By Claudia Kalb NEWSWEEK
PHARMAGEDDON !
It was to have been Jerry and Mary Sagen's first New Year's Eve together as a married couple. But on that morning in 1996, says Jerry Sagen, "I awoke to hear her dying." As Mary gasped her last breaths, Jerry dialed 911 and frantically blew air into her lungs, but it was too late. At first the death of the healthy 45-year-old woman was a mystery. But last month an answer was stamped onto Mary's death certificate: accidental death due to a toxic level of the antihistamine Hismanal. (While not commenting on the case, Janssen Pharmaceutica, the maker of Hismanal, said it is difficult to confirm a drug as the ultimate cause of death and stressed that "it's been taken safely by a huge number of people.") For Jerry Sagen, 53, it was unfathomable. "You're numb," he says; "you can't believe it happened."
250,000 People Die Every Year because of doctors!
100,000 People Die Every Year Just from the Drugs Alone!
For millions of Americans, prescription drugs are a way of life - about 2 billion are dispensed each year. We rely on them for everything from allergies to diabetes to depression. But in a study published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that adverse reactions to prescription drugs may rank somewhere between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Dr. Bruce Pomeranz, a professor at the University of Toronto, and his team analyzed 39 studies conducted in American hospitals over four decades (the study was funded by a scientific-research group). Of 33 million patients admitted to hospitals in 1994, more than 100,000 died from toxic reactions to medications that were administered properly, either before or after they were hospitalized. And more than 2 million suffered serious side effects.
Original Source: Reprinted from the 27 April, 1998, issue of Newsweek magazine. Excerpted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.
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