Scientists Take 36 Years To Respond To Vernon Coleman's
Warnings On Dangerous Drug Interactions
On 24th June 2011
the British press reported that researchers had warned doctors that mixtures of
common prescription drugs could kill and might exacerbate serious health
problems such as dementia. It was announced in the Daily Telegraph that
the new research `shows for the first time that mixing drugs has a significant
impact on a patient's chance of death'.
However, I have been warning for
many years that drug interactions are dangerous and deadly. In my book The
Medicine Men (first published in 1975) I wrote: `It is the problem of drug
interactions which is likely to cause most controversy in the future. There are
many possibilities. Metabolism of one drug may affect another. Drugs may react
chemically together within the body and excretary rates may be modified with
devastating results. Patent medicines and even foodstuffs may react.'
I
then spent several pages of the book explaining why drug interactions were so
potentially dangerous.
That was in 1975. But neither doctors nor
journalists take much notice of history - especially when it is
inconvenient.
The Medicine Men book was widely reviewed in the
national press and widely attacked in the medical press for its attacks on the
drug industry. The warnings and recommendations it contained were not well
received by the authorities. It has taken the world of medicine 36 years to
respond. (Although I have repeated and refined the warnings many times over the
last three and a half decades. For example, in my book Coleman's Laws,
published in 2006, I wrote: `When a patient is given a prescription drug there
is a risk that the drug will cause a side effect. When a patient is given two
drugs both can, of course, cause side effects. But there is another (usually
underestimated) problem. Many drugs do not interact well. If you take two drugs
then your chances of developing unpleasant or lethal side effects are far
greater than the chances of developing unpleasant or lethal side effects with
the two individual drugs. Taking two prescription drugs is a bit like drinking
brandy and red wine. Taking three is like drinking brandy, red wine and
champagne.)
It will, I fear, be at least another 36 years before doctors
consider changing their prescribing habits and take real notice of the problem
of drug interactions. The pharmaceutical industry (which now controls the NHS
and the medical profession) doesn't want doctors changing their habits. And what
the pharmaceutical industry wants it gets.
The bottom line is that
(largely thanks to their ignorance and bad prescribing habits) doctors now kill
far more people than cigarettes.
Sadly, that isn't going to
change.
Indeed, things are going to get much, much worse before they get
better.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2011
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