"Richard Schultz" <schultr@mail.biu.ack.il> wrote:

Is not the subject.

Off topic.

Excerpts From:
http://www.lef.org/LEFCMS/aspx/PrintVersionMagic.aspx?CmsID=111570

Death by Medicine

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

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

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 .

The Nutrition Institute of America is a nonprofit organization that
has sponsored independent research for the past 30 years. To support
its bold claim that conventional medicine is America 's number-one
killer, the Nutritional Institute of America mandated that every
“count” in this “indictment” of US medicine be validated by published,
peer-reviewed scientific studies.

What you are about to read is a stunning compilation of facts that
documents that those who seek to abolish consumer access to natural
therapies are misleading the public. Over 700,000 Americans die each
year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and
other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing
those who offer safe alternatives.

A definitive review of medical peer-reviewed journals and government
health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more
harm than good.

Each year approximately 2.2 million US hospital patients experience
adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to prescribed medications.(1) In 1995,
Dr. Richard Besser of the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) estimated the number of unnecessary antibiotics
prescribed annually for viral infections to be 20 million; in 2003,
Dr. Besser spoke in terms of tens of millions of unnecessary
antibiotics prescribed annually.(2, 2a) Approximately 7.5 million
unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed annually in
the US,(3) while approximately 8.9 million Americans are hospitalized
unnecessarily.(4)

As shown in the following table, the estimated total number of
iatrogenic deaths—that is, deaths induced inadvertently by a physician
or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures— in the US
annually is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is
itself the leading cause of death and injury in the US . By
comparison, approximately 699,697 Americans died of heart in 2001,
while 553,251 died of cancer.(5)

Table 1: Estimated Annual Mortality and Economic Cost of Medical
Intervention
Condition
Deaths
Cost
Author

Adverse Drug Reactions
106,000
$12 billion
Lazarou(1), Suh (49)

Medical error
98,000
$2 billion
IOM(6)

Bedsores
115,000
$55 billion
Xakellis(7), Barczak (8)

Infection
88,000
$5 billion
Weinstein(9), MMWR (10)

Malnutrition
108,800
-----------
Nurses Coalition(11)

Outpatients
199,000
$77 billion
Starfield(12), Weingart(112)

Unnecessary Procedures
37,136
$122 billion
HCUP(3,13)

Surgery-Related
32,000
$9 billion
AHRQ(85)

Total 783,936
$282 billion

Using Leape's 1997 medical and drug error rate of 3 million(14)
multiplied by the 14% fatality rate he used in 1994(16) produces an
annual death rate of 420,000 for drug errors and medical errors
combined. Using this number instead of Lazorou's 106,000 drug errors
and the Institute of Medicine 's (IOM) estimated 98,000 annual medical
errors would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths
annually.

Table 2: Estimated Annual Mortality and Economic Cost of Medical
Intervention
Condition
Deaths
Cost
Author

ADR/med error
420,000 $200 billion Leape(14)
Bedsores
115,000
$55 billion
Xakellis(7), Barczak (8)

Infection
88,000
$5 billion
Weinstein(9), MMWR (10)

Malnutrition
108,800
-----------
Nurses Coalition(11)

Outpatients
199,000
$77 billion
Starfield(12), Weingart(112)

Unnecessary Procedures
37,136
$122 billion
HCUP(3,13)

Surgery-Related
32,000
$9 billion
AHRQ(85)

Total 999,936

The enumerating of unnecessary medical events is very important in our
analysis. Any invasive, unnecessary medical procedure must be
considered as part of the larger iatrogenic picture. Unfortunately,
cause and effect go unmonitored. The figures on unnecessary events
represent people who are thrust into a dangerous health care system.
Each of these 16.4 million lives is being affected in ways that could
have fatal consequences. Simply entering a hospital could result in
the following:

In 16.4 million people, a 2.1% chance (affecting 186,000) of a serious
adverse drug reaction(1)
In 16.4 million people, a 5-6% chance (affecting 489,500) of acquiring
a nosocomial infection(9)
In16.4 million people, a 4-36% chance (affecting 1.78 million) of
having an iatrogenic injury (medical error and adverse drug reactions).
(16)
In 16.4 million people, a 17% chance (affecting 1.3 million) of a
procedure error.(40)
These statistics represent a one-year time span. Working with the most
conservative figures from our statistics, we project the following 10-
year death rates.

