Canadians have grown in a world with Universal Health Care and have grown accustomed to visiting the doctor possibly too often. That leads to perhaps being prescribed medicine that might not be necessarily needed. Several people on our very own campus may have visited the doctor looking to nip a cold or a sore throat before an exam. What does this have to do with Vanessa Young?
           Vanessa Young was fifteen years old when she died from taking prescription drugs. Julia Belluz from Macleans writes; “By some estimates, prescription drug overdoses have killed 100,000 North Americans over the past 20 years, and part of the death toll can be attributed to the misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers.” Vanessa does not fall into this demographic, but rather a heartbreaking failure on our government’s part to monitor drugs and their potentially deadly side effects. Vanessa did what she was told to do by her family physician: she took her medicine and passed away not from misuse, but rather proper use of an acid-reflux, or commonly called heart-burn drug, a rarely discussed demographic. She is among a growing statistic of 10,000 Canadian, an estimated statistics that is believed to be even higher. She died from cardiac arrest; something one believes comes from old age and is rarely found in healthy young adults, let alone teenagers unless they have a heart condition. Her father, Conservative MP Terence Young, has fought for 12 years since her death in March 2000 for a stricter government drug monitoring system. He cites that the current system is mostly in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, a topic that needs to be discussed.
           The drug Vanessa was taking is called Cisapride, a drug that has been considered far more toxic than the heart-burn leading to 80 deaths in Canada and the United States, and hundreds of adverse effects in both countries. Health Canada knew of these risks, especially to women and children when approving the drug in 1990, and has sent four letters to doctors about the risk of inducing cardiac arrest. These letters were sent over a ten year period and are easy to ignore or lose, particularly when it comes to the busy life of a doctor or pharmacist. A still more frightening thought is that our neighbors in the United States in January of 2000 rewrote the warning labels on Cisapride and issued an advisory to doctors warning of the chances of heart attacks. A month after Vanessa’s death, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) announced that pharmacies would be pulling the drug from shelves by July that year. This was after the drug was “black boxed” for two years. This is a cue for doctors to be aware of the extra health risks and therefore less likely to prescribe any drug that is found on this list, these drugs are treated as more of a last resort and extreme cases.
           The current model of the Canadian drug industry trusts the drug companies too much, allowing the drug companies to submit their own trials and possibly fabricated results for the drug rather than Health Canada running its own tests. Even Health Canada’s website is not user friendly as it is difficult to navigate even if it does list adverse reactions to drugs, and discovery of these adverse effects by doctors and pharmacist are reported voluntary and are not mandatory. Research has shown that deaths linked to drug prescription has accounted for 106,000 fatalities annually in the United States making it the fourth leading cause of death behind cancer, heart disease and stroke.
           Young hopes to pass a bill that will create an independent drug monitoring agency, able to remove dangerous drugs from the market. This private member bill will be debated late next year, and that is at the earliest. This will help limit the number of deaths by drug prescription  and prevent the number from rising, as it is expected to as the population age rises. The market of prescription drugs grows about a billion dollars a year, growing from $ 26.9 billion which is about what Canadians spend on doctors.
           In this growing age of technology drugs are easy to look-up on Google, information has never been easier to find! However, there is a fine line between looking up effects of a subscription and self-diagnosis. Even published tests on-line could be fabricated or changed depending on who published the test and results. Our best hope for clear information is still our doctors and pharmacists, but we have to remember to ask question especially when it is our lives that could be at stake. Remember to write down the names of any prescriptions you are taking before visiting the doctor, and make sure none of them will react with any new prescriptions. Remember that some drugs also react with none prescribed medicine like vitamins, Tylenol or even certain fruits and be sure to ask about those too. When researching a drug, make sure you have more than one source and at least one or two government websites. This is your health and you as a person must be responsible for your health.
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Photo credits
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/20/a-national-embarrassment-2/mac46_perscriptions03_445x290/