(The Danger Within Us, Jeanne Lenzer, December 2017)
License to kill
Stephen King must be envious. Nothing he has written is nearly as frightening or as suspenseful as what the medical-industrial complex does to its customers, us. In Jeanne Lenzer’s The Danger Within Us, the implants we now consider to be everyday miracles (hips, knees, stents, pacemakers, etc.) have caused conditions worthy of banning by international treaties against torture. The greed, selfishness, self-dealing and corruption is unending, and nothing ever seems to stop it.
The book is structured around a single interminable case, Dennis Fegen, who was implanted with a device called a Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) which is meant to lessen epileptic seizures, among a dozen other things, all unproven. It dug its way into his jugular vein (from which it cannot be removed) and nearly killed him countless times, stopping his heart every three minutes. The company bullied the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), leveraged congressmen and withheld failure stats to win approval for this device, which studies say is essentially useless, when not dangerous. At least as many do worse with it as do better. The US military is now considering it for vets with PTSD.
Medical devices are not tracked like prescription drugs. Lenzer estimates 70 million Americans have had implants in the last ten years alone. The number of people who died because of them is not collected either, and the FDA itself says less than 1% have been reported by the device makers. Since the number of reported deaths is 16,000, possibly two million have actually died. Annually. (Overall, the health care system is the number three cause of death in the USA.) Lenzer cites several experts who estimate that a good 50% of devices get implanted unnecessarily. Standard medical treatment would be just as effective, if not more so. And safer.
Lenzer provides plenty of other examples, including drugs like Genentech’s blockbuster tPA, which has been proven to be no better than its old fashioned competition, and in some ways worse. Though far more expensive, of course. And as we head into the great future of the internet of things, more and more devices report data. They are hackable targets, able to kill the patient remotely, via cellphone.
There are numerous books like this in various sub-fields within medicine, as well as chemicals, nutrition and agriculture. The evidence is stark. The effects often fatal. And nothing ever comes of it. (Just ask Dennis Fegen, who has been contacting anyone and everyone for years with zero results.) No congressional hearings, no permit revocations, no criminal prosecutions. Not even libel suits. Maybe the occasional fine. And to top it off, the Supreme Court has ended liability suits by victims if the device operated properly. Industry bribes doctors to sell each other. Industry finances politicians. Industry dangles fat jobs in front of FDA types. Doctors live in a state of suspension of disbelief when it’s not simple gullibility. The bogus VNS gizmo sits front and center on the company’s website. At $40,000 (installation not included), it is key to their success, and to hell with the (over a thousand) bodies piling up. The Danger Within Us in infuriating.
David Wineberg