Table 3: Estimated 10-Year Death Rates from Medical Intervention
Condition
10-Year Deaths
Author

Adverse Drug Reaction 1.06 million  (1)
Medical error
0.98 million (6)
Bedsores 1.15 million (7,8)
Nosocomial Infection 0.88 million (9,10)
Malnutrition 1.09 million (11)
Outpatients 1.99 million (12, 112)
Unnecessary Procedures 371,360 (3,13)
Surgery-related  320,000 (85)
Total 7,841,360

Our estimated 10-year total of 7.8 million iatrogenic deaths is more
than all the casualties from all the wars fought by the US throughout
its entire history.

Our projected figures for unnecessary medical events occurring over a
10-year period also are dramatic.

Table 4: Estimated 10-Year Unnecessary Medical Events
Unnecessary Events
10-year Number Iatrogenic Events
Hospitalization 89 million(4) 17 million
Procedures  75 million(3) 15 million
Total 164 million

These figures show that an estimated 164 million people—more than half
of the total US population—receive unneeded medical treatment over the
course of a decade.

INTRODUCTION
Never before have the complete statistics on the multiple causes of
iatrogenesis been combined in one article. Medical science amasses
tens of thousands of papers annually, each representing a tiny
fragment of the whole picture. To look at only one piece and try to
understand the benefits and risks is like standing an inch away from
an elephant and trying to describe everything about it. You have to
step back to see the big picture, as we have done here. Each
specialty, each division of medicine keeps its own records and data on
morbidity and mortality. We have now completed the painstaking work of
reviewing thousands of studies and putting pieces of the puzzle
together.

Is American Medicine Working?
US health care spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2003, representing
14% of the nation's gross national product.(15) Considering this
enormous expenditure, we should have the best medicine in the world.
We should be preventing and reversing disease, and doing minimal harm.
Careful and objective review, however, shows we are doing the
opposite. Because of the extraordinarily narrow, technologically
driven context in which contemporary medicine examines the human
condition, we are completely missing the larger picture.

Medicine is not taking into consideration the following critically
important aspects of a healthy human organism: (a) stress and how it
adversely affects the immune system and life processes; (b)
insufficient exercise; (c) excessive caloric intake; (d) highly
processed and denatured foods grown in denatured and chemically
damaged soil; and (e) exposure to tens of thousands of environmental
toxins. Instead of minimizing these disease-causing factors, we cause
more illness through medical technology, diagnostic testing, overuse
of medical and surgical procedures, and overuse of pharmaceutical
drugs. The huge disservice of this therapeutic strategy is the result
of little effort or money being spent on preventing disease.

Underreporting of Iatrogenic Events
As few as 5% and no more than 20% of iatrogenic acts are ever reported.
(16,24,25,33,34) This implies that if medical errors were completely
and accurately reported, we would have an annual iatrogenic death toll
much higher than 783,936. In 1994, Leape said his figure of 180,000
medical mistakes resulting in death annually was equivalent to three
jumbo-jet crashes every two days.(16) Our considerably higher figure
is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day.

What we must deduce from this report is that medicine is in need of
complete and total reform—from the curriculum in medical schools to
protecting patients from excessive medical intervention. It is obvious
that we cannot change anything if we are not honest about what needs
to be changed. This report simply shows the degree to which change is
required.

We are fully aware of what stands in the way of change: powerful
pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, along with other
powerful groups with enormous vested interests in the business of
medicine. They fund medical research, support medical schools and
hospitals, and advertise in medical journals. With deep pockets, they
entice scientists and academics to support their efforts. Such funding
can sway the balance of opinion from professional caution to
uncritical acceptance of new therapies and drugs. You have only to
look at the people who make up the hospital, medical, and government
health advisory boards to see conflicts of interest. The public is
mostly unaware of these interlocking interests.

