Drugs and Doctors may be
the Leading Cause of Death in U.S.
by Dr Joseph Mercola
www.mercola.com

At one time, the main title of my Web site read:

Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death.
This title stemmed from a JAMA article that was published over two years ago. This article, available on my home page, was widely circulated on the Internet and was one of the reasons why my Web site was initially popular.

However, JAMA actually published a study a year earlier that could support that doctors may be the leading cause of death in the United States. This finding is more of a speculation though, so below I have provided some other studies to support this assertion.

In 1994, an estimated 2,216,000 (1,721,000 to 2,711,000) hospitalized patients had serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 (76,000 to 137,000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death.

Fatal ADRs accounted for 0.32 percent (95 percent confidence interval (CI), 0.23 percent to 0.41 percent) of hospitalized patients.
JAMA April 15, 1998;279(15):1200-5 -

Serious and Fatal Drug Reactions in US Hospitals
Drug-related morbidity and mortality have been estimated to cost more that $136 billion a year in United States. These estimates are higher than the total cost of cardiovascular care or diabetes care in the United States. A major component of these costs is adverse drug reactions (ADE).
Healthsentinel.com

The numbers of deaths reported in data sets varied 34-fold and were up to several 100-fold less than values based on extrapolations of surveillance programs.
Am J Med August 1 2000;109(2):122-30

About 0.05 percent of all hospital admissions were certainly or probably drug-related. Incidence figures based on death certificates only may seriously underestimate the true incidence of fatal adverse drug reactions.
Eur J Clin Pharmacol October 2002;58(7):479-82

In one study of 200 patients, ADRs may have contributed to the deaths of two (one percent) patients.
J Clin Pharm Ther October 2000;25(5):355-61

In a survey of over 28,000 patients, ADRs were considered to be the cause of 3.4 percent of hospital admissions. Of these, 187 ADRs were coded as severe. Gastrointestinal complaints (19 percent) represented the most common events, followed by metabolic and hemorrhagic complications (nine percent). The drugs most frequently responsible for these ADRs were diuretics, calcium channel blockers, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and digoxin.
J Am Geriatr Soc Dec 2002;50(12):1962-8