Dear Friend:
I apologize for not being here as often as I had hoped. As I shared some time ago, I went through a startingly difficult adverse reaction to prescription medicine this summer and fall. I am still in recovery, with signs of improvement. The reactions crept up on me unexpectedly, with all manner of symptom. I did not notice it at first, partly because I am not a drug user and did not spot the signs. I almost wish I had done more drugs in my life, so that I would have noticed what was happening to me. It was something out of a horror film, but it has set me in motion with respect to exploring the broader issues at the heart of my experience. For example, there often appears to be no requirement of informed consent with respect to prescription medication. That is, the prescribing physician has no responsibility to tell you about possible side effects (Shall we re-name the ‘Hippocratic Oath’, the Hypocratic Oath?). In addition, there is no systemic emphasis on the existence of Pharmacogenetic testing that can (sometimes) determine how your unique system will respond to a variety of medications. That testing does exist with respect to certain drugs and—if it were collectively prioritized—could be expanded to include a great number of others. There is no excuse for the status quo.
As it is, somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people die annually in the US from adverse reactions to prescriptions. And the number of people who survive—and who have to live with a variety of physical and psychological challenges—is somewhere around 2 million. Take that in. That’s more than the entire population of Phoenix. If regular Pharmacogenetic testing was expanded and normalized, those numbers would drop considerably. It’s not difficult to understand why this has happened—the last thing Big Pharma wants is for people to know which drugs are contra-indicated (or to find out that they can’t take prescriptions at all!). Let’s face it—they would rather have someone die after making a profitable drug purchase, than live without making any purchase at all. And yes, I do realize that Big Pharma has made positive contributions to your world. What I am focusing on are some of the ways in which they—and their medical enablers—are perpetuating an inhumane system.
In my case, I had asked a functional medicine Doctor to prescribe something called ‘Armour Thyroid’ in the autumn of 2022. My recollection is that my thyroid numbers were optimal, but I needed an extra bit of support to manage a variety of pressures. Months later it appears that I unknowingly went into a hyper-thyroid state, experiencing a variety of symptoms including unusually high anxiety. At no point was I told that I must have my blood levels checked. At some point, I requested sleeping medication because I was finding it hard to calm my system. The first med (Dayvigo) was not particularly effective, and so I asked for a drug called Zopiclone in Canada. Soon thereafter, I experienced a broad range of psychological and physical symptoms (including a particularly frightening physical collapse). And despite my interface with a variety of systems, none of them figured out what was happening to me. Between the loving support of my wife Susan Frybort, and my own intuition, I somehow realized that I had to stop taking the medications. And soon thereafter, my thinking normalized but my body had changed. I had lost over 40 lbs, with a variety of energetic and physiological challenges. It is somewhat of a miracle that I am still here.
While studying to become a lawyer, I formed the intention to develop a litigation wing devoted to medical jurisprudence. If I had built a practice, I would have done that. I won the Law and Medicine Prize in Law School, and was always horrified by the self-serving and unconscionable aspects of the mainstream medical world. Even as a teenager, I was writing letters to the College of Physicians and Surgeons to complain about power tripping Doctors who failed to properly care for my persistently ill grandparents. And now my intentions have come full circle. I won’t go back into law, but I want to devote a considerable amount of time to writing a book about this experience (working title—Pharmageddon) and to bringing more attention to these issues…