Who’s to Blame for Fluoroquinolone Toxicity and Damage?

The question of who is to blame for the damage done by Fluoroquinolones is a bit complicated and, as such, this is going to be a long post, of which I’ll apologize in advance. Of course, no one is taking responsibility for the damage done to people by these drugs; in fact, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, almost no one admits that there is even a problem at all, let alone a problem on the vast scale that is reported across the internet. So, let’s have a look at all of the players who are involved in these problems caused by the Fluoroquinolone and see what their roles are.

But first things first, if you are new to the problems caused by antibiotics like Cipro, Levaquin and Avelox, then please see the Introduction to the Fluoroquinolones here, and you can also see a full List of Quinolone and Fluoroquinolone drugs here.

Is the FDA to Blame

The FDA, at least in the United States, is the organization that has been charged with the responsibility to protect consumers from the effects of dangerous drugs. Their ENTIRE job, the sole reason for their existence is to protect the consumer. Unfortunately, in their one and only reason for being, they have utterly and completely failed by any objective measures, and in this, the FDA is definitely to blame for the damaging problems associated with the Fluoroquinolone antibiotics.

While the FDA has put several Black Box Warnings on the Fluoroquinolone Drugs, it was not without protest. One consumer group actually forced the FDA to issue a black box warning for tendon rupture by suing them in court. But this is of little consequence since few people read these warnings, and even most doctors and pharmacists are oblivious of their existence or their importance.

How can I make the claim that the FDA has failed? A recent Harvard study entitled Institutional Corruption and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs emphatically stated this. The FDA has veered from its original mission of protecting the public, to protecting the interests of the drug industry. Essentially, its entire mission is to protect the profits of drug companies, even if that means sacrificing the health of the public to do so.

I could literally go on and on about how the corruption in the FDA and the thousands of ways that regulations actually are beneficial to drug companies, giving them an essential monopoly, rather than controlling them to protect the public. Basically, anyone who gets injured by the Fluroquinolones and looks into this deep enough discovers that it’s not some conspiracy theory, but drop dead reality blatantly exposed by Harvard University, stating that the FDA is not there to protect you, but to serve monied interests in the pharmaceutical industry.

Institutional corruption consists of distortions of these
responsibilities, such as approving drugs that are mostly
little better than existing medications, failing to ensure
sufficient testing for serious risks, and inadequately
guarding the public from harmful side effects.”
Institutional Corruption and the Myth
of Safe and Effective Drugs

When the number three cause of death in the US is medical care¹, when over 100,000 hospitalized patients die each year from PROPERLY prescribed prescription drugs²; well, you have to suspect something is wrong.

How about the Drug Companies?

Drug companies are basically wealthy companies that have been able to buy a virtual monopoly on the right to bring drugs to market. The FDA and the drug companies are two sides of the same coin. Neither one is interested in your safety or well-being, and since drug companies have a virtual monopoly on what can ‘cure  or prevent’ disease, given to them by the US government, the consumer is faced with limited choices because of this ‘unholy alliance’ that benefits drug companies over the public.

Doctors

While most victims of the Fluoroquinolones still tend to think highly of their doctors and don’t believe they should take much of the blame for their problems, I tend to disagree, and I place a high amount responsibility onto doctors for the serious damage these drugs have caused to these suffering victims everywhere.

I lay the responsibility onto doctors because people who are sick don’t go to the FDA or drug companies when they are sick, they go to a doctor. And a doctor is supposed to be the expert on health and who you are paying to give you the proper information on your health.

As reprehensible as many [pharmaceutical] industry
practices are… the behavior of much of the medical
profession is evenmore culpable. Drug companies are
not charities; they expect something in return
for the moneythey spend, and they evidently
get it or they wouldn’t keep paying.
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption
by Marcia Angell, Editor of The New England
Journal of Medicine for twenty years

Doctors are supposed to do all of the research and takes the proper amount of care to make sure that he is doing the right thing and giving the right solution to the right problem. After all, doctors take an oath to ‘First Do No Harm’ and have the duty to be a patient advocate. If they cannot do that, then why are they doctors?

Doctors are out last line of defense against the inappropriate prescribing of drugs, yet Antibiotics are Prescribed Unnecessarily One Half of the Time. The very reason that these drugs require a prescription is supposed to be so that we can only get them from an expert with the proper skills to judge whether or not they are needed and whether they are safe.

But doctors have utterly failed being our advocates, and in fact, they are arguably more advocates of drug companies than of their patients. Marcia Angell, from the quote above, estimates that doctors are paid up to $10 billion dollars a year from pharmaceutical companies.

