Medical Industry: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - by Aby Haglage

A new study published in BMJ Tuesday suggests that if experts classified medical error as a disease, it would be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Helmed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the paper estimates that medical errors cause 250,000 deaths a year, surpassing chronic lower respiratory diseases—the third leading cause of death—by more than 100,000. The authors blame limitations in death certificates for the lack of accurate data on the topic, and suggest the way fatalities are reported be revised.

Medical error is loosely defined as a “preventable adverse effect of care, whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient.” The authors of the BMJ study cite specific types of error, which include “the use of a wrong plan,” “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended,” and “an unintended act.”

It’s a phenomenon that’s virtually invisible in death statistics due to the United States reliance on what’s called the International Classification of Disease (ICD). Approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is used by 117 countries worldwide as a standard diagnostic tool for measuring mortality and morbidity statistics.

The system provides specific codes that correspond to causes of death, but leaves no room for physicians or others to denote a cause that resulted from a medical shortcoming. As a result of this limitation, there is no way to track how much medical error plays into the death rate worldwide.

Studies on the amount of deaths caused by medical error in the U.S., as a result, have been scant. The “seminal” study on the topic, as far as science is concerned, is a 1999 paper from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which the authors call “limited and outdated.” The report estimates anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year from medical error.

Since 1999, several more studies on the topic have been released; one in 2008 suggested that as many as 400,000 people die a year from this cause. To update the current number, the researchers combined all of the studies since 1999 and performed a weighted analysis. The result: a mean rate of 251,454 deaths per year from medical error.

Martin A. Makary, the leader of the study and an oncologist at Johns Hopkins, attributes the lack of knowledge surrounding the issue to the CDC’s failure to create a system in which deaths due to medical care could be catalogued.

“Currently, deaths caused by errors are unmeasured and discussions about prevention occur in limited and confidential forums, such as a hospital’s internal root cause analysis committee or a department’s morbidity and mortality conference,” writes Makary. “These forums review only a fraction of detected adverse events and the lessons learnt are not disseminated beyond the institution or department.”

The researchers give one example case of a death caused by medical error, that of a “young woman” who had successfully recovered from a transplant surgery. A few days after going home, she came back to the hospital with “non-specific symptoms.” At that point, doctors performed “extensive tests,” some of which the authors deem “unnecessary.”

When she returned days later, she was suffering from intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest. “An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the

pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death,” the authors write. “The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular.”

Stories like these, says Makary, perfectly capture the problem with death statistics, and highlight the need for both the U.S. and the World Health Organization to pursue a better system.

Read more: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - The Daily Beast

Almere-Digest

Mercury in Vaccines: Anti-vax group defends comparing immunisation withThimerosam additive to rape

In a press release issued recently, one that almost no mainstreain Australia m media sources have bothered to report, it was announced that Dr. Brian Hooker had finally received documents from the CDC through a Freedom of Information Act that revealed the CDC had access to data linking Thimerosal in vaccines to autism, non-organic sleep disorders, and speech disorders.

Two members of Congress helped Dr. Hooker draft his letter to the CDC, after having spent nearly 10 years submitting over 100 Freedom of Information Acts to no avail.

This information is very damaging to the CDC, which has stated for years that there are no studies linking the mercury of Thimerosal in vaccines to autism.  

In another recent testimony given by the CDC in the November 2012 Congressional Hearing on Autism, they claimed there are no studies linking Thimerosal to autism. Thimerosam however is still used today in the flu shot that is administered to pregnant women and infants.

An Anti-vaccination group in Australia has defended an advert which appears to compare immunising children with being raped. The Australian Vaccination Skeptics Network posted an image of a woman with a man threateningly holding his hand over her mouth on its Facebook page earlier today.  

This information, so far, has been completely blacked out of the mainstream media.

EU-Digest

USA: What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? Can Pharmaceutical And Medical Industry Still Be Trusted ?

Hippocratic Oath has been shoved under the mat?

I-Lawsuit noted recently “Medical professionals like doctors and pharmacists prescribe to the Hippocratic Oath before starting their practice.

The oath is believed to have been written by ancient Greek Philsopher Hippocrates and dates back to 5th Century BC.  When translated notable parts include to, “keep patients from harm and injustice”, and to practice medicine in both “purity and holiness”.

But are they keeping that Oath?

Undoubtedly there are more doctors who care about the quality of patient care over personal profit, but what about the professionals who are willing to take bribes to endorse a product?

In-between doctors and pharmaceutical companies are the little-known championers of the pharmaceutical industry- the drug reps.

According to Glassdoor the average Pharma sales rep made more than $80,000 last year while the average biotech rep pulled in $152,000 dollars a year- 6 times more than the average American citizen.

Pharma representatives rarely have any formal education in science with the majority holding a BA in the liberal arts or business.

A former rep for Eli Lily revealed that he was the only member of his team with a background in science, and that the majority of his coworkers were “former cheerleaders and ex-models”.

