Pubdate: May 3, 1998 Source: New York Times (NY) Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Author: Jacqueline Boone A REVIEW OF: PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER The Hidden Dangers in Your Medicine Cabinet. By Thomas J. Moore. Simon & Schuster, $25. "With 100,000 annual deaths, one million severely injured and another two million harmed during hospitalization, adverse reactions to drugs rank as one of the greatest man-made dangers in modern society," Thomas J. Moore writes in "Prescription for Disaster." Moore, a senior fellow in health policy at the George Washington University Medical Center, offers readers a riveting and relentlessly horrific account of the "inevitable, inherently unpredictable, amazingly varied" adverse effects associated with the nation's most commonly used medications ---perforated ulcers, brain damage, addiction, cancer and cardiac arrest. He presents ample and alarming evidence of an often "unforgivably sloppy system" of drug safety controls, characterized by inadequate drug testing and monitoring, inappropriate and erroneous prescribing, and dismaying levels of both ignorance and denial among physicians, pharmaceutical companies and Federal regulators about the potential dangers of drugs. He is also quick to caution that "mindless fear" about the hazards of drugs is a reaction every bit as ill-advised as succumbing to "blind faith" in their benefits. He reviews what actions can be taken to enhance drug safety, and also outlines steps readers can take both to minimize common drug hazards and to exert influence to aid reform of a "fatally-flawed" monitoring system. - --- Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"