That’s 106,000 dead Americans every year from properly prescribed drugs, not medical errors; drugs taken as directed, not overdose. That means that each decade, “normal” side effects of drugs are killing about 1 million people in the U.S.

I am betting the failing NYT is hooked on drug advertising ‘supplements’.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/05/27/are-the-elderly-taking-too-many-vitamins.aspx

By Dr. Mercola

The conventional view of dietary supplements is, for the most part, predictably negative. The New York Times recently offered a perfect demonstration of this view in its April 3 article, “Older Americans Are ‘Hooked’ on Vitamins.”¹ In this interview, Dr. Andrew Saul, editor-in-chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service and author of “Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works” and “Fire Your Doctor: How To Be Independently Healthy,” breaks down the myths and inaccuracies presented in that article.

While drug overdoses are currently killing 63,000 Americans each year — with opioids being responsible for nearly 50,000 of them and being a leading cause of death for Americans under 50 — the media is still pretending that people getting “hooked” on vitamins is a dangerous trend.

“The funny thing is that for those who are hooked on opioids, high doses of vitamin C had been shown — in two really good studies — to enable people to get off opioids without withdrawal symptoms, or greatly reduced withdrawal symptoms. Being hooked on vitamin C would actually help you get unhooked from heroin,” Saul notes.

Getting back to that New York Times article, “The Times has laid-off or fired a very large number of copyeditors … They wanted to save money, so they eliminated the copydesk. They got rid of about 100 copyeditors … In my opinion, this article is a good example of a piece that should have been properly copyedited and fact-checked, and wasn’t,” Saul says…

The New York Times article also states that older Americans get plenty of essential nutrients in their diet, and that the Western diet is not short on vitamins. “This is demonstrably nonsense,” Saul says, adding “The elderly tend to have poor diets in general, especially those who live alone or are institutionalized.”…

Saul also notes that Harvard School of Public Health has assessed the role of drugs in deaths at great depth. When properly prescribed and taken as directed, the lowest estimated death toll from pharmaceutical drugs is still around 85,000 people a year. The high estimate is around 135,000 people annually, while the generally accepted estimate is about 106,000 people a year.

That’s 106,000 dead Americans every year from properly prescribed drugs, not medical errors; drugs taken as directed, not overdose. That means that each decade, “normal” side effects of drugs are killing about 1 million people in the U.S.

According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), which has been tracking this information for over three decades, there have been 13 alleged deaths from vitamins in 31 years. However, Saul notes, “My team looked into this and we could not find substantiation, documentation, proof or convincing evidence of one single death … from vitamins in the last 31 years.” In most cases, the individual was taking both drugs and vitamins…

As a general rule, most Americans are not getting enough vitamins, minerals and micronutrients from their foods, in large part thanks to the prevalence of processed foods. Dietary supplements, especially if your diet is largely processed, is generally advisable. In the long term, growing more nutrient-dense food is a big part of the answer…

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