The Worst Drugs on The Market

[...not the headline of this article. but content further down. It is an eye-opener, but not to those of us who are always on the lookout, have affected friends and family, and read the monographs.]

"A frequent question I receive is what the most harmful medications in America are. Prior to the COVID-19 vaccines (which I feel have earned that distinction) there in turn were two ways I interpreted that question.
Which medications are frequently prescribed to everyone, often provide minimal benefit, and cause real harms you frequently seen in practice?
Which medications are highly toxic and have more narrow uses, but are nonetheless frequently given to patients in many cases where the harms of doing so far exceed any possible benefit.
In regards to the first interpretation, almost every integrative physician I’ve ever asked for their top 5 has listed the following:
•Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs—the focus of this article)
•SSRI antidepressants (e.g., Prozac)
•Statins
•NSAIDs (e.g., Ibuprofen)
•Birth control pills.
Note: some have also argued tylenol, benzodiazapines (e.g., valium) and flu shots also belong on the above list. Likewise, opioids used to always be on it, but now that the government has gone in the opposite direction and curtailed their prescribing, so they are no longer widely distributed and hence no longer can be in the first category.
In regards to the second interpretation, there are many more answers, but some of the most common ones include:
•Anti-psychotic meditations (used for a wide variety of mood disorders)
•Accutane (used for acne)
•Ciprofloxacin and other fluoroquinolone antibiotics
•Finasteride (commonly used for hair loss)
•Gadolinium (this is used as a contrast agent for MRIs)
•Gardasil (the HPV vaccine)
•Lupron (which amongst other things is used as a puberty blocker)
In sales, a common practice is to start with a free or low cost item, and then from the pool of people who get it, use their investment to sell them a moderately priced item, and then from the pool of those buyers, sell a more expensive item and so forth. This business practice, in turn, is known as creating “sales funnels.”
Frequently, with the above drugs, I see a variety of sales funnels. For instance, adolescent girls are frequently put onto birth control pills by their pediatricians (e.g., this survey found 54% of women aged 15-19 had used the pill)—often for reasons unrelated to sex (e.g., painful periods or PMS in a twelve year old).
Birth control pills in turn frequently cause significant mood swings and mood alterations (e.g., a large study detected a 130% increase in the rates of depression during the first two years of using the pill), which often leads to these new mood disorders being “treated” with an SSRI antidepressant (which now more than 10% of teenage girls are on). In turn, one of the more common side effects of SSRIs are other new psychiatric disorders (bipolar I is the most common) which are then treated with an antipsychotic (or another mood stabilizer).