Read the Fine Print

We are bombarded with medical advice from the pharmaceutical companies and asked to make decisions based on inadequate information.

Having created the impression that the advertised drug will cure everything from asthma to zoonotic diseases, you have only to "ask your doctor." Who will, no doubt, after checking his medical insurance agree to prescribe the medication rather than risk a lawsuit in the event that you just happen to fall dead (or worse become invalid for life (at his expense)) as the result of his not having prescribed the wonder drug.

As a case in point, read the fine print that accompanied any advertisement for a drug. After you read the contra-indications, ask yourself if you would take this medicine or give it to a member of your family.

. Then there is the unsettling revelation that about ten percent of those for whom the drug was prescribed stopped using it (no explanation given). Add to this the two or three percent that have "adverse" effects, and the forty percent shrinks to about twenty five (or one in four) that actually benefitted from the drug. That's actually quite good, provided the drug is being given for some life threatening illness, but if it is just one of the current fad drugs, maybe not.

Also before you rush to the doctor, having been encouraged to "ask your doctor", put yourself in his (or her) shoes. If the doctor refuses to prescribe the drug, he risk alienating his patient, or worse yet, if following the visit, you drop dead or have a serious problem he might be sued! If he prescribes the drug, although he feels there is little or no need for it, he is safe - after all, you asked for it and the pharmaceutical house promoted it.

The good doctor remains our first line of defense against ill-health, but he needs all the help he can get and it isn't being provided by the pill pushers or the FDA. There is nothing better than a visit to the doctor when you are well, and a good discussion of the medication you are taking and that might be right for you is in order. But demanding the latest fad drug to salve your ego, is worse than the "organ recitals" of old in creating a demand for medical products and services that are unnecessary.

With an average of 17 prescriptions written each year for those over the age of 65, isn't it about time to question which are really necessary and to put them on a priority list, given that some are essential, it just may be that many of those are just not needed!

So read the fine print of that insert that comes with the medicine and see if you really need it - and by all means do ask your doctor.

ABOUT Joe Wortham

JOE WORTHAM'S HOME PAGE

NOTE:
Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II, Canto I, Line 183 -

Quoth Hudibras, This thing called pain
Is (as the learned Stoics maintain)
Not bad simpliciter, nor good;
But merely as �tis understood.

Sense is deceitful, and may feign,
As well in counterfeiting pain
As others gross phaemomenas
In whch it oft mistakes the case.

But since th' immortal intellect
(That's free from effort and defect
Whose objects still persist the same)
Is free from outward bruise or maim,

Which nought external can expose
To gross material bangs or blows,
It follows, we can ne'er be sure
Whether we pain or not endure:

And just so far are sore and griev'd
As by the fancy is believ'd.
Some have been wounded with conceit,
And died of meer opinion straight;

Others though wounded sore in reason,
Felt no contusion or discretion.

Zachery Grey wrote the following as a note to this passage:
Remarkable are the effects of both fear and joy. A trial of the former kind was made upon a condemned malefactor, in the following manner. A dog was by surgeons let blood, and suffered to bleed to death before him; the surgeons talking all the while, and describing the gradual loss of blood, and of course a gradual faintness of the dog, occasioned thereby: and just before the dog died, they said unanimously, Now he is going to die.

They told the malefactor that he was to be bled to death in the same way; and accordingly blindfolded him, and tied up his arm; and then one of them thrust a lancet into his arm, but purposely missed the vein: however they soon began to describe the poor man's gradual loss of blood, and of course a gradual faintness occasioned thereby; and just before the supposed minute of this death, the surgeons said unanimously, Now he dies. The malefactor thought all this real, and died by mere conceit, though he had not lost above twenty drops of blood (referenced to Athenian Oracle by Grey.)