For example, a 2003 study found that nearly half of medical school
faculty who serve on institutional review boards (IRB) to advise on
clinical trial research also serve as consultants to the
pharmaceutical industry.(17) The study authors were concerned that
such representation could cause potential conflicts of interest. A
news release by Dr. Erik Campbell, the lead author, said, "Our
previous research with faculty has shown us that ties to industry can
affect scientific behavior, leading to such things as trade secrecy
and delays in publishing research. It's possible that similar
relationships with companies could affect IRB members' activities and
attitudes.”(18)

Medical Ethics and Conflict of Interest in Scientific Medicine
Jonathan Quick, director of essential drugs and medicines policy for
the World Health Organization (WHO), wrote in a recent WHO bulletin:
"If clinical trials become a commercial venture in which self-interest
overrules public interest and desire overrules science, then the
social contract which allows research on human subjects in return for
medical advances is broken."(19)

As former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine , Dr. Marcia
Angell struggled to bring greater attention to the problem of
commercializing scientific research. In her outgoing editorial
entitled “ Is Academic Medicine for Sale?” Angell said that growing
conflicts of interest are tainting science and called for stronger
restrictions on pharmaceutical stock ownership and other financial
incentives for researchers:(20) “When the boundaries between industry
and academic medicine become as blurred as they are now, the business
goals of industry influence the mission of medical schools in multiple
ways.” She did not discount the benefits of research but said a
Faustian bargain now existed between medical schools and the
pharmaceutical industry.

Angell left the New England Journal in June 2000. In June 2002, the
New England Journal of Medicine announced that it would accept
journalists who accept money from drug companies because it was too
difficult to find ones who have no ties. Another former editor of the
journal, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, said that was not the case and that
plenty of researchers are available who do not work for drug companies.
(21) According to an ABC news report, pharmaceutical companies spend
over $2 billion a year on over 314,000 events attended by doctors.

The ABC news report also noted that a survey of clinical trials
revealed that when a drug company funds a study, there is a 90% chance
that the drug will be perceived as effective whereas a non-drug-
company-funded study will show favorable results only 50% of the time.
It appears that money can't buy you love but it can buy any
"scientific" result desired.

Cynthia Crossen, a staffer for the Wall Street Journal, i n 1996
published Tainted Truth : The Manipulation of Fact in America , a book
about the widespread practice of lying with statistics.(22) Commenting
on the state of scientific research, she wrote: “The road to hell was
paved with the flood of corporate research dollars that eagerly filled
gaps left by slashed government research funding.” Her data on
financial involvement showed that in l981 the drug industry “gave”
$292 million to colleges and universities for research. By l991, this
figure had risen to $2.1 billion.

Continued on Page 3 of 6

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

THE FIRST IATROGENIC STUDY
Dr. Lucian L. Leape opened medicine's Pandora's box in his 1994 paper,
“Error in Medicine,” which appeared in the Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA).(16) He found that Schimmel reported in
1964 that 20% of hospital patients suffered iatrogenic injury, with a
20% fatality rate. In 1981 Steel reported that 36% of hospitalized
patients experienced iatrogenesis with a 25% fatality rate, and
adverse drug reactions were involved in 50% of the injuries. In 1991,
Bedell reported that 64% of acute heart attacks in one hospital were
preventable and were mostly due to adverse drug reactions.

Leape focused on the “Harvard Medical Practice Study” published in
1991, (16a) which found a 4% iatrogenic injury rate for patients, with
a 14% fatality rate, in 1984 in New York State. From the 98,609
patients injured and the 14% fatality rate, he estimated that in the
entire U.S. 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of
iatrogenic injury.

Why Leape chose to use the much lower figure of 4% injury for his
analysis remains in question. Using instead the average of the rates
found in the three studies he cites (36%, 20%, and 4%) would have
produced a 20% medical error rate. The number of iatrogenic deaths
using an average rate of injury and his 14% fatality rate would be
1,189,576.

Leape acknowledged that the literature on medical errors is sparse and
represents only the tip of the iceberg, noting that when errors are
specifically sought out, reported rates are “distressingly high.” He
cited several autopsy studies with rates as high as 35-40% of missed
diagnoses causing death. He also noted that an intensive care unit
reported an average of 1.7 errors per day per patient, and 29% of
those errors were potentially serious or fatal.

