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Nearly every day, drugs are removed from the market because they have been shown to produce such
strong side effects that their use is “no longer” justified. Yet all drugs are potentially dangerous because
the poison they contain is “anti-body” oriented, which means that they are also destroying parts of the
body.
The heart drug nifedipine, a calcium-channel blocker used to treat high blood pressure, has been linked
with serious, and sometimes fatal, side effects, including heart attacks and other cardiac abnormalities.
Although the Journal of the American Medical Association argues that because of its severe side effects,
the drug should be abandoned, it is still prescribed world-wide in certain hypertensive emergencies. The
U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has warned doctors to use nifedipine only with great
caution, if at all. One study published in 1995 in the Lancet found that patients who received calcium-
channel blockers were 60 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than those put on either diuretics or
beta-blockers. Nifedipine turned out to be the most dangerous of all calcium-channel blockers.
Beta-blockers are hazardous, too. In 1998, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported
that apart from being ineffective, the elderly are more likely to suffer a sudden and fatal heart attack while
taking these drugs. New analysis of 10 trials from a Medline search revealed that beta-blockers, which
have been used for over 30 years to treat high blood pressure, are no more effective than a sugar pill.
The American drug reserpin, which is also used to lower elevated blood pressure, has been shown to
increase the risk of breast cancer by 300 percent, but it is still given to patients with high blood pressure.
Several other classes of drugs—including diuretics and anti-hypertensives (for lowering blood pressure)
—are suspected to cause cancer of the kidneys. The beta-blocker atenol also became suspect after it was
discovered that cancer was twice as common in hypertensive sufferers taking the therapy. Both British
and U.S. studies have shown that only a fifth to a third of patients on drugs managed to reach the blood
pressure targets set by their doctors. Even placebos are able to achieve that. This makes the so urgently-
advised treatment of high blood pressure all the more questionable.
Another major side effect of hypertensive drugs is hypotension—or a sudden drop in blood pressure
when one stands up. Thus, these drugs can be considered a major risk of dizziness and falling, and
therefore, bone and hip fractures among senior citizens. In 1994, the British Medical Journal published a
study showing that diuretics (drugs used to lower blood pressure) cause an 11-fold increase in diabetes.
As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993, ACE inhibitors (a group of
pharmaceuticals that are used primarily in treatment of hypertension and congestive heart failure) can
cause potentially fatal kidney damage and even death, if they are given too soon after a heart attack.
Even the highly praised “miracle” drug insulin, which is injected into diabetics, has now been proven
to cause diabetic blindness. Another drug, the anti-malaria medication plaquenil, which is supposed to be
useful against lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and skin problems, is often prescribed. Its sale is legal in the
U.K, where authorities have no objections to recommending the drug for children provided the daily
dosage does not exceed 6.5 mg per kg of body weight. In the U.S., any doctor who prescribes plaquenil to
a child faces the risk of a lawsuit because a number of fatalities have been reported among children who
have taken doses as low as 0.75 g. Not only children risk their health and possibly their lives by using this
drug. Those suffering eye problems, psoriasis or liver problems, and also alcoholics and pregnant women
could find their condition worsening. Side effects of the drug include irritability, nervousness, nightmares,
convulsions, nerve deafness, blurred vision, edema, bleaching of the hair, alopecia (loss of scalp hair)
aplastic anemia, anorexia and nausea.
A whole range of drugs also exists that were designed to cut down your stomach acid production. If
you want to avoid developing pneumonia, among other serious health problems, you had better stay away
from antacids and instead deal with the true causes of acid reflux. Subduing the secretion of stomach acid,
no matter what approach you choose, is a serious intervention with long-term consequences, if pursued