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What You Must Know About the Hidden Dangers of Antibiotics
By Jay S. Cohen
Published by Square One
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
While the news about taking too many antibiotics is now common knowledge, there is another underlying danger that the public is not aware of. As beneficial as this class of drugs are, there is a widely prescribed family of antibiotics that is highly destructive. Called fluoroquinolones, they are better known under the names Cipro and Levaquin (as well as four others). What You Must Know About the Hidden Dangers of Antibiotics, has two main goals. The first is to expose the truly destructive capability of these drugs to cause serious, sometimes long term and permanent injuries. The capacity of these drugs for such damage has been attested to by the government’s own watchdog agency, the FDA. Hundreds of patients, many of whom are quoted in this book, have confirmed their long-lasting injuries to the book’s author, Dr. Jay Cohen, while many hundreds more have been ignored or dismissed by their own physicians. As this book will show, being brushed off and dismissed as simple side effects essentially allows these manufactures to hide these problems from public view.
The second goal of this book is to provide other safer and effective remedies, solutions, and considerations that may help end the suffering experienced by patients suffering from these dangerous side effects--that can affect many human systems including the musculoskeletal, nervous, psychiatric, gastrointestinal, and others. To do this we explain how these dangerous antibiotics work, and particularly how they injure. By understanding the underlying problems, the alternatives offered in this book can help people potentially reduce their pain reduction, clear up persistent antibiotic-based health issues, and just as important, give them hope.
Because so many doctors do not carefully read the FDA’s dire warnings about the risks these specific antibiotics pose, there is little likely patients will be know why they are having such serious reactions. With What You Must Know About the Hidden Dangers of Antibiotics, they may have the answer they are looking for.
The second goal of this book is to provide other safer and effective remedies, solutions, and considerations that may help end the suffering experienced by patients suffering from these dangerous side effects--that can affect many human systems including the musculoskeletal, nervous, psychiatric, gastrointestinal, and others. To do this we explain how these dangerous antibiotics work, and particularly how they injure. By understanding the underlying problems, the alternatives offered in this book can help people potentially reduce their pain reduction, clear up persistent antibiotic-based health issues, and just as important, give them hope.
Because so many doctors do not carefully read the FDA’s dire warnings about the risks these specific antibiotics pose, there is little likely patients will be know why they are having such serious reactions. With What You Must Know About the Hidden Dangers of Antibiotics, they may have the answer they are looking for.
Excerpt
Open Letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education & Labor
Dear Senators:
Serious adverse reactions to fluoroquinolone antibiotics (FQs) have been reported in medical journals and to the FDA since the 1980s. Although the FDA has increased the warnings on these drugs, my analysis of the data shows that reports continue to climb in number. As of February 2014, approximately 45,000 individual cases of fluoroquinolone toxicity have been reported. And, as studies have proven, the FDA receives reports of only one to 5 percent of the actual numbers of adverse reactions that occur.
I have been following these medications for sixteen years and have evaluated in person or by telephone consultation more than 500 people injured by FQs. In 2001, I published an article, “Peripheral Neuropathy with Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics” in the peer-reviewed journal, Annals of Pharmacotherapy. This article described forty-five cases of neurological symptoms such as tingling, numbness, burning pain, twitching, and/or weakness. Moreover, 93 percent of agitation, impaired cognitive function, intractable insomnia, hallucinations, psychosis, acute manic episodes, joint or muscle pain, or tendon rupture. In many cases, toxicities also involved the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems, skin, and sight or hearing. Overall, 90 percent of my subjects experienced toxicity to multiple body systems, hence I have coined the term: fluoroquinolone toxicity syndrome (FTS).
Of greatest concern, the majority of my cases had lasted more than one to two years and were ongoing. These severe, long-term reactions occurred in a generally young and healthy population. The average patient was forty-two, many of them athletes. In fact, top athletic organizations now warn athletes to avoid treatment in FQs. Because of the impaired healing seen in severe FTS patients, we have long suspected genetic injury from FQs. These drugs were designed to injure the genetic structure of bacteria and thereby kill them, and they are very efficient in doing so. However, testing was never performed to ensure that FQs do indeed injure human DNA. Further study on this must now be undertaken.
