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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38488 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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I think the source of the 3rd leading cause of death quip is Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime, it's a book though by Peter C. Gøtzsche. He summarizes the point in this letter to the editors of the BMJ. Oddly I can't find any reviews about that topic from him even though he's written many others.

He's attributing the underlying cause of many other immediate causes so they're not going to show up in the statistics. I tend to agree with him that drugs are overused in the medical system, but that's a personal value decision on my part, not a researched conclusion.

Thanks for digging up a plausible source for RFK Jr's claim. I agree with you that drugs are likely overused (though in part for cost-benefit reasons rather than because I think the drugs themselves are super harmful). Having said that, I don't think RFK Jr's claim is really justified. Most deaths are multi-causal, especially when you consider second and third order effects and counting every death where over-medication was plausibly involved as a "drug death" while not doing so for other causes of deaths is dishonest.

Yeah, it's at best something like Coffee/Wine/Butter gives/prevents cancer/heart disease level reporting.

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