Over-the-Counter NSAID Kills, But Docs & Regulators Ignore Evidence
Diclofenac has long been known to be a killer, every bit as dangerous as Vioxx, which may have killed half a million people in the US alone. But diclofenac isn’t only a prescription drug. It’s sold over-the-counter. Yet doctors keep prescribing it and regulators do nothing to control or even warn about it.
by Heidi Stevenson
Diclofenac is a very common over-the-counter NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) that can kill at a significantly greater rate than most other NSAIDs. It may be even deadlier than the infamous Vioxx, which officially killed tens of thousands of people. The reality, as reported in Gaia Health, is frighteningly worse. It’s more likely that Vioxx killed half a million Americans.
But Vioxx was only available by prescription. Diclofenac is available both by prescription and casually in drug stores and supermarkets—any place where you might buy over-the-counter pain pills. It’s so profitable that the number of names under which it’s sold is stunning—well over a hundred. You’ve likely seen it as Anuva, Voltarol, Sandoz, or Voltral.
Gaia Health warned about Diclofenac in Diclofenac Deaths May Dwarf Vioxx Disaster: Health Agencies Helped It Happen. About a year-and-a-half ago, a PLoS article reported that heart attacks are 1.4 times more likely if patients take Diclofenac[1].
New Study
Now, we have new PLoS reports documenting and discussing the reality. The aforementioned study examines several existing studies to identify the relative risks of different NSAIDs[1]. They found that all NSAIDs studied increase the risk of heart attacks to some degree.
Etoricoxib increases the cardiovascular risk by more than double and etodolac increases the risk 1½ times. These are prescription-only drugs.
Much more worrisome, though, is diclofenac. Notice that result for rofecoxib, which is the generic name for Vioxx, is almost the same as that for diclofenac.
Now consider that diclofenac is being heavily pushed on people in pharmacies and supermarkets. It is a very popular over the counter drug. Therefore, it’s only reasonable to assume that diclofenac is killing far more people than Vioxx ever did—and Vioxx was pulled off the market for precisely this same risk!
The Evidence-Based Medicine Fraud
The PLoS study, “Use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs That Elevate Cardiovascular Risk: An Examination of Sales and Essential Medicines Lists in Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries”, states the issue clearly:
NSAIDs with a high risk of cardiovascular complications are widely used. Diclofenac and etoricoxib together account for approximately one-third of all sales of NSAIDs in the countries included in our analysis. There was no difference between high- and low-income countries. Diclofenac was by far the most popular NSAID, despite having an RR [relative risk] identical to rofecoxib, which was withdrawn from world markets 8 years ago owing to cardiovascular toxicity. The information on cardiovascular risk associated with diclofenac has been available to regulators, writers of guidelines and essential medicines lists, and prescribers for at least 5 years. Calls have been made for its withdrawal. High levels of sales as recently as 2011 suggest that none of this information has resulted in effective action. There has been a slow decline in prescription numbers in England, Australia, and Canada since 2006, but it remains popular in all three countries, particularly in England where it is the single most-prescribed NSAID.[2] [Emphasis mine.]
Please read this statement carefully. It makes absolutely clear that, in spite of the risks being known for many years, little or no change has been made in prescriptions of diclofenac.
What’s all that we hear modern medicine so proudly proclaim? Their practice is based on evidence? You know the mantra of evidence-based medicine is based on scientific studies.
In fact, modern medicine is not generally based on science. It’s based on profits. Science is used primarily by Big Pharma—misused, in reality—to push its drugs on us by any means possible. Pseudo studies are produced that make false claims, both for efficacy and safety.
The same process is repeated again and again. A new drug comes on the market, coordinated with an expensive and effective marketing campaign that includes advertisements everywhere they’re legal—and in the US, that’s everywhere. Faux grassroots organizations are quickly put together and other patient groups jump on the bandwagon to lobby for rapid approval and dissemination of the drug. Doctors jump on the bandwagon almost immediately, dispensing samples and prescriptions to just about anyone who wants them.
In time, reports of the harms start coming out. Initially they’re termed “coincidental”. Big Pharma stands behind their products, using every tool at their deep pockets disposal deployed to keep the poison on the market as long as possible. Doctors hide behind the mantra of evidence-based medicine, claiming that the drugs have little risk—completely ignoring the fact that Big Pharma studies are often fraudulent, using games like non-publishing of negative results, twisting statistics, and making claims in their journal reports that aren’t supported by their data.
But the doctors hide behind the false glamour of evidence-based medicine and continue to prescribe. They deny their patients’ reports of adverse effects and lack of efficacy. And they fail even to pay attention to studies that point out the risks. As stated by K. Srinath Reddy and Ambuj Roy in PLoS:
[P]racticing physicians have a duty to regularly update their knowledge on the drugs they frequently prescribe. [3]
Clearly, the doctors are not paying attention.