The research on the Fluoroquinolone drugs is in easy to find places in great abundance. All a doctor would have to do is to go to a professional drug research site, that every doctor has access to, and type in something like ‘Fluoroquinolone Side Effects’ or ‘Fluroquinolone Dangers’ and he’d have an abundance of information on things like the DNA Damage and permanent disability from Mitochondrial Disorder from the Fluoroquinolones at his fingertips that should make him sufficiently concerned about giving this drug to anyone, particularly for a minor illness.

Doctors have failed on all accounts to keep people safe from these drugs.

The American Medical Association

The AMA is a monopoly organization that controls the state medical boards that give doctors their licensure. In the United States, only those who go to AMA approved medical schools and who are licensed by the AMA controlled medical boards can call themselves ‘medical doctors’ and put an MD after their name, and thus are the only ones who can write a prescription (with a few exceptions).

While the state boards were given the right to license doctors under the guise of ‘public health’, what it actually did was to create a drug industry serving monopoly. One of the functions of the AMA is to create a ‘standard of care’ for doctors to follow to reduce their liability against harming patients. This ‘standard of care’ means that doctors have little leeway to make decisions about your care and, ironically, “the good news from a physician’s standpoint is that the law only requires minimal competence. The care does not even have to be average.” ³. These ‘standards of care’ are also what insurance companies follow and will pay for, so anything ‘alternative’ or outside the bounds of the standard of care will not be paid for by the insurance companies, with much fallout for a doctor who consistently gets treatment denied because he practices outside of the standard of care.

“There is also terrible fear of losing their licenses if they go
against the wishes of their medical licensing boards. This
combines with some fear of loss of revenue if their patients
actually become well.  So it seems to be a combination of
ignorance, self-serving greed and ambition that drives and
sustains the medical destruction of the health of the people
around the world today.”
DRUG ADDICTION – A NUTRITION PROBLEM
by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

Doctors who choose to do their own research and to decide to treat their patients using ‘outside the box’ methods, such as treating patients with nutrients, or not putting them on a Statin Drug or an antibiotic when that drug is ‘indicated’ risk serious liability if the patient gets hurt, and they also risk not being covered by malpractice insurance, and possibly even losing their license.

What About Pharmacists?

Pharmacists are truly our last line of defense against the inappropriate prescribing of these drugs. Pharmacists are required to have pHd’s in order that they are experts on the drug prescriptions they are filling. They have advanced computer programs that can take all of the other drugs someone is on, along with their age and even their laboratory results, and determine if this drug is appropriate for the person they are being prescribed for, and any drug interactions that might exist.  They are the ones that when we say, “Is this drug safe?” they would generally have the best information with which to warn you about the problems a drug might cause.

Yet how many times do we hear about people getting the Fluoroquinolones prescribed at the same time as drugs that the Fluoroquinolones interact negatively with? Fluoroquinolones  and Tylenol, and Fluoroquinolones and Prednisone increase the risk of damage and toxicity from these drugs, yet pharmacists almost never catch this interaction and call the doctor back to remind them not to prescribe them together. In fact, these drugs ARE prescribed at the same time a frightening amount of the time despite these known interactions.

The Patient

While the victim is never to blame for their own victimization, the tragedy that is the unrecognized problem of Fluoroquinolone toxicity should teach us that we all need to take absolute responsibility for our own health.

We cannot trust blindly in the medical profession to know what they are doing, and many Fluoroquinolone sufferers have found out that with only a small amount of research and inquiry that they end up knowing more about the Fluoroquinolones than their drug industry educated doctor does.

I try to help everyone to change their perspective on doctors and instead of trusting them as an authority figure that makes decisions about their health, they should use them as tools to get one perspective about their health on. After they get information from their doctor’s perspective, while taking copious notes, they should then go and research the information that has been given to them and see if their doctor’s advice is truly the best option for them.

This is excellent when we have the luxury of time, but all too often when someone goes to the doctor they are ill, in pain, exhausted, and frightened; and just want to get relief from their problem as quickly as possible.

Because of this fact, and the fact that drugs specifically, and medical care in general is extremely dangerous, this speaks to the idea that as health care consumers, we need to take extraordinary measures to take excellent care of our health so that we rarely get into a position of requiring a doctor to help us with a health emergency, and if we do, we have researched the topic as much as possible in order to make a decision that is as informed as it can be under the circumstances.

If you are suffering from the effects of Fluoroquinolone toxicity, we suggest that you take a look at the book Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Solution. It’s a comprehensive program that will help you to overcome the damaging effects of these drugs and giving you a lifelong program to get as healthy as possible and take responsibility for your health in many ways. The staff here at FQResearch.org have all used this program and all agree that it gave us the largest strides in improvement from our Fluoroquinolone Toxicity over anything else that we have tried. We recommend it, and we hope that you try it and get as much benefit from it as we have.