There is no doubt that fluoroquinolones are important medications that help many thousands of people each year, but the indiscriminate prescribing of these highly potent “big gun” antibiotics for everyday minor infections such as sinusitis, sore throats, or bladder infections is unnecessary and medically unsafe. Medical authorities have repeatedly denounced the overuse of FQs. In my forty-plus years in pharmacovigilance, FQs surpass Vioxx and thalidomide in the degree of permanent harm done.
FDA warnings currently describe many of the adverse effects of FQs. Recently the FDA has finally acknowledged that FQs can cause permanent injury. However, FDA warnings do not adequately describe FTS syndrome, so doctors do not consider FTS a possible culprit for patients’ symptoms. Instead, they waste valuable time and order expensive testing for rare neurologic or rheumatologic disorders while discontinuing or dismissing patients who are suffering severely from FTS. The warnings must be improved and the word about FTS must be spread nationally and worldwide. It can start with you.
Sincerely,
Jay S. Cohen, M.D.
Dear Senators:
Serious adverse reactions to fluoroquinolone antibiotics (FQs) have been reported in medical journals and to the FDA since the 1980s. Although the FDA has increased the warnings on these drugs, my analysis of the data shows that reports continue to climb in number. As of February 2014, approximately 45,000 individual cases of fluoroquinolone toxicity have been reported. And, as studies have proven, the FDA receives reports of only one to 5 percent of the actual numbers of adverse reactions that occur.
I have been following these medications for sixteen years and have evaluated in person or by telephone consultation more than 500 people injured by FQs. In 2001, I published an article, “Peripheral Neuropathy with Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics” in the peer-reviewed journal, Annals of Pharmacotherapy. This article described forty-five cases of neurological symptoms such as tingling, numbness, burning pain, twitching, and/or weakness. Moreover, 93 percent of agitation, impaired cognitive function, intractable insomnia, hallucinations, psychosis, acute manic episodes, joint or muscle pain, or tendon rupture. In many cases, toxicities also involved the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems, skin, and sight or hearing. Overall, 90 percent of my subjects experienced toxicity to multiple body systems, hence I have coined the term: fluoroquinolone toxicity syndrome (FTS).
Of greatest concern, the majority of my cases had lasted more than one to two years and were ongoing. These severe, long-term reactions occurred in a generally young and healthy population. The average patient was forty-two, many of them athletes. In fact, top athletic organizations now warn athletes to avoid treatment in FQs. Because of the impaired healing seen in severe FTS patients, we have long suspected genetic injury from FQs. These drugs were designed to injure the genetic structure of bacteria and thereby kill them, and they are very efficient in doing so. However, testing was never performed to ensure that FQs do indeed injure human DNA. Further study on this must now be undertaken.
There is no doubt that fluoroquinolones are important medications that help many thousands of people each year, but the indiscriminate prescribing of these highly potent “big gun” antibiotics for everyday minor infections such as sinusitis, sore throats, or bladder infections is unnecessary and medically unsafe. Medical authorities have repeatedly denounced the overuse of FQs. In my forty-plus years in pharmacovigilance, FQs surpass Vioxx and thalidomide in the degree of permanent harm done.
FDA warnings currently describe many of the adverse effects of FQs. Recently the FDA has finally acknowledged that FQs can cause permanent injury. However, FDA warnings do not adequately describe FTS syndrome, so doctors do not consider FTS a possible culprit for patients’ symptoms. Instead, they waste valuable time and order expensive testing for rare neurologic or rheumatologic disorders while discontinuing or dismissing patients who are suffering severely from FTS. The warnings must be improved and the word about FTS must be spread nationally and worldwide. It can start with you.
Sincerely,
Jay S. Cohen, M.D.
Product Details
- Publisher: Square One (June 13, 2018)
- Length: 144 pages
- ISBN13: 9780757054693
Raves and Reviews
"Recommended for popular consumer health collections."
– Mary Chitty, Cambridge Healthtech, Needham, MA, Library Journal, April 15 2018
