Modern Medicine Can Kill
by author David Crowe

If the airline industry had 100 fatal crashes a year in Canada, nobody would fly; yet even this would cause fewer deaths than modern medicine does year after year.

The enormity of this problem is stunning. Modern allopathic or conventional medicine is one of the leading causes of death in industrialized countries, even according to estimates from within the profession.

No good statistics are kept, but studies of hospital records prove it–and these estimates are almost certainly too low. The best evidence of this problem is from the United States. Given the similarities between our countries, it’s reasonable to assume that Canada suffers one-tenth of the medical deaths of the US, in proportion to its population (300 million versus 30 million). Using the one-tenth rule, based on a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it can be estimated that every year 1,200 Canadians die from unnecessary surgery–700 from medication errors in hospitals; 2,000 from other hospital errors; 8,000 from infections contracted in hospitals; and 10,600 from non-error adverse drug reactions. This is a total of 22,500 deaths per year.

No statistics can be considered anything more than rough estimates because all methods of collection have serious limitations. Reporting adverse events on death certificates is rarely done, but the closest to regular statistics on iatrogenic (doctor-caused) deaths are the reporting plans for adverse drug reactions. Most plans are voluntary, and even those that are mandatory have no way to ensure compliance. These systems have huge, in-built conflicts of interest because the medical provider or the institution involved is supposed to do the reporting on itself. Consequently, it is estimated that only one to 10 per cent of medical errors are ever reported, making statistics derived from reporting systems of very little use.

Adverse Drug Reactions

A better approach is to look at adverse events in one institution over a short period of time and extrapolate the rate of errors causing injury or death to the entire population. Studies based on this methodology estimate that three to 10 percent of patients in hospitals experience an adverse drug reaction. One study showed that almost half of hospitalized patients experienced an adverse event (not limited to drug reactions) in each stay. Another showed that clinicians made an average of 1.7 incorrect decisions per patient per day. A significant number of these adverse experiences have fatal consequences. One Spanish study showed that half the risk of death at one facility was due to various adverse events resulting from medical care.

Errors have a snowball effect. Studies have estimated that five to 36 percent of hospital admissions are due to consequences of outpatient care, and it is admitted that these results are probably underestimates. Once a patient enters a hospital, he or she is likely to be prescribed more drugs and undergo more procedures, each of which comes with a risk of injury or death. It is perhaps surprising that the largest number of adverse events stems from unexpected reactions to properly prescribed medications.

An Understated Problem

Our working estimate of 22,500 deaths a year is much more likely an underestimate than an overestimate. Treatments promoted by allopathic medicine often result in the symptoms of the disease they are supposed to combat, making it very difficult to determine the true cause of death. This is particularly a problem with chronic conditions. For example, chemotherapy and radiation are, themselves, carcinogenic, and many AIDS medications result in destruction of the immune system. An entire disease that caused thousands of deaths in Japan beginning in the 1960s, known as SMON, turned out to be caused by a medication (Clioquinol) given for intestinal disturbances.

Furthermore, most analyses are based on hospital data and don’t consider additional factors. One study published in the British Medical Journal (2000) estimated that outpatient deaths are almost as many as hospital deaths, perhaps 20,000 annually in Canada (based on estimates for the US). Conservatively estimating another 7,500 deaths from non-prescription drugs (for which there are virtually no figures), it is reasonable to estimate that medicine causes a total of roughly 50,000 deaths annually in Canada.

If this estimate is correct, then conventional medicine is the third leading cause of death in Canada after heart disease (80,000 deaths in 1997) and cancer (59,000). The next highest cause of deaths is respiratory conditions (20,000 in 1997). And many of the deaths recorded as being from cancer, heart disease or respiratory conditions may, in fact, be due to short-term or long-term effects of drugs or medical procedures.

This problem is not going away. A Lancet paper estimates, based on an analysis of US death certificates, that between 1983 and 1993 there was more than a doubling of medication errors in hospitals and at least an eight-fold increase in outpatient errors. Part of the problem, but not all of it, is due to an almost 50 per cent increase in the number of prescriptions per person.

Despite this enormous death toll, mainstream media still portray modern medicine as miraculous, while often warning their readers against alternative therapies, which are responsible for, at best, a tiny fraction of the deaths caused by "clinically proven" modern medical treatments.

David Crowe is president of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society at 403-220-0129 or www.aras.ab.ca.

Source: alive #232, February 2002