Heroes Not Zombies

One of the doctors who trained me told me “If you send your patient to a man with a knife he’ll use it”. The advice was about referring to surgeons. He meant if I sent a patient to a surgeon it was highly likely that the patient would end up with some kind of operation, so I should ask myself if I thought that possibility was in the best interests of the patient. All operations carry risks after all.

It was much later when I realised that the same kind of advice applies to specialists who specialise in the prescription of drugs – physicians. Let’s face it, drugs carry risks too.

In the BMJ this week, we are reminded of just how dangerous they are –

The number of reported serious adverse events from drug treatment more than doubled in the United States from 1998 to 2005, rising from 34 966 to 89 842, says a new study.

Almost 90,000 serious bad reactions to drug treatments in the US alone in 2005!

Over the same period the number of deaths relating to drugs nearly tripled, from 5519 to 15 107, show data from the US Food and Drug Administration’s adverse event reporting system, which collects all reports of adverse events submitted voluntarily to the agency either directly or through drug manufacturers (Archives of Internal Medicine 2007;167:1752-9).

15,000 deaths related to prescribed drugs in one country in one year!

I work in Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital and I know that for some people homeopathy is a controversial method but in 250 years do you know how many people have died from the effects of a homeopathic drug? NONE. ZERO. NIL. Nope, not a single one. And yet, all the UK NHS Homeopathic Hospitals have shown that they typically make a difference for two thirds of the patients who attend their clinics – a difference the patients themselves rate as significant (ie changes that make a difference to daily life).

What happened to “first do no harm”? Now don’t get me wrong, there are some highly effective drugs which can, in certain cases, be life-saving. There are many people who live better and longer lives because of the drugs they take. But drugs are dangerous. They should be used with caution. And we should never rely solely on drugs. We need to pay attention to interventions which facilitate recovery from illness and which foster resilience. We need to find ways to reduce the lifetime load of chemicals patients with chronic illnesses end up taking.

Finally, we need to investigate and learn from every single death from medication. To die from a treatment is a tragedy.