Drug Safety
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Pills are the problem

What You Should Know

Nearly 70% of doctors tell patients nothing about adverse effects when they prescribe a drug. Here are five key questions you should ask about every drug you take.



1 Is a small overdose dangerous?
When the margin of safety is small, special care is needed.
2 Are there withdrawal or rebound effects?
With some drugs the problems begin when you stop taking them.
3 A major FDA warning for this drug?
These important safety bulletins seldom reaches consumers.
4 Can it change mood or behavior?
When the margin of safety is small, special care is needed.
5 Does it interact with many other drugs
These require special precautions whenever you start or stop another drug.


Your Next Steps:

In Prescription for Disaster, three chapters describe a consumer strategy for getting the benefits of drugs while reducing the risks.

For now, the only accurate and complete drug risk information comes from the hard-to-read and highly technical drug labels (also called package inserts). On the web, you can get copies for any drug from Scholtz Healthcare. Scholz also provides a very useful drug interaction checkup.

You might also want to consider the Public Citizen Research Group's guide Best Pills/Worst Pills.