Pharma companies ‘getting away with murder’--not just drug prices: leading cause of illness, disability and death

Trump said drug companies are getting away with murder and he would work to bring prices down. (WashPost) While murder suggests the intent to kill, manslaughter--killing without malice or forethought, is more true of our leading cause of illness and death, says Dr. Richard Ruhling, a retired physician who was board-certified in internal medicine and taught at Loma Linda University. He offers the following information.

Pharma’s policy of donating to re-election campaigns of congress has made it easy to persuade them to okay drug ads on TV. But it’s a violation of biblical law that says,“Take no gift: for the gift blinds the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous.” (Exodus 23) Why should congress care? They accept the benefits and give drug companies what they want, like Obamacare, written by ‘Big Pharma’ lobbyists and likely to bring those companies $35 billion, mushrooming pharma market value by 33% to $476 billion. (Google)

After congress approved drug ads, Adverse Drug Reactions were reported to put 2.2 million in hospitals and 106,000 died, "making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death." journal of American Medical Assoc, 4-15-1998.

But how many died at home? 199,000 according to the Western journal of Medicine and that’s not all. For every death, milder reactions caused 550 people to be sick enough to see their doctor, for every death 40 were sick enough to be put in the hospital and for every death, 15 were put in nursing homes—messed up for life? WJM, June 2000. This brought the deaths to 305,000 per year and 8 million hospital admissions.

"From 1998 through 2005, reported serious adverse drug events increased 2.6-fold...fatal adverse drug events increased 2.7-fold..." Archives of Internal Medicine, Sep 10, 2007, p 1752. This brings deaths to 823,500/year.
But if deaths increased 2.7 fold from 1998 to 2005, and those drug ads continue, we could expect by 2017 deaths have increased 8-fold. Multiplying 305,000 deaths/year by 8, prescribed drugs are killing 2.4 million people/year—and these are not old people in nursing homes--most of them weren't even in the hospital.

Marcia Angell, MD, former editor of the New England journal of Medicine, in her book, The Truth About the Drug Companies, How They Deceive Us, says they spent $400 million/year on Congress, but they must find it worth it to “get away with murder.”

Medical textbooks are filled with disease of “unknown etiology.” If they don’t know the cause, how can the drug be the cure? Sooner or later the patient becomes toxic to the prescription and then there are two problems instead of one, and often serious.

A little known fact is that drug companies don’t do long-term studies. They don’t want to know those results. They also have clever ways of massaging the data to report benefit that is questionable.

“In the widest sense of the word, pharmacology and toxicology are one, and the art of medicine is to use these poisons beneficially.” Drill’s Textbook of Pharmacology in Medicine, chapter 5, Mechanisms of Drug Action.

A historic healing in the Bible by the pool of Bethesda where a throng of people lay waiting for a troubling of the water when a stampede might result in the first person into the pool to get healed. The parallel to our time reminds us our pool of Bethesda. Our tax dollars are pooled and Bethesda, Maryland is where drug research is funded, and often a stampede that tramples many in a vain hope of a cure. John 5.

The last call in the Bible is out of Babylon, that we “partake not of her sins and receive not of her plagues…for by her sorceries [the Greek word is pharmakeia] were all nations deceived.” Rev 18:4,23. If people did not take drugs, but experimented with their foods by leaving out some of their favorite foods that they may be abusing, they might see some benefit--we are mostly a product of what we’ve eaten since birth.

More information at http://LeadingCauseOfDeathPrescriptionDrugs.com