in painstaking detail, we provide a basis for competent and compassionate medical professionals to recognize the inadequacies of today’s system and at least attempt to institute meaningful reforms. Natural medicine is under siege, as pharmaceutical company lobbyists urge lawmakers to deprive Americans of the

benefits of dietary supplements. Drug-company front groups have launched slanderous media campaigns to discredit the value of healthy lifestyles. The FDA continues to interfere with those who offer natural products that compete with prescription drugs.

These attacks against natural medicine obscure a lethal problem that until now was buried in thousands of pages of scientific text. In response to these baseless challenges to natural medicine, the Nutrition Institute of America commissioned an independent review of the quality of “government-approved” medicine. The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States.

Here is the link to the entire document, read and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.vitalcarbs4life.com/images/Death_by_Medicine1.pdf