Is Medicine Making Us Sicker? (Part 2 of 4)
This blog post, written by guest author Al von der Linden, is part two of a four-part series. Click here to read part one. Sign up for our newsletter to receive each installment by email as it is released.
Serious Side Effects
How could taking more medicine make us sicker? Let’s start with the published potential side effects of these drugs.
We’ve all watched TV commercials for drugs with a long list of potential serious side effects that are far more serious than the condition they’re attempting to treat. As we joke about those commercials, we probably don’t consider that real people are actually suffering or dying after taking drugs that were promised to help them. According to the CDC and FDA, nearly 1.3 million people went to U.S. emergency rooms due to adverse drug effects in 2014, and about 124,000 died from those events.
Are these side effects rare? It is estimated that 1 in 5 older Americans (about 10 million people) experienced an adverse drug event in 2018. More than one-quarter of a million were hospitalized because of a reaction to medication. Every day, 750 older Americans are hospitalized due to serious side effects from one or more medications. Even worse, the odds of experiencing a serious adverse reaction to a medication increases 7 to 10 percent with each additional drug.
A 2019 Lown Institute report estimated that if nothing is done, adverse drug events over the next decade can be expected to cause 4.6 million hospitalizations of older Americans, 74 million outpatient visits, and nearly 150,000 premature deaths.
However, these are just the side effects we’re allowed to talk about. What about the side effects that most doctors are afraid to talk about?
Do Statins Affect the Immune System?
Take statin drugs for instance. In 2013, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association recommended that everyone between the ages of 65 and 75 who were at elevated risk of cardiovascular disease be prescribed a statin drug. By 2019, statins became a $10 billion market, and over 92 million people – 35 percent of the population – mostly older adults, were taking statin drugs. This number was a threefold increase from the previous decade. By 2020, the U.S. ranked sixth in the world in per capita statin use.
Statin drugs lower a person’s cholesterol, which is necessary for forming the vitamin D molecule. Vitamin D is the gateway nutrient to the proper functioning of the rest of the immune system. It is critical to both the treatment and prevention of many infectious illnesses. Some brave doctors have suggested that the use of statin drugs may render many seniors vulnerable to poor outcomes from infectious illnesses, such as COVID-19.
Mental Health Drug Caution
Some mental health drugs have helped patients, particularly in the short term. However, for many patients taking mental health drugs, their original symptoms worsen the longer they take the drug. Some psychiatrists have been known to tell their patient that their original condition is worsening so they must either increase the dosage or add another drug.
Many mental health drugs carry potential serious side effects that may cause long term harm. Most of them are also addictive and cause horrible withdrawal symptoms. If you want to learn more about this, begin by watching the video titled “Medicating Normal” on YouTube.
“Unavoidably Unsafe”
Then there is the taboo topic of childhood vaccines. In 1962, American children received just 5 vaccine doses. As of 2023, children up to age 18 receive 73 doses of 16 different vaccines.
Why the huge increase in childhood vaccines? Are these vaccines safe and effective? Discerning the truth about childhood vaccines is extremely difficult (and risky) because so much effort and money is spent hiding the truth about them.
Let’s begin with what we know. We know the pharmaceutical industry persuaded Congress to pass a law in 1986 giving them broad protection from liability and creating a framework to compensate children injured by compulsory vaccines through a no-fault administrative system, on the premise that vaccines were important for public health but also “unavoidably unsafe.”
Although the CDC reports hundreds of thousands of people die or are seriously injured by other medications, childhood vaccines were the only medications for which the pharmaceutical industry insisted upon liability protection.
This law requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to report on vaccine safety every two years, but the agency has never submitted a vaccine safety report to Congress. So, we don’t know the cumulative effects of this childhood vaccine schedule because it’s never been tested, and the required safety report has never been published.
Studies regarding vaccine safety are rarely conducted because curious doctors risk losing their medical license. Dr. Paul Thomas, whose license was suspended for advocating for informed consent for vaccinations, conducted a study comparing the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. His findings revealed that vaccinated children experienced significantly higher instances of various health issues.
Dr. Thomas has also spoken about 6 studies examining the correlation between sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases and vaccines. “In one data set, 97% were in the first 10 days after the vaccine. Only 3% were in the subsequent 10 days,” he said. “Other studies showed similar patterns, with 75-90% of SIDS deaths occurring within the first week after vaccination,” he said.
American parents don’t know how childhood vaccines are affecting their children’s health because public health authorities and drug companies don’t want them to know.