Leape calculated the error rate in the intensive care unit study.
First, he found that each patient had an average of 178
“activities” (staff/procedure/medical interactions) a day, of which
1.7 were errors, which means a 1% failure rate. This may not seem like
much, but Leape cited industry standards showing that in aviation, a
0.1% failure rate would mean two unsafe plane landings per day at
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport; in the US Postal Service, a
0.1% failure rate would mean 16,000 pieces of lost mail every hour;
and in the banking industry, a 0.1% failure rate would mean 32,000
bank checks deducted from the wrong bank account.

In trying to determine why there are so many medical errors, Leape
acknowledged the lack of reporting of medical errors. Medical errors
occur in thousands of different locations and are perceived as
isolated and unusual events. But the most important reason that the
problem of medical errors is unrecognized and growing, according to
Leape, is that doctors and nurses are unequipped to deal with human
error because of the culture of medical training and practice. Doctors
are taught that mistakes are unacceptable. Medical mistakes are
therefore viewed as a failure of character and any error equals
negligence. No one is taught what to do when medical errors do occur.
Leape cites McIntyre and Popper, who said the “infallibility model” of
medicine leads to intellectual dishonesty with a need to cover up
mistakes rather than admit them. There are no Grand Rounds on medical
errors, no sharing of failures among doctors, and no one to support
them emotionally when their error harms a patient.

Leape hoped his paper would encourage medical practitioners “to
fundamentally change the way they think about errors and why they
occur.” It has been almost a decade since this groundbreaking work,
but the mistakes continue to soar.

In 1995, a JAMA report noted, "Over a million patients are injured in
US hospitals each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as a
result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs
the annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts
for more deaths than all other accidents combined."(23)

At a 1997 press conference, Leape released a nationwide poll on
patient iatrogenesis conducted by the National Patient Safety
Foundation (NPSF), which is sponsored by the American Medical
Association (AMA). Leape is a founding member of NPSF. The survey
found that more than 100 million Americans have been affected directly
or indirectly by a medical mistake. Forty-two percent were affected
directly and 84% personally knew of someone who had experienced a
medical mistake.(14)

At this press conference, Leape updated his 1994 statistics, noting
that as of 1997, medical errors in inpatient hospital settings
nationwide could be as high as 3 million and could cost as much as
$200 billion . Leape used a 14% fatality rate to determine a medical
error death rate of 180,000 in 1994.(16) In 1997, using Leape's base
number of 3 million errors, the annual death rate could be as high as
420,000 for hospital inpatients alone.

ONLY A FRACTION OF MEDICAL ERRORS ARE REPORTED
In 1994, Leape said he was well aware that medical errors were not
being reported.(16) A study conducted in two obstetrical units in the
UK found that only about one-quarter of adverse incidents were ever
reported, to protect staff, preserve reputations, or for fear of
reprisals, including lawsuits.(24). An analysis by Wald and Shojania
found that only 1.5% of all adverse events result in an incident
report, and only 6% of adverse drug events are identified properly.
The authors learned that the American College of Surgeons estimates
that surgical incident reports routinely capture only 5-30% of adverse
events. In one study, only 20% of surgical complications resulted in
discussion at morbidity and mortality rounds.(25) From these studies,
it appears that all the statistics gathered on medical errors may
substantially underestimate the number of adverse drug and medical
therapy incidents. They also suggest that our statistics concerning
mortality resulting from medical errors may be in fact be conservative
figures.

An article in Psychiatric Times (April 2000) outlines the stakes
involved in reporting medical errors.(26) The authors found that the
public is fearful of suffering a fatal medical error, and doctors are
afraid they will be sued if they report an error. This brings up the
obvious question: who is reporting medical errors? Usually it is the
patient or the patient's surviving family. If no one notices the
error, it is never reported. Janet Heinrich, an associate director at
the U.S. General Accounting Office responsible for health financing
and public health issues, testified before a House subcommittee
hearing on medical errors that "the full magnitude of their threat to
the American public is unknown” and "gathering valid and useful
information about adverse events is extremely difficult." She
acknowledged that the fear of being blamed, and the potential for
legal liability, played key roles in the underreporting of errors. The
Psychiatric Times noted that the AMA strongly opposes mandatory
reporting of medical errors.(26) If doctors are not reporting, what
about nurses? A survey of nurses found that they also fail to report
medical mistakes for fear of retaliation.(27)

Standard medical pharmacology texts admit that relatively few doctors
ever report adverse drug reactions to the FDA.(28) The reasons range
from not knowing such a reporting system exists to fear of being sued.
(29) Yet the public depends on this tremendously flawed system of
voluntary reporting by doctors to know whether a drug or a medical
intervention is harmful.

