Many children with hyperactivity disorders are prescribed medication that is intended to help them. But a recent comprehensive study (the first of its kind) showed that certain drugs may be doing more harm than good. For kids with ADHD and other behavioral issues, a few different types of drugs are often prescribed including ADHD medications, anti-depressants and in extreme cases anti-psychotics. It is this last group on which the study, published by neuroscientists at the University of Wollongong, focused: Continue reading →

Martin Shkreli’s antics are giving the drug industry’s greedy ways a bad name.

Khalil Bendib is OtherWords’ cartoonist

“It is scary how many similarities there are between this [pharmaceutical] industry and the mob.” ~ former Vice-President of Pfizer pharmaceuticals.

The U.S. federal government has released disturbing data about the profiteering nature behind our medical system. Namely, a staggering 4.4 million payments made to physicians and teaching hospitals by medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

According to officials from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), during the last five months of 2013, big pharma and medical companies paid a total of $3.5 billion in kickbacks to 546,000 physicians and 1,360 teaching hospitals. Continue reading →

Nearly 60 % Of All U.S. Adults Are On Prescription Drugs

If you have a health problem, even if it is just an imaginary one, some giant pharmaceutical company out there is probably making a pill for it. According to shocking new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 59 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least one prescription drug, and 15 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least five prescription drugs. Continue reading →

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic.” ~ Attributed to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Benjamin Rush accurately foretold a grave possibility facing Americans today, namely, that the art and science of healing be restricted to a select class of allopathic physicians, who have the sole legal right to recommend and administer medicines, and whose pharmacopeia excludes – as a matter of principle – all the healing foods, vitamins and herbs which have been used safely and effectively for countless millennia in the prevention and treatment of disease.  Continue reading →

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children. The condition can range from mild to severe, and usually involves not only inattention, but also difficulty controlling behavior.

On the rise…

Between the years of 2003 and 2011, ADHD diagnosis grew by 42%. Continue reading →

Seniors represent only 13% of the population, but they take over 40% of pharmaceutical drugs in the US. In the UK, 45% of prescriptions are doled out to individuals over the age of 65 years. The practice of polypharmacy has never been more acute than it is in the modern era. So why are we drugging the elderly so profoundly? Continue reading →

If every single person currently taking psychotropic medications or antidepressants were to be pulled off these deadly drugs and given a new, safer regimen instead, society would be much better off. This is the larger inference of a new review published in The BMJ (British Medical Journal), which found that more than half a million people in the West die every year from psych meds, which authors found have “minimal” benefits and a multitude of harmful side effects. Continue reading →

The federal government released detailed data today on nearly 1.4 billion prescriptions dispensed to seniors and disabled people in the Medicare program in 2013, bringing more openness to the medication choices of doctors nationwide.

The data release comes two years after ProPublica reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had done little to detect or deter hazardous prescribing in its drug program, known as Medicare Part D. ProPublica analyzed several years’ worth of prescription data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and created a tool called Prescriber Checkup that lets users compare individual physicians to others in the same specialty and state.

But Medicare itself hadn’t made this information easily accessible—until now. Continue reading →

A new study has shown that pharmaceutical drugs cause more overdoses and more deaths than all of the illegal drugs on the market combined. According to the government’s own statistics, listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, deaths relating to pharmaceutical drugs rose to roughly 23,000 last year, which accounts for over half of the total overdose deaths in the country for that time period.

Additionally, a recent study conducted by researchers with the University of Virginia, University of Arkansas, the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, and the American Institutes for Research reconfirmed the known dangers of pharmaceutical drug abuse. Continue reading →

…and 21 Other Facts About America’s Endless Pharmaceutical Nightmare

Has there ever been a nation more hooked on drugs than the United States? And I am not just talking about illegal drugs – the truth is that the number of Americans addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans addicted to illegal drugs. As you will read about below, more than 30 million Americans are currently on antidepressants and doctors in the U.S. wrote more than 250 million prescriptions for painkillers last year. Sadly, most people got hooked on these drugs very innocently. They trusted that their doctors would never prescribe something for them that would be harmful, and they trusted that the federal government would never approve any drugs that were not safe. And once the drug companies get you hooked, they often have you for life.

You see, the reality of the matter is that some of these “legal drugs” are actually some of the most addictive substances on the entire planet. And when they start raising the prices on those drugs, there isn’t much that the addicts can do about it. It is a brutally efficient business model, and the pharmaceutical industry guards their territory fiercely. Very powerful people will often do some really crazy things when there are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. The following are 22 facts about America’s endless pharmaceutical nightmare that everyone should know… Continue reading →

How half of the 80,000 overdoses a year are caused by MEDICINES

Around half of the 80,000 deaths a year attributed to drug overdoses in America are caused by medication, new figures suggest today.

They also show that the rate of all drug overdoses in the U.S. has more than than doubled over the last decade.

A database maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics keeps a tally of all deaths listed on certificates, which are required by law to include an underlying cause. Continue reading →

In a nation that seems to thrive on popping pills for a range of different health woes, it really should come as no surprise that deaths due to the overdosing of prescription drugs are on the rise in the United States, and will likely to continue to be so. Though there is a definite need for a number of these prescription drugs, and they provide relief from pain, infections and a host of other uncomfortable ailments, history is starting to tell the story of how these medically prescribed medications can be abused by patients. Many physicians, too, simply write a prescription as a cure-all for their patients rather than spend the time and make the effort to get to the root cause of the issue. Continue reading →

The Washington Post had a major piece that discussed the ethics of efforts to use public pressure to force drug companies to make expensive drugs available to patients at affordable prices. Remarkably it never discussed the role of patent monopolies.

In the case that was the immediate focus of the article, a young boy who was suffering from cancer and seemed likely to benefit from a drug that was still in the experimental stage, it does not appear that patent protection was a major factor. However in many cases patients will face exorbitant prices for a life-saving drug that they may not be able to afford because the drug is subject to patent protection. Continue reading →

The American people are the most drugged people in the history of the planet. Illegal drugs get most of the headlines, but the truth is that the number of Americans that are addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans that are addicted to illegal drugs. As you will see below, close to 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug. In addition, there are 60 million Americans that “abuse alcohol” and 22 million Americans that use illegal drugs. What that means is that almost everyone that you meet is going to be on something. That sounds absolutely crazy but it is true. Continue reading →