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Editorial Note: This follows Restoring Health part 1 and What's Poisoning Health part 2 of the Crusoe Report in response to the Witty Magna Carta posts. A medicine is a mix of a chemical that pharmaceutical companies produce and knowledge about how to use the chemical – that we produce. Making even basic chemicals was beyond us for millennia. But once the process was … [Read more...] about Lost in Medication: The Crusoe Report 3

How did we get to the point where healthcare itself is sick – where we have as Annemarie Mol brings out become consumers of healthcare products rather than people whom doctors and nurses care for when we are at our most vulnerable? The breach of trust in modern healthcare comes close to a mother poisoning her babies in their infancy. From luxury to basic Back in the 1950s … [Read more...] about What’s Poisoning Health: The Crusoe Report 2

The diplomatic thing would be to say there is some agreement between the Witty Report and this one. There is certainly some overlap in suggested solutions. We could perhaps even agree that the real problem is the failure of medicine rather than pharma malfeasance. But the fault-line runs deeper. There are two or maybe three forces, depending on the way you look at it, … [Read more...] about Restoring Health: The Crusoe Report 1

This post is designed to be read with the Drugs and Smell post on RxISK. Into the Matrixx The second drug in the Anosmia Table in the Drugs and Smell post is Zinc Gluconate which was traded under the name Zicam. For anyone concerned about adverse events this is one of the most important drugs in History. Zicam was marketed by Matrixx Pharmaceuticals. The company's … [Read more...] about Magna What? The Embarassing Side Effects of Drugs

This post on the eight hundredth anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta is the second in a Magna Carta series, and the twentieth in the Persecution series. Faced in 2012 with questions about the $3 Billion fine imposed on GSK - triggered by a sequence of events starting with Study 329, – is it just the cost of doing business? Andrew Witty snapped back: “Although corporate … [Read more...] about Magna Pharma

Editorial note: This is the first in a Magna Carta series, and the nineteenth in the Persecution series. As the days lengthen and things warm up in England, historically it has been the time for the people to get restive. Eight Hundred years ago, the people meant a group of us who counted – we called ourselves the Barons. There were other human beings – our serfs - who … [Read more...] about A Magna Carta for Healthcare

Editorial Note: This post is by John Stone at my invitation. I am broadly speaking pro-Vaccination and reluctant to stray into the Vaccination Wars but the issues about free debate in recent posts seem most acute in this domain. Anyone who even thinks about questioning is vilified. There are important public policy issues involved in MMR but less so with the HPV vaccine and … [Read more...] about The Couric Incident: HPV Vaccine & Mass Bullying