Just how much damage conventional medical drugs and vaccines do to us, and our health, is not really known or fully understood. The reason is that doctors do not routinely report ‘side effects’ or ‘adverse reactions’ to the drugs they prescribe. This has been known for a long time, although little or no action has ever been taken to improve the situation.
A study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, (2006; 296: 1086-93), found that whilst prescribing doctors should routinely report ‘side-effects’ and ‘adverse reactions’ to drugs to the drug regulatory authorities, many are not doing so.
In fact, the actual rate of reporting was found to be alarmingly low. It was around 10 times below the optimum level set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The study was carried out with doctors in Portugal, where 26 ‘adverse reactions’ were reported per 1 million population. WHO suggest that this should be closer to 300 report per million people!
The researchers said that this under-reporting was not restricted to Portugal, and that the USA, Canada, Italy, Sweden and the UK also have very low reporting rates
The magazine, WDDTY, commenting on this study, said that if the WHO targets were reached, the whole drugs industry would 'grind to a halt’!
In the Guardian, on 12th May 2006, Sarah Bosely wrote that the British Medical Authority (BMA) had said the Yellow Card scheme was not being used enough. Her article quoted BMA figures that at least 250,000 people went to hospital each year because of the damaging ‘side-effects’ of medication, and that about 5,000 die.
As a result the BMA was urging doctors to be more vigilant, and to report any suspected side-effects their patients might experience. They said that only an estimated 10% of adverse drug reactions were currently reported through the "yellow card" scheme to the MHRA. A BMA spokesperson said
"Doctors have a professional duty to report all adverse drug reactions, especially if children or the elderly are involved. Unfortunately too many health professionals are confused about reporting procedures. Doctors must make sure they report any suspected [adverse drug reactions] and at the same time increase awareness among their patients about the reporting process”.
Another BMA spokesman said that not all side-effects could be picked up in clinical trials before the medicine is licensed, which meant that greater vigilance was needed on the part of doctors, pharmacists and nurses.
In the same article the MHRA urged healthcare professionals to use the yellow card scheme. It said
"There is no need to prove that the medicine caused the adverse reaction, just the suspicion is good enough"
The article concludes by saying that it has long been known that doctors did not report all the suspected ‘side-effects’ their patients tell them about, and that 10 years earlier the BMA had issued similar guidance to doctors. But it had little effect!
Similarly, in an Observer article published on 20th January 2008, Dennis Campbell reported that Steve Walker, chief executive of the NHS Litigation Authority, said that doctors must own up to the mistakes they make, in order to cut down on compensation claims that were totalling £613 million each year. He called for a new culture of honesty and openness.
A more jaundiced opinion about this under-reporting is that if all the D.I.Es of drug and vaccines were reported to the drug regulators, most of these so-called medicines would be too readily seen to be harmful and dangerous, and most, if not all of them withdrawn from the market.
Doctors usually prescribe us drugs and vaccines to us on the basis of a calculation - that they will do us more benefit than harm. So by ignoring, or failing to report, 90% of the harm, conventional medicine usually gets the calculation very wrong indeed!
All conventional medical drugs and vaccines harm, damage, and kill us more than we are being told!