UNDERSTANDING THE RISKS OF MEDICINES

Sally Lorimer, Stan Cohen 

To help understand the risks that come with using any medication, it is helpful to consider risks in our daily lives. They are there, but we usually don't think about them until a situation makes us uncomfortable: a sudden fire or an earthquake, for example. But others are there as we get older, for example, falling and being unable to get up.   

Let's take another example. Some people are afraid of flying-deathly afraid. They are frightened the entire time they are flying on a trip somewhere-or they never get on plane because they're scared. So they drive. But in 2005, when there were 321 deaths from airplane accidents in the US, there were 43,443 deaths on the road. 

Another way to compare the risks while driving or flying is by comparing the mileage. Wikipedia gives the example of someone either driving or flying the 450 miles from Boston to Washington, DC. Turns out that driving that distance is over 50 times more dangerous than flying–and that even driving 20 miles each way to and from the airport is 5 times more likely to result in a deadly accident than getting on the plane and taking the flight. Fortunately, that risk is still small, but it's there.   

Using a medicine is similar. We want to get to our destination (better health), but medicines contain some degree of risk. Even the procedures like CT scans and colonoscopies that guide the use of those medicines have a small risk. But the bigger risk can be worse disease complications, if you don't take the medicines or delay surgery.