Britain's drinking water supplies will be tested for safety amid fears that rivers are contaminated with prescription drugs.

British drinking water 'may be tainted with prescription drugs'
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Cancer drugs are of particular concern because they dissolve easily in water.

The "cytotoxic" drugs, which are used in chemotherapy, are potentially dangerous because they are hard to break down through traditional water purification methods and remain potent in low concentrations.

About 50 of these drugs are prescribed to patients in Britain and researchers are concerned they could be very dangerous if one or more of the drugs mixed together in the water supplies. The drugs make their way into the water system when people prescribed the treatments use the toilet.

Although drinking water in the UK is monitored, none of the cytotoxic drugs are included in the list of contaminants."

Scientists attack exaggerated claims made about 'breakthrough' cancer drug treatments

Exaggerated claims are being made for new cancer treatments that are not justified by the evidence, scientists warned yesterday. Drugs hailed as breakthrough treatments for cancer, Britain's biggest cause of death, may be less effective and cause more harm than suspected, they said.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
Comment: Cancer is a multi-billion dollar business. The drugs used in chemotherapy kill cancer cells - but they also kill healthy cells too. That fact alone is bad enough, but it doesn't stop there. The drugs used in chemotherapy also have side-effects and many cause new cancers and new diseases, leading to the use of yet more drugs which in turn have new side effects. It's a vicious circle and a license to print money for the pharmaceutical industry. To learn the facts on chemotherapy drugs used as treatments for cancer, click here.

Big Pharma - promoting diseases as multi-billion dollar markets for patented drugs?

Here is an extract from the Dr Rath Foundation (The Dr. Rath Health Foundation) newsletter which I received today:

February 26, 2008

Court Considers Protecting Drug Makers From Lawsuits
WASHINGTON — Less than a week after issuing a sweeping ruling that bars most lawsuits against medical device makers, the Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in the first of two cases that could determine whether drug makers receive similar protection.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Needless to say, the ruling that is being sought here is a last desperate attempt to avert the imminent collapse of the pharmaceutical investment business with patented drugs. Whatever the Supreme Court eventually rules in these cases, the truth about the pharmaceutical industry – including its toxic chemotherapy and antiretroviral drugs - will remain unchanged: While pretending to deliver health to the world, its entire existence is based on promoting diseases as multi-billion dollar markets for patented drugs.

February 25, 2008

Wyeth, Pfizer Ordered to Pay $2.75 Million Over Drugs
Hormone-replacement drugs made by Wyeth and a Pfizer Inc. unit caused an Arkansas woman's breast cancer and she deserves at least $2.75 million in damages, jurors ruled in the companies' first loss in federal court. Jurors in Little Rock, Arkansas, deliberated 12 hours over two days before finding the combination of Wyeth's Premarin and Pharmacia & Upjohn's Provera menopause drugs helped cause Donna Scroggin's cancer. The former factory worker had a double mastectomy after taking hormone-replacement drugs for about 10 years.
Read article at bloomberg.com

NHS hospital patients dying as 10,000 injections are bungled...

Patients dying as 10,000 injections bungled - Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"Hospitals across Britain have been ordered to review how drugs are given to patients after figures revealed that almost 10,000 injections are bungled each year.

Mistakes led to the deaths of 25 patients and harmed more than 3,000 between January 2005 and June 2006, a study found.

In all, 14,000 errors were discovered during the 18 months assessed by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), a watchdog created to advise the NHS on safety matters.

Most involved administering wrong dosages. Other errors included injecting drugs into the wrong part of the patient's body, incorrectly formulating medicine, wrongly storing products, giving patients drugs to which they were allergic or failing to administer prescribed drugs. As a result, the NPSA has told all hospitals to carry out a risk assessment of the products they use and ordered them not to skimp on safety on the grounds of cost."

"Six years ago, Wayne Jowett, a teenager, died in agony after the highly toxic drug vincristine was injected into his spine when it should have been injected into a vein. The lethal blunder came when two chemotherapy drugs stored in similar syringes were mixed up.

The 18-year-old, who was in remission from leukaemia, suffered irreparable nerve damage, causing excruciating pain, followed by creeping paralysis and organ failure.

His father, also called Wayne, who has campaigned for the development of a new type of connector that would make it impossible to pump drugs intended for the veins into the spine, said that neither the NPSA alert nor the pilot schemes went far enough. Mr Jowett, 47, from Nottingham, said: "We don't think enough has been done. We are just waiting for a case like Wayne's to happen again.""