Base salaries begin at $60,000 for new reps and $150,000 for a seasoned biotech representative- but perks don’t stop there. Johnson & Johnson’s reps celebrated on internet forumswhen they were given a chance to partake in a new fleet of Audi A3’s, with a MSRP of over $27,000.

With commission ranging from 10-15%, a company car, free gas and bank account the job is undeniably sexy,  but pharma reps aren’t the only ones who are benefitting from Big Pharma’s generosity.

Doctors who endorse their products routinely receive gifts as well. Medical giant Medtronic shocked the media when it was discovered they had bribed a team of 13 doctors  $210 million over the course of 15 years to post favorable studies of the off-label use of their INFUSE bone graft.

Many patients who received the bone grafts became paralyzed or died from complications stemming from the uncontrollable bone growth.

Consequently large drug companies have grown "wealthy beyond imagination" through blockbuster drugs that depended on government-funded research—and by committing fraud.

Elisabeth Warren, a Democratic Senator recently noted that over the past 10 years, some of the US's wealthiest drug companies—those that capitalize on government research to generate billions of dollars in revenues through the sale of blockbuster drugs—have found another way to boost profits".

Warren said, in a prepared text of her speech at an event sponsored by the health care advocacy group Families USA. "They've been caught defrauding Medicare and Medicaid, withholding critical safety information about their drugs, marketing their drugs for uses that aren't approved, and giving doctors kickbacks for writing prescriptions for their drugs."

Democrats have largely laid off the pharmaceutical industry since the legislative debate over the Affordable Care Act, when drugmakers agreed to support the bill as long as it didn't include certain policies. And Warren—whose home state is home to several large drug companies—praised the industry's scientific advances.

But, said Warren, drug companies paid roughly $13 billion in settlements with the federal government
between 2007 and 2012. "That doesn't happen without serious wrongdoing."

After 1978 Bayer (a German Company) and other pharmaceutical companies produced Factor VIII and IX.
The product was designed for hemophiliacs, people who suffer from a genetic disorder whose blood can not clot to stave bleeding. As a result, even a minor cut could cause them to bleed out and lose dangerous levels of blood. Factor VII is harvested from the blood plasma of non-hemophiliacs, but to purportedly to cut costs Bayer harvested blood from pools of “high risk” individuals.

This included:  prison populations, intravenous drug users and blood from clinics with a large amount of homosexual donors. Federal law also forbids the use of blood from an individual with a history  of viral hepatitis- but Bayer and other companies failed to enact strict prerequisites for blood farming. As a result, thousands of hemophiliacs died from the HIV- tainted blood plasma.

Senator Warren said, "it seems that the biggest drug companies are increasingly playing by a different set of rules than everyone else," Warren said. "The government has kicked thousands of small and medium-sized physician practices out of the Medicare program for fraud, but not one of these major drug companies has ever been kicked out. The government convicts hundreds of people of health care fraud every year, but not one of these major drug company cases has even gone to trial."

Warren in a bill proposed to the Senate wants pharmaceutical companies to fund more of the basic research conducted by the National Institutes of Health. Many blockbuster drugs do stem, at least in part, from NIH research.

Under Warren's proposal, "the biggest and most successful drug companies" would have to contribute to the NIH's budget whenever they settle criminal accusations with the federal government. In addition to the fines that companies already pay, they would have to contribute 1 percent of their annual profits to the NIH for five years.

"It's like a swear jar: Whenever a huge drug company that is generating enormous profits as a result of federal research investments gets caught breaking the law—and wants off the hook—it has to put some money in the jar to help fund the next generation of medical research," Warren said.

If such a policy had been in place over the past five years, NIH would have seen a budget bump of about $6 billion—or 20 percent—per year, she said.

In the meantime, however, in the US, the boundaries between the drug companies, FDA, and doctors have became increasingly blurred. FDA officials sometimes move to jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, which means they may not want to burn their bridges with industry.

The same FDA officials who approve the drugs are responsible for monitoring them after they are on the market, which gives them an obvious disincentive to say that the drugs they earlier certified as safe were now unsafe.

Finally, the FDA gets input from outside advisory panels made up of doctors who are experts in their fields. Most of these doctors receive payments as consultants, research grants and support for travel to conferences from drug companies.

In some cases, the doctors are working as paid consultants to the same companies whose drugs are coming up for approval by their advisory committees.

The US is the only country in the world where you can turn on the TV and have an announcer tell you to go ‘ask your doctor’ for a drug.

Doctors often will give medications to patients even if they don’t think they need it. For example, one study showed that 54% of the time doctors will prescribe a specific brand and type of medication if patients ask for it.

Drugs on the average cost twice as much in the US than in Canada or Europe . US  Dr's also prescribe more drugs to their "patients" than any other nation in the world

The argument drug manufacturers make for the high cost of their products is that the money supports research and development of new life-saving medicine. And they also say that expensive advertising is needed not to sell drugs, but to educate doctors and patients. Indeed, a whopping 80% of their budgets is used for marketing and advertising, certainly not education.

 Some things definitely are broken and need fixing in the US Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry.

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