(NaturalNews) Death by prescription drug continues to be a major health problem in the United States, as Big Pharma remains influential and dominant in traditional medical practice. But a noted neurosurgeon and contributing CNN health expert may represent the first chink in Big Pharma's formidable armor, according to a recently published commentary he authored, in which he discussed the scope of the problem.
"It's the biggest man-made epidemic in the United States. That's how a doctor in Washington state described it to me as we sat outside the state Capitol in Olympia," wrote Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in paraphrasing a discussion he had with Gary Franklin, medical director for Washington state's Department of Labor and Industries.
Franklin was lamenting a litany of "terrifying" cases where scores of innocent patients were killed by the very medications they had been prescribed, a worsening situation that had become "the saddest thing he had ever seen." In one particularly gloomy case, Franklin told Gupta about a teenager he'd heard about that had died after taking too much narcotic medication following a dental procedure.
The most common occurrences; however, according to Franklin, involve men in their 40s or 50s who went to see a doctor for back pain, and who then walked out of the office with a prescription for painkillers. An average of three years later, many of those same men die in their sleep from taking too many pills and mixing them with alcohol.
They're not trying to kill themselves, say the medical professionals, but some 20,000 times annually, or once every 19 minutes on average, that's what happens. It has become so common, in fact, that accidental overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the U.S., passing up automobile crashes.
"As a neurosurgeon working in a busy level 1 trauma hospital, I had an idea that the problem was growing - but the numbers still boggle the mind," Gupta wrote.
http://www.naturalnews.com
"It's the biggest man-made epidemic in the United States. That's how a doctor in Washington state described it to me as we sat outside the state Capitol in Olympia," wrote Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in paraphrasing a discussion he had with Gary Franklin, medical director for Washington state's Department of Labor and Industries.
Franklin was lamenting a litany of "terrifying" cases where scores of innocent patients were killed by the very medications they had been prescribed, a worsening situation that had become "the saddest thing he had ever seen." In one particularly gloomy case, Franklin told Gupta about a teenager he'd heard about that had died after taking too much narcotic medication following a dental procedure.
The most common occurrences; however, according to Franklin, involve men in their 40s or 50s who went to see a doctor for back pain, and who then walked out of the office with a prescription for painkillers. An average of three years later, many of those same men die in their sleep from taking too many pills and mixing them with alcohol.
They're not trying to kill themselves, say the medical professionals, but some 20,000 times annually, or once every 19 minutes on average, that's what happens. It has become so common, in fact, that accidental overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the U.S., passing up automobile crashes.
"As a neurosurgeon working in a busy level 1 trauma hospital, I had an idea that the problem was growing - but the numbers still boggle the mind," Gupta wrote.
http://www.naturalnews.com
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