In my practice I came across many cases of what seemed to be side-effects from drugs and I witnessed dramatic harm done to the infant son of a friend by whooping cough vaccine. Because of the lack of reported data it was usually very difficult to prove a causal relationship between drug and the related harm. These incidents are rarely reported and so there is a vicious circle whereby the lack of information leads doctors to be less alert and fewer incidents of side effects are reported. Yet adverse drug reactions are said to cost the NHS up to £466 million a year and account for 6% of hospital admissions.
In “The Times” for 6th January, 2014, Dr Maureen Baker, Chair of the Royal College of GPs doubted that side-effects are fully reported. She is quoted as saying, “The number of patients that every GP is looking after has risen significantly in the past few years, but the resources that GPs in practices have has fallen – the service is extremely stretched. Submitting reports is a professional responsibility but it can be a question of priorities. If you’ve got more immediate issues to deal with, directly affecting patient care, it’s understandable that sometimes these reports just don’t get done.”
Even the reported side effects of statins and other blood pressure drugs are extremely concerning (please see past blogs), but the concern is compounded if for one reason or another some side-effects never come to be generally known. Warfarin has long been the holder of the ‘most adverse side-effects’ award, but it has only recently been reported that there have been five possible adverse reactions (one fatal) associated with those on warfarin taking cranberry juice.
Dr Harry Eldwardt (below), a strong proponent of L-arginine, tells the sad story of his father, who despite feeling well was prescribed drugs for blood pressure, as a side effect he developed an irregular heart beat (more drugs) and so on till the volume of prescribed 
drugs caused him irreversible kidney failure (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPmNBrDwiEg). ADNO is a natural remedy, which outstrips statins in every respect. In 1997 a test compared L-Arginine with the statin, Lovastin. Lovastin functioned well to reduce plaque formation in brain and heart arteries and to reduce thickening and plaque formation, but Arginine was more effective in both cases. Also, Arginine, unlike Lovastin, also inhibited the dangerous oxygen free radicals (Boger et al, “Dietary L-Arginine Reduces the Progression of Atherosclerosis in Cholesterol Fed Rabbits: Comparison with Lovastin,” Circulation, 96 (1997), 1282-1290.).
The moral is take good quality pharmaceutical grade one natural supplements and avoid falling into the hands of the ‘pill pushers’.