Finally, as the public gradually becomes aware, as the bad publicity increases, a new drug comes along to replace the old one now known to be ineffective and dangerous. And the process starts all over again.
This is the state of modern medicine. As we see the truth about drug after drug and treatment after treatment reach the point where it can no longer be hidden, the reality of medicine’s claim to rely on evidence is proven utterly false.
Sources:
- Cardiovascular Risk with Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs: Systematic Review of Population-Based Controlled Observational Studies, PLoS, Patricia McGettigan, David Henry; doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001098
- Use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs That Elevate Cardiovascular Risk: An Examination of Sales and Essential Medicines Lists in Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries, PLoS, Patricia McGettigan, David Henry; doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001388
- Cardiovascular Risk of NSAIDs: Time to Translate Knowledge into Practice, PLoS, K. Srinath Reddy and Ambuj Roy; doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001389
The Corporation Manipulation Model of Food
Permitting corporations to genetically modify, synthetically process and artificially preserve substances for you to ingest, and then calling it “food” insults our health and well-being. The claim that starving masses must be given cheap alternatives is a fabrication to let them trod upon our garden.
by Scott Sonnon
To describe Primal Eating, allow me to contradistinguish with its opposite: the corporate manipulation model.
Permitting corporations to genetically modify, synthetically process and artificially preserve substances for you to ingest, and then calling it “food” insults our health and well-being.
You will hear many arguments as to why they feel it necessary to promote this disease-riddled behavior. They claim that to feed an over-populated world of dwindling resources, the starving and low economic masses must be given cheap alternatives to quality food. They fabricated this argument, as the footprint of simple eating is magnitudes lighter than their heavy iron clad boots with which they trod upon our garden.
Trusting a corporation to alter the makeup of your food because they promote their humanitarian intent, when they stand to profit from your addiction and disease, is like trusting an elected official to represent your values, because they purport to philanthropically believe in your interest, when they stand to profit from attaining and remaining in office due to contributions from dubious lobbies in exchange for unknown favors.
Anything someone says to you, who stand to profit from your decreased health, should be held suspect from their bias. They may attempt to suspend your good judgment by switching to an argument of survival subsistence claiming, “You must accept a degree of lesser quality if we are to feed the world inexpensively. You can’t afford high quality food.”
We cannot afford low quality! We are made of food we eat. Eating lesser quality is not the solution. Eating better is. And frankly, you cannot afford high quality only because they have made conventional access methods expensive. So, we must return to simple methods of self-reliability to outmaneuver this covert extortion.
You may feel like you have no option but to eat their products, but remember your power to vote in the marketplace with your dollar. You may feel extorted to accept their selections. But you hold the power to change the industry. If you resist consuming these non-food ingestibles, you will force corporations to change their offerings.
Corporations must provide the needs you demand in order to operate. But if you do not define those needs, their profit margin will define your needs for you, and your potential decreased health and increased disease becomes an acceptable loss (especially if they stand to profit from it.)
I despise sounding conspiratorial, but unfortunately, I’ve been around long enough to observe this mutation in the food industry which accelerated forty years ago. Some of us can remember what simple eating was like for we ate that way, or recall our parents or grandparents doing so. But the next generations—our children and children’s children—face a world unfamiliar with this experience. They will walk alone and unaware of what they consume, unless we object.
Discuss with our community and educate yourself. Empower yourself and express your dissatisfaction. Ally yourselves together. Stand up and speak out. Point out bias. Resist coercion. Invest in high quality. Respect your right to personal dignity in your food, for you are what you eat.
Very respectfully,
Scott Sonnon
Scott Sonnon
Scott Sonnon is a Master of Sport, World Martial Arts Champion, USA National Coach, and Federal Consultant. He overcame childhood obesity, learning disabilities and joint disease, to be named by Men’s Fitness Magazine one of the top 24 trainers in the world, and by Black Belt Magazine as one of the 6 most influential martial artists of the century.
Despite incredible obstacles, Scott became the first foreigner in the 1990s to officially receive an invitation and to intern behind xUSSR’s “Iron Curtain” in their national martial art style called “Sambo” and became one of the first 20 Westerners to earn the discipline’s highest athletic distinction: “Master of Sport.” As the USA National Sambo Team Coach, he repeatedly applied his strategies to win international titles for himself and his athletes. To test himself, he came out of retirement at the age of 40, for the 2010 World Martial Art Games, and won 5 gold medals for his country; in Sport Jiujitsu, Submission Grappling, and amateur MMA, against fighters half his age and 100 lbs heavier teams worldwide.
The Above article is courtesy of Gaia Health (http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2013-02-11/the-corporation-manipulation-model-of-food/)
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