ANURA
Stop the abuse, Start the healing!

Frightening Facts about Prescription Drugs

• Because so many millions are exposed, drugs have a potential for disaster
  that drawfs most other risks of modern society.

• Millions of Americans today might be taking drugs that are slowly poisoning them rather than providing a health benefit because of the systemwide failure to insist on long-term drug testing.

• One of the major reasons why drugs are so unnecessarily hazardous today is that so much attention has focused on the benefits of drugs and so little has been devoted to understanding and reducing their risks.

• Doctors' fear that many patients would reject drugs if accurately informed of their dangers keeps many patients in the dark.
  
• Thanks to the concerted efforts of doctors' groups and drug companies, a simple and accurate English-language translation of the drug disclosure label is not readily available. 
  Writing these documents in unreadable language draws little attention as possible to drug dangers while taking credit for having forth-rightly disclosed their risks.

• If the adverse effect is subtle, or resembles symptoms you've had before, the drug may not
  be suspected.

• A position paper on drug safety from PhRMA states, "Because drugs are powerful substances, they cannot be made completely safe for all users under all circumstances".
  This argument is, "We just have to accept a few injuries to get the benefits."   Can you image the airline industry arguing that having 1 million people seriously injuried in airplane crashes every year was just a part of the game because air travel can't be "made completely safe for all users under all circumstances"?

• Mass-market books misinform the public that a "broken brain" or "biochemical imbalance"
  is responsible for personal unhappiness.  Yet the only biochemical imbalances that we
  can identify with certainty in the brains of psychiatric patients are the ones produced by
  psychiatric treatment itself.  Psychiatric drugs.
  

• Untold numbers
  of children and adults are saddled with the false conviction that
  they have genetic defects and lifelong "crossed wires" and "biochemical imbalances".
  
  of adults with solvable personal problems end up taking drugs,
  getting shock treatment, or being locked up in mental hospitals - or all three.

• of elderly people are drugged and shocked into oblivion and
  hurried to a premature death, often while residing in nursing homes.

• of people suffer permanent brain damage from psychiatric drugs and electro-
  shock while the profession denies that it is happening.
  

• A study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that adverse drug reactions are responsible for 100,000 fatalities a year and afflicting 2.2 million people
  with serious drug-induced diseases. 
  
• Drug-induced illness is one of the leading causes of preventable disease and death
  in the United States.

The following works were consulted in compiling this list:

• Prescription for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers In Your Medicine Cabinet
  by Thomas J. Moore
     
• Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock and Biochemical Theories of the "New Psychiatry"
  by Peter R. Breggin, M.D.

• Worst Pills, Best Pills: A Consumer's Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death
  or Illness
  by Sidney M. Wolfe, Larry D. Sasich, Rose-Ellen Hope and Public Citizen's Health
  Research Group

Compiled by April A. Severin

For more information on these and other books please see the Book List

Home | What's New | Poetry | Articles and other items
Booklist | Music list | Movie list
Anura Links | Animal Appeal | Animal Appeal Links

Earth Partners Publishing