Painkillers may not kill pain very well. But they still have serious side effects

New research has found that NSAID painkillers have no more effect than placebo in the treatment of back pain, but continue to cause patient harm.

The study, entitled "Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for spinal pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis" examined 35 randomised controlled trials, covering over 6,000 patients, that compared the efficacy of painkilling drugs with placebo control groups. It found that the drugs did reduce pain for a short period, but that overall "the effect was not clinically important", and that those on placebo control groups did equally well.

               "In summary, compared with placebo, NSAIDs do not provide a clinically important effect on spinal pain, and six patients must be treated with NSAIDs for one patient to achieve a clinically important benefit in the short term."

However, the team from the University of Sydney in Australia also found that the patients taking NSAID painkillers s were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from the well known adverse reactions to the drugs, notably adverse gastrointestinal complications than those taking placebo.

So whilst these pharmaceutical drugs are of little of no benefit, they continue to be a major threat to our health because of their harmful and damaging side effects!

Another noteworthy feature of the study was that it compared this finding with the current guidelines of NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in Britain. These guidelines were only recently updated, and made NSAID painkillers the 'first choice treatment' for low back pain. This advice followed similar findings about the ineffectiveness of Paracetamol (Acetamorfen in the USA), and the dangers of opioid painkillers.

So NICE does have a difficult task! What are they supposed to do? The three main groups of painkilling drugs available for conventional doctors don't work! But they do damage to patients. So perhaps their clinical guidelines should now be rewritten again, admitting that there are no safe painkillers, and no effective painkillers. At least this would be a more honest assessment of the situation conventional medicine now finds itself.

Yet NICE could be more positive. It could advise us all to look towards alternative medical therapies, like Homeopathy and Acupuncture, in recognition that if they are truly to pursue their objective of  'clinical excellence' the pharmaceutical industry no longer has anything to offer.

I have noticed several comments from doctors about this situation. One reflected sadly that "instead of everyone falling over themselves to say what we can't use, how about what we CAN use?" Clearly, the doctors cupboard is bare! The solution for conventional doctors is the same. They need to recognise that there are no safe or effective painkillers, and instead, they need to refer their patients to alternative medical therapies. In this way they will find that their patients are treated more effectively, and more safely.

Indeed, the lack of side effects of alternative medical treatment might also mean that patients do not have to  keep returning to the surgery, and doctors will not find themselves so stretched, and the NHS not in such a crisis!

Aspirin. That nice, harmless painkiller?

I wrote about Aspirin in my e-book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", in which I outlined why, after spending so much on health care during the last 60+ years we seem to be getting sicker rather than better. In this piece I wrote the following:

          ".... like all NSAID drugs, aspirin is associated with side-effects such as stomach ulcers, disruption of the blood clotting system, and asthma attacks in susceptible people. And aspirin is far more dangerous than we have been told. A WDDTY report dated 18th October 2007 claims that aspirin kills 20,000 people in the USA every year, whilst another 100,000 end up in hospital as a result of taking the drug".

Since writing this, I have to admit that I seem to have got things very wrong! Aspirin is now known to be much more dangerous than I realised at the time. The dangers of Aspirin go far beyond the Gastro-Intestinal diseases it causes.

Aspirin was first patented as a drug in 1889, so in over 120 years, the conventional medical establishment appears to have been quite unaware of the dangers of Aspirin, or quite unprepared to tell us about them, although at the same time quite prepared to tell us that aspirin was 'safe', and could be taken routinely for any number of health reasons.

In August 2011, the magazine WDDTY (What doctor's don't tell you) reported that although Aspirin is supposed to prevent heart disease (and many millions of patients are taking a daily aspirin to do so, on the advice of their doctors), all NSAID drugs, including aspirin, actually become a killer for patients who already have a heart condition. The article reported on research done at the University of Florida, published in the American Journal of Medicine, which showed that patients taking aspirin regularly increased their risk of dying by 47%.

