Editorial Note: This post follows from Vampire Medicines and Cisparency and Transparency and links to Relationship Based Medicine on Rxisk. The painting is of Joshua crossing the Jordan with the Arc of the Covenant - an image that catches the essential features of climactic scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc with Joshua in the Indiana Jones position. In every generation, … [Read more...] about Raiders of the Lost Drug Wreck
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Cisparency and Transparency
Editorial Note: This post continues Vampire Medicine and links to Reformation Day on RxISK and forthcoming posts - Here We Stand. Between 2002 and 2004, giving antidepressants to teenagers and the risks of triggering suicidality became one of the most high profile issues in medicine. Raising a profile should be the way to put things right but things are getting much worse. … [Read more...] about Cisparency and Transparency
Vampire Medicines
Editorial Note: This is the first of four Trick or Treat posts. They make most sense when read in conjunction with the RxISK Prize posts especially the series of 3 posts starting tomorrow. In 1962 RCTs were added to the regulatory requirement for marketing medicines. This looked like a definitive stake through the heart of hucksterism. No longer would we have to carry … [Read more...] about Vampire Medicines
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler… Trick or Treat?
Its the end of October when every Irish person going back millennia gets taken over by Halloween - not just the Celts, those who come and stay get bitten too, as Bram Stoker could tell you. So there will be a series of 4 posts to mark the occasion, starting next week, previewed here. These fit closely with the RxISX Prize posts and should be read in conjunction with … [Read more...] about If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler… Trick or Treat?
It Couldn’t Happen Here: Consent to “Treatment”
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a pretty harrowing movie. In brief a new SS Kommandant and his family come to a camp. The Kommandant seems like a reasonable man. His family seem very normal. His son makes friends with a boy behind the wire. They ultimately create a hole in the fence between them and get to spend time together. Finally the Boy in the Striped Pajamas is … [Read more...] about It Couldn’t Happen Here: Consent to “Treatment”
Drug Bites Man
Editorial note: This post follows up on Leonie Fennell's post earlier this week - Dogs and Serotonin. The follow up comes from a celebrated event that happened over a decade ago, reported as follows in the WSJ with follow-up comments. What to Say in the TV Ads ---- By Chris Adams, The Wall Street Journal You might call it a made-for-TV drug. Approved for human use in the … [Read more...] about Drug Bites Man
Dogs and Serotonin
Editorial Note: This post by Leonie Fennell is the first of two on related themes. We would love to hear any observations you or your veterinarian have on drugs in animals in general. Depression, once a disease deemed too rare to merit study, has become so common that it is now a booming business. More and more people are asking: “When we stop at the pharmacy to pick up our … [Read more...] about Dogs and Serotonin
RxISK Prize
Over on RxISK, we have launched a RxISK Prize. The hope is to find an answer to the debilitating disorders of Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction, PSSD, Post-Finasteride Syndrome, PFS, and Post Retinoid Sexual Dysfunction (PRSD). Please check this out and pass the word on to any pharmacologist, physiologist, endocrinologist, biologist, electrical engineer, doctor, herbalist, and … [Read more...] about RxISK Prize
Alt Medicine
Editorial Note: When I raised the specter of the Science Media Center and Sense about Science recently, some of the Americans I knew fell about laughing, figuring we are still a long way off being as censored as the US of A is. After calming down, one of them Johanna Ryan wrote this post. In June 2014 the BMJ published a study by Lu et al supposedly of … [Read more...] about Alt Medicine
The Junkies Take over the Asylum
Some markers first. I am a committed believer in what may now be a last millennium concept - the medical model. I think antidepressants - the older tricyclics and ECT, not the more recent SSRI and other antidepressants - can save lives. I figure conflict of interest, crucially important in other areas of life, is of minor importance if not irrelevant in science. Although by … [Read more...] about The Junkies Take over the Asylum