Wow! So Many Drugs!

Like I incoherently said yesterday, I'm not sure how long the articles from the NYTimes are accessible. I've got a subscription, so I can see any article in the archives anytime. Sadly, I need an additional (and slightly more expensive subscription) to access the crossword puzzles - so, that, I don't have. I know not everyone is 29 months pregnant, and thus immobilized, left with time to peruse the papers...

Anyway, this is from a 25 Feb article ("How 2 Rights Can Make a Wrong") on mixing drugs, wittingly or not... But the main thing that strikes me is the astronomical #s of takers and drugs.

In 2004, 82 percent of the United States population reported using at least one prescription drug, over-the-counter medication, or dietary supplement in the previous week, and 30 percent reported using five or more of these during the same period, according to a study by the Sloan Epidemiology Center at Boston University. Among senior citizens, 75 percent of all Americans over the age of 65 took roughly four prescription drugs on a daily basis in 2005; the average 75-year-old in the United States swallowed eight different prescription medications each day. That same year, approximately 1.6 million American teenagers and children (almost 300,000 of whom were under 10) were given at least two psychiatric drugs in combination, according to an analysis performed by Medco Health Solutions for The New York Times.

I don't think it's just vitamin C, they're taking. Crazy numbers... No wonder, "In August 2006, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies released a major study on medication errors in American hospitals that found that adverse drug events harm more than 1.5 million people and kill several thousand a year, costing at least $3.5 billion annually." How could this many people be taking this many drugs WITHOUT adverse effects?
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Also "Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril" - "A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. “Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. " Somehow, I think that if bees aren't pollinating our crops, more than just the beekeepers are in trouble. So, exactly the kinds of food we should be eating more (non-processed, unrefined things that occur in nature) a) only make up 1/3 of our diet and b) are imperiled. Maybe we can genetically modify our food so it doesn't require pollination! Yay - seedless - the way nature intended!