By Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD
April 16, 2024
Source: Mad in America
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Other drug groups and hospital deaths
Analgesics are also major killers. In USA, about 70,000 people were killed in 2021 by an overdose of a synthetic opioid.34
The usage of NSAIDs is also high. In USA, 26% of adults use them regularly, 16% of which get them without a prescription35 (mostly ibuprofen and diclofenac).36
As there seems to be no major differences between the drugs in their capacity to cause thromboses,37 we may use data for rofecoxib. Merck and Pfizer underreported thrombotic events in their trials of rofecoxib and celecoxib, respectively, to such an extent that it constituted fraud,1 but in one trial, of colorectal adenomas, Merck assessed thrombotic events. There were 1.5 more cases of myocardial infarction, sudden cardiac death or stroke on rofecoxib than on placebo per 100 patients treated.38 About 10% of the thromboses are fatal, but heart attacks are rare in young people. Restricting the analysis to those aged at least 65, we get 87,300 annual deaths.
It has been estimated that 3700 deaths occur each year in the UK due to peptic ulcer complications in NSAID users,39 corresponding to about 20,000 deaths each year in USA. Thus, the total estimate of NSAID deaths is about 107,000.
If we add the estimates above, 315,000 hospital deaths, 390,000 psychiatric drug deaths, 70,000 synthetic opioid deaths, and 107,000 NSAID deaths, we get 882,000 drug deaths in the United States annually.
Many other commonly used drugs than those mentioned above can cause dizziness and falls, e.g. anticholinergic drugs against urinary incontinence and dementia drugs, which are used by 1% and 0.5% of the Danish population, respectively, even though they do not have any clinically relevant effects.1,2
It is difficult to know what the exact death toll of our drugs is, but there can be no doubt that they are the leading cause of death. And the death toll would be much higher if we included people below 65 years of age. Moreover, from the official number of deaths from heart disease, we would need to subtract those caused by NSAIDs, and from accidents, deaths by falls caused by psychiatric drugs and many other drugs.
If such a hugely lethal pandemic had been caused by a microorganism, we would have done everything we could to get it under control. The tragedy is that we could easily get our drug pandemic under control, but when our politicians act, they usually make matters worse. They have been so heavily lobbied by the drug industry that drug regulation has become much more permissive than it was in the past.40
Most of the drug deaths are preventable,41 above all because most of the patients who died didn’t need the drug that killed them. In placebo-controlled trials, the effect of neuroleptics and depression drugs has been considerably below the least clinically relevant effect, also for very severe depression.2,7 And, despite their name, non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs, NSAIDs do not have anti-inflammatory effects,1,42 and systematic reviews have shown that their analgesic effect is similar to that of paracetamol (acetaminophen). Yet, most patients with pain are recommended to take both paracetamol and an NSAID over the counter. This will not increase the effect, only the risk of dying.
Most tragically, leading psychiatrists all over the world do not realise how ineffective and dangerous their drugs are. A US psychiatrist, Roy Perlis, professor at Harvard, argued in April 2024, that depression pills should be sold over the counter because they are “safe and effective.”43 They are highly unsafe and ineffective. Perlis also claimed that depression drugs do not increase the risk of suicide in people older than 25, which is also wrong. They double suicides in adults.23,24
Perlis wrote that “Some still question the biological basis of this disorder, despite the identification of more than 100 genes that increase depression risk and neuroimaging studies showing differences in the brains of people with depression.” Both these claims are plain wrong. Genetic association studies have come up empty-handed and so have brain imaging studies, which are generally highly flawed.44 People are depressed because they live depressing lives, not because of some brain disorder.
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