3 ms·
>> prescription drugs, many of them probably prescription painkillers, kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. But how many lives are saved by these d
by the_watcher 13y ago
>> prescription drugs, many of them probably prescription painkillers, kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.
But how many lives are saved by these drugs? To be clear, I am totally open to this number not being nearly high enough to justify the deaths caused, and very much believe our prescription drug system should be reformed. But the fact that prescription drugs actually save lives, and are not simply causes of death, gets ignored far to much for me. I want to know the true net cost of prescription drugs (an intentionally absurd analogy would be something like airbags kill 7 people a year with no mention of how many people those airbags saved).
- Zigurd 13y agoOn the other hand, Acetaminophen is used to supposedly make prescription painkillers less subject to abuse. I wonder how many people are killed by liver failure this way? That's pretty much intentionally killing people who could be put into addiction treatment.
- the_watcher 13y agoAlso a good point. My main point is when looking at drug deaths, the total should reflect (deaths caused-deaths prevented), rather than a raw count of total deaths. At least when looking at it from a macro, pure optimization perspective.