Research in Australia has linked Aspirin with age-related macular degeneration. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the number of older people who have been encouraged to take aspirin, routinely, over recent decades. But note that the researchers could not quite bring themselves to prove a 'causal' relationship! This probably means two things. First, patients won't be told until a 'causal relationship' has been completely demonstrated. And in the meantime, doctors will continue to give it to us despite the risks!

Note that doctors in the UK have already been told about the doubling of the risk of contracting the condition, but that their advice is to continue prescribing it:

          " ...'any decision to stop aspirin therapy is complex and should be individualised', noting that the risk 'should be balanced with the significant morbidity and mortality of sub-optimally treated cardiovascular disease'. Overall they felt there was insufficient evidence to recommend changing practice, except in patients with strong risk factors for neovascular age-related macular degeneration".

So all is well within the world of the conventional medical establishment! Carry on, they say, despite the risk.

So do our doctors tell us about the risk? Well, at least WDDTY have done so. In their report on research done at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, they say that the risk increases the longer patients take aspirin, and that "those who have taken the drug regularly for 10 years or longer are at the highest risk" emphasising the the drug can cause many kinds of eye problems, up to, and including, blindness.

See also the following articles on Aspirin, Eyesight and Blindness.
Taking aspirin regularly causes severe degenerative eye disorders
Taking aspirin as few times as once a week triples risk of blindness

So what about all the evidence that suggest aspirin does such wonderful things for our health? For example, does it not reduce cancer risk? WDDTY have again suggested that this is another piece of ConMed hype. It reports on an article published in The Lancet that examined the evidence of aspirin's 'cancer-protecting' role, which found that the study was a re-analysis of about 90 previously published studies - which conveniently managed to exclude several major US trials that had failed to find "any protective effect from aspirin".

The situation is actually worse than this, as described in this article which indicates that not only will aspirin not prevent cancer, it will actually cause it. The author reminds us that the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, in 2004, found that daily aspirin intake "is linked to a significantly increased risk of developing cancer". Indeed, the article goes on to remind us of the overall dangers of aspirin, namely:

          "Regular use of aspirin is linked to heart attack, stroke, intestinal bleeding, organ damage, and death".

The conclusion that can be reached is that the ConMed Establishment is willing to discount, or to ignore, the overwhelming evidence that aspirin consumption is dangerous; and that it is able, and willing to use and manipulate 'medical science' in order to highlight any marginal, or indeed bogus benefits that can be found in drugs.

We are dealing with Big Business interests here, not in a health service that puts patient interests first and foremost.

Similar claims have been made for Aspirin in relation to it preventative role in treating Dementia. 'The Healthier Life' have examined these claims, and came to this conclusion:

          "In a new study, research gave memory tests to hundreds of older subject with high risk of heart disease. Five years later, they gave the same tests. Subject who took low-dose aspirin tended to score a bit hight than those who didn't use the therapy. Okay. Slightly better memory. That's good. But even the researchers admit ... "There were no differences in dementia rates in the two groups".

So this is not a ringing endorsement of aspirin as an effective treatment of dementia. But any marginally positive news is used by the ConMed Establishment to hype its drugs. So despite the risks to our hearts, our eyes, and our stomachs, older people are given a drug in the hope that it might, just, have a marginal effect on our brains.

Great marketing. Lousy medicine!

Aspirin is a NSAID painkiller. In the next few days I will be continuing with a series of blog on painkillers that implicates these drugs with far wider damage to human health.

Diclofenac. Too dangerous, causes patient harm, but still on sale

Diclofenac is a NSAID painkiller, launched in Britain in about 1993, that has been found to cause heart attacks, and banned by the MHRA in June 2013 - at least for patients with heart problems. As usual, this ban took a long time, even though all NSAID drugs have been linked with heart disease for many years. This has been one of the few such drugs that has faced even a partial banned. Vioxx is another. And, as far as I am aware, the drug is still available elsewhere in the world, and clearly, is still available in Britain for those patients who do not have heart problems!

