Poison In A Pill Bottle? -- More Likely Than You'd Think
How many ways can medications kill you? It would be hard to count them all. But let's just start at the beginning — how medications are developed. Nowadays, new medications are created by a drug industry that is 100% devoted to its own profitability, and could give a rat's ass about product safety. The drug development process is focussed on creating new, patentable substances that cure diseases that afflict rich and affluent people, so that high, monopolistic pricing can be maintained for as long as possible.
The Food and Drug Administration, staffed with revolving-door appointees who owe more to their former drug-industry employers than Dick Cheney owes to Halliburton, not only fail to investigate the problems with the drugs they are approving, they actually help the drug companies to hide problems. So the system for making sure that only safe drugs are stocked by the pharmacist has been totally undermined.
The drug companies are assiduously hiding all negative information about drug tests in order to grease the process of FDA approval, and when the bad facts are discovered, they roll out the lawyer to slander the injured and deprive them of just compensation. So the mere fact that a product is on the market should not be taken as an assurance of safety.
Before you take anything, even a prescription drug prescribed by your trusted physician, use the Internet to research the dangers, side-effects, and contra-indications carefully. Doctors don't know everything; indeed, many know little more than the pharmaceutical salesman told them when they dropped off the free samples. Besides which, drug company marketing reps are willing to do just about anything to convert doctors to their product. Surprisingly, very large numbers of pharmaceutical reps are actually — get this — former cheeleaders! I s*it you not. Check it out at this article here:
http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2005/Cheerleader-Drug-Sales28nov05.htm
Well, after the drug companies get done bribing the FDA and your doctor, it's time for a big dose of something reliable, like good old skepticism, and maybe some Kentucky Bourbon or Irish Rye. That stuff's been approved by generations of back-country physicians, and none of them ever had to be paid a dime for their endorsements.
The types of injuries medications can cause are literally as varied as the human body. Blood-pressure medications can cause blindness. Pain pills can cause heart attacks. Diet drugs can cause schizophrenia. Depression drugs can cause homicidal and suicidal impulses. If you experience side effects from a drug, or think you are experiencing side effects, don't hesitate to research on the Net to see if there's some similarity between what you and other takers of the medication are experiencing. Print out that material and take it to your physician immediately. The life you save may be your own.