Health Impact News Editor Comments: While a common theme on this news site, even “mainstream” media can no longer ignore the prescription drug problem in this country any more, although this story did not exactly make headlines.
Excerpts:
U.S. doctors are too quick to reach for their prescription pads, according to a new report urging them to think more about side effects and non-drug alternatives. Nearly half of all Americans have used at least one prescription drug in the past month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and experts say overprescribing is rampant.
In an editorial in the same journal (, researchers describe how opioid painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet have become increasingly common without good evidence that they help patients in the long run.
The evidence of harm, on the other hand, is clear, write Dr. Deborah Grady of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues.
In 2007 alone, for instance, there were nearly 11,500 deaths related to prescription opioids — “a number greater than that of the combination of deaths from heroin and cocaine,” according to the researchers.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43385827/ns/health-health_care/
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