The dangers of Diclofenac have been known about for many years. In June 2005 a BBC article outlined ‘Safety doubts for more painkillers’. This referred to all NSAID painkillers, and within the article there is a comment that “enough concern exists to warrant a consideration of the cardiovascular safety of all NSAIDs”. However, it took the drug regulatory system a further 8 years to act on Diclofenac, whilst other NSAID painkillers are still being given to patients. After the ban was announced (June 2013) I checked the Wikipedia website, and it still  had this to say about Diclofenac.

          “Diclofenac is among the better-tolerated NSAIDs. Though 20% of patients on long-term treatment experience side effects, only 2% have to discontinue the drug, mostly due to gastrointestinal complaints

Other internet websites that described the ‘side-effects’ of Diclofenac also failed to give clear warnings that the drug caused heart attacks, and were content to repeat this bland ‘well-tolerated’ assurance.

This is quite typical. Most drugs are known to be dangerous for many years before they are banned, and prior to the ban patients are told little about the dangers, but plenty of re-assurances about their safety! 

The Daily Mail reported the problems in September 2011, but even then added “Don’t stop taking the pills, but do talk to your doctor”.

An Asian vulture seemed to have been treated better than human patients! Diclofenac is used for veterinary purposes, and in India its manufacture was banned for cattle as it was killing a rare species of Asian vulture! Even this did not appear to suggest to the Conventional Medical Establishment that Diclofenac might be a dangerous drug! The withdrawal of the drug in India did, however, lead to the recovery of the vulture. This was happening in 2009 - 4 years prior to the current ban.

The ban on Diclofenac was announced by the BBC, a media organisation which has a long history of relaying news of conventional ‘medical breakthroughs’, but rarely about medical catastrophies like this. So I searched on the internet to see what they had been telling us about this drug. 

* February 2013. BBC article refers to ‘heart risk’ and says that the drug is ‘overused’.

* May 2013. BBC article refers to ‘common painkiller’ that ‘poses heart risks’ on the basis of an article published in the Lancet.

* June 2013. BBC article refers to a ‘heart risk warning’ about the drug.

So, like most of the mainstream media, they have been well aware of the problems associated with Diclofenac, but rather than warning us, they have relied almost entirely on what they are told by the conventional medical establishment. Our Media appears to have little stomach for investigative journalism when it comes to exposing dangerous drugs!

This puts us all at risk. Known drug dangers are kept secret by the conventional medical establishment. And the Media is not prepared to ask serious questions about the dangers caused by pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines.

What this means is that no patient, at any time, can be satisfied that any current drug or vaccine (Diclofenac was a ‘current drug’ even for people with heart conditions until the MHRA announcement) is safe.

Thanks to Vijay Vaishnav for this additional information on Diclofenac - sent to me via Facebook. Clearly the dangers of Big Pharma drugs go further than the damage caused to human populations.

          "Doclofenac can also indirectly affect human health because of the ecological disturbance it causes. For example, use of diclofenac in animals has been reported to have led to a sharp decline in the vulture population in the Indian Subcontinent, a 95% decline in 2003, 99.9% decline as of 2008. The mechanism is, it is presumed, renal failure, a known side effect of diclofenac. Vultures eat the carcasses of livestock that have been administered veterinary diclofenac, and are poisoned by the accumulated chemical, as vultures do not have a particular enzyme to break down diclofenac. 

          "The loss of tens of millions of vultures over the last decade has had major ecological consequences across the Indian Subcontinent that pose a potential threat to human health. In many places, populations of feral dogs (Canis familiaris) have increased sharply from the disappearance of Gyps vultures as the main scavenger of wild and domestic ungulate carcasses. Associated with the rise in dog numbers is an increased risk of rabies and casualties of almost 50,000 people. A major shift in transfer of corpse pathogens from vultures to feral dogs and rats can lead to a disease pandemic causing millions of deaths in a crowded country like India; whereas vultures' digestive systems safely destroy many species of such pathogens. 

          "Diclofenac has been shown also to harm freshwater fish species such as rainbow trout. (Wikipedia)

P.S.  Diclofenac might have been banned by the MHRA, but it is still sold as Voltarol, and still advertised on television (January 2014). And on Voltarol's website you can search in vain for any mention of the known dangers.