Medication side effect warnings. Medications that do more harm than help should not be placed on the market. Medications with three or more side effects damaging organs should not be available to the public. The average human dies from complications from medicine.
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Regarding side effect statistics provided by pharmaceutical/biotech companies for drugs, I propose that statistics be provided to show the public a clearer picture of how the occurrence of combinations of side effects, of any severity, is distributed among clinical trial subjects.
Say a new drug was associated with the following side effects: dizziness (20% ), nausea (20%), and low platelet count (20%). These statistics do not tell the consumer whether these side effects are distributed evenly across the patients. For example, out of 10,000 clinical trial patients, all the side effects could have occurred in a specific subset of 2,000 patients, with the rest experiencing no side effects. Or, for example, 60% of the patients (6,000) experienced only one of the side effects, and 4,000 experienced none of them. The likelihood of clustering of side effects among specific individuals should be communicated. A patient who experiences many side effects, even if not severe, can suffer from a greatly worsened quality of life. This is a common problem with many cancer drugs, which often poison healthy and cancerous cells.
Some possible statistics that could inform the public of the possibility of combinations of side effects, with a new drug, are:
Percent of patients with no side effects
Percent of patients with one or more side effects
Percent of patients with two or more side effects
Percent of patients with three or more side effects
Percent of patients with five or more side effects
Percent of patients with ten or more side effects
Percent of patients with one severe side effect
Percent of patients with two severe side effects
Percent of patients with three severe side effects
A drug may be associated with three severe side effects, but if each of these side effects is uncommon (1%) and no patient experienced more than one severe side effect, that drug’s side effect profile might be considered more favorable compared to a drug where patients experiencing any severe side effects would experience 2 or 3 of them.