If you are like most people, you have probably never even heard of Iatrogenic Disease. Make no mistake, however, this “disease” is very real. In 2003, heart disease accounted for approximately 700,00 deaths per year and cancer deaths were around 550,000. Iatrogenic Disease, however, accounted for a little under 784,000 deaths, which made it the leading cause of death in the United States in 2003.

Basically, Iatrogenic Disease is sickness and death caused by the medical system itself. A large portion of it is caused by pharmaceutical drug negligence on the part of prescribing doctors, but surgeries gone awry and dirty hospital conditions have their share of representation in this decades-long “hidden epidemic.”

The Government Has Known About Iatrogenic Disease

The federal Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was created in 1972. Its job was to provide oversight and accountability regarding technology and the well-being of the country’s citizens. In 1995, the OTA published a report on the state of the U.S. healthcare system.

They came to a pretty shocking conclusion. According to the OTA report, “only 10-20% of all procedures used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial.”

This means that up to 90% of all conventional medical procedures at the time were unnecessary! Ironically, the year that their report came out, Congress disbanded the Office of Technology Assessment.

The “Death by Medicine” Report

The OTA report was just the tip of the iceberg though. In 2003, the Nutrition Institute of America and four key doctors—Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD and Gary Null PhD—came out with a report of their own entitled “Death by Medicine.”

In their comprehensive analysis, they discovered that the state of the country’s medical system was in a more dire situation than the OTA had reported. The “Death by Medicine” report was the first study to determine in a big way that the medical system itself was actually making people sick. Here are just a few of the highlights of the report, based on 2003 statistics:

Adverse drug reactions accounted for 106,000 deaths annually;

Bedsores and infections while in the hospital or another care facility accounted for 203,00 deaths annually;

There were 7.5 million unnecessary medical procedures, including surgeries, performed in 2003;

There were 8.9 million unnecessary hospitalizations;

“Adverse Drug Reactions” (ADRs) were experienced by 2.2 million people, while they are in the hospital;

Only about 20% of “iatrogenic events” wind up getting reported, so the numbers presented in the report could be much higher, according to the authors.

No Improvements Since

Sadly, the situation may have gotten worse over the last 15 years.

Eighteen percent of patients are still harmed in some way by the American medical care system each year, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010. A 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) discovered that close to 50% of all hospital deaths are linked, surprisingly, to sepsis, or acute infection.

It also seems that the poorest members of society suffer the most at the hands of the medical establishment. One in seven hospital patients on Medicare are affected health-wise in some way by mismanagement, according to a 2008 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.

The practice of emergency medicine, long considered the “shining star” of the American allopathic medical system, has taken a nosedive at the expense of the consumer as well. A mere 4% of doctors practice emergency medicine these days.

The American College of Emergency Physicians also rated emergency medicine programs globally in 2014 and gave the US an overall grade of D+. Major issues of concern stated in their report were access to emergency care, the quality of health care facilities, the practice of “defensive medicine,” overcrowding and not enough time taken to review patients’ medical records, especially their use of pharmaceuticals. The report emphasized that in 2011 there were 1.5 million visits to the ER due to prescription drug misuse. They urged ER doctors and nurses to better regulate prescription drugs.

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