Pharmacology texts also will tell doctors how hard it is to separate
drug side effects from disease symptoms. Treatment failure is most
often attributed to the disease and not the drug or doctor. Doctors
are warned, “Probably nowhere else in professional life are mistakes
so easily hidden, even from ourselves.”(30) It may be hard to accept,
but it is not difficult to understand why only 1 in 20 side effects is
reported to either hospital administrators or the FDA.(31, 31a)

If hospitals admitted to the actual number of errors for which they
are responsible, which is about 20 times what is reported, they would
come under intense scrutiny.(32) Jerry Phillips, associate director of
the FDA's Office of Post Marketing Drug Risk Assessment, confirms this
number. “In the broader area of adverse drug reaction data, the
250,000 reports received annually probably represent only 5% of the
actual reactions that occur.”(33) Dr. Jay Cohen, who has extensively
researched adverse drug reactions, notes that because only 5% of
adverse drug reactions are reported, there are in fact 5 million
medication reactions each year.(34)

A 2003 survey is all the more distressing because there seems to be no
improvement in error reporting, even with all the attention given to
this topic. Dr. Dorothea Wild surveyed medical residents at a
community hospital in Connecticut and found that only half were aware
that the hospital had a medical error-reporting system, and that the
vast majority did not use it at all. Dr. Wild says this does not bode
well for the future. If doctors don't learn error reporting in their
training, they will never use it. Wild adds that error reporting is
the first step in locating the gaps in the medical system and fixing
them. Not even that first step has been taken to date.(35)

In misc.health.alternative marcia <marcia12345.c@gmail.com> wrote:

The Great And Powerful Oz (excuse me, Cee) doesn't ask for explanations --
he gives them.

The theory behind giving actual explanations is that there is some number
of lurkers who would appreciate them.  It's a judgment call.  In the heyday
of usenet, they used to estimate that there were ten lurkers for every
poster.  I seriously doubt that the ratio is anything close to that nowadays.

"Dr." Cee is very insistent that he doesn't have a medical degree.  He has
a Ph. D. and a DNH from the aforementioned institute of higher learning
(Rumors that what he got from them was a "DNR" probably got started from
the evidence that he presents that he is brain-dead.)

-----
Richard Schultz                              schultr@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"French bread makes very good skis"

[    ]

Diversions.  Off topic.

Lots of us -- but we've all heard of hyponatremia, too.

+- D. C. Sessions <dcs@lumbercartel.com> -+

Off her tree

Wrong. Goes to credibility.

Original post On Topic.

On Nov 21, 3:41 pm, drcee...@insightbb.com wrote:

Basic physiology: water is NEVER excreted out of the organism by
active transport. Water is excreted by either a difference in
HYDROSTATIC (water) pressure or a difference in OSMOTIC pressure
across a membrane. Water FOLLOWS actively transported solutes (salts
and sugars, etc.) by OSMOSIS. Remember what Richard wrote??????

Excess TBW (total body water) relative to solute [in this case Na
(sodium)] = hyponatremia

Hyponatremia > severe edema > high intracranial pressure (which may
cause seizure) > brainstem herniation > death

Important stuff to know, if you're going to play the role of
healthcare provider, dontcha think?

If you acknowledge that, then why did you comment:

"I really have to wonder how increasing your water intake and
decreasing one's salt intake could lead to a "fit" which could result
in brain damage."

I'm really curious, because all the indicators (treatment, signs,
symptoms) should lead you to think of hyponatremia. This obviously
occurred to people who believe in conventional medicine -- or at least
conventional anatomy & physiology.