CHAOS

I am looking for some self-respecting human being subjected to prescription mania who now is ready to stand up for their rights. I believe you are really out there, and I hope there are more and more signing up for health rights as the days pass along.
You have to be out of your mind if you don't!
Well, today we learn that Gleevec causes heart failure.
Oh yes, it's that good one you know; the left ventricle acting out of character. So if your left ventricle acts out just how do you think that blood will get circulated around your body and get oxygen to the cells?
I don't think there is a day that passes that I don't see some news report on FDA corruption, FDA collusion with drug companies, or how the FDA is failing the citizens it is supposed to protect from the ravages of dangerous drugs.
Don't ask me what I think about these Medicare Senior Drug Plans. (just don't look at the profits rising at the drug companies and insurers on the financial pages or you might get some new disease so that they'll have to do some spin so you beleive what they say, whether or not it is based on fact; shame on AARP too!)
And please don't forget that nutritional supplements in the form of vitamins are so harmful.
Well, where's the harm? Might it just be that Big Pharma can't bear the thought that you might be able to think for yourself, take some good vitamins in high doses and actually get over what diagnosis you've been labeled with?
You know there are NO bodies from taking vitamins, or did your doctor forget to tell you that.
Millions dying from prescription errors. Now that's another topic in the headlines too.
They want to cure this with electronic prescriptions by 2010.
Maybe the way to cure this faux pas is to get doctors to actually learn about the drug on their own, especially the side effects, interactions, and side effects. Maybe we could throw in "informed consent" as well!
This goes for pharmacists and NPs too, as I see these health care professionals making grave mistakes with Rx drugs every week.
It frightens me, and I am an NP.
I surely hope it frightens you too.

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PRESCRIPTIONS: UK FACES SIMILAR DILEMMA
Doctors' lack of drug training puts patients at risk Most doctors agree that their role has been reduced from healer to that of drug peddler - and it seems they aren't very good at that, either.
Doctors' lack of knowledge of drugs and their use is so bad that the lives of Patients is constantly put at risk, a group of leading pharmacologists has claimed.

Even the most conservative figures suggest that 1 in 16 hospital admissions is the result of an avoidable adverse reaction to a drug. Once there, up to 10 per cent of those will suffer another adverse drug reaction while in the care of a hospital doctor.

It's all the fault of the training hospitals, which are no longer teaching basic pharmacology and prescribing. "The competence of young doctors in prescribing is a very serious problem," says Prof Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the UK medical standards group, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Ultimately, the blame lies with the General Medical Council, he says, which has changed the emphasis of doctor training to 'problem solving' rather than learning the basics.

The GMC issued its new teaching edict around 16 years ago, around the time when drug companies were coming up with more complex medications. The problem has been exacerbated more recently by the UK government's obsession with performance targets.

As a result, many clinical pharmacology departments had closed down, and there are just 68 specialists who practise clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in Britain, a fall of 24 per cent over the last 10 years. Of those that are left, half will retire in the next 10 years, and are unlikely to be replaced.

Prof David Webb, chairman of the Scottish Medicines Consortium, said medical students were privately expressing concerns at their lack of knowledge about drugs. "Patients are becoming ill and some are dying as a result of poor prescribing. There is no doubt about that. A substantial proportion of that is undoubtedly avoidable," he said.

This all bodes well for the drugs industry. With the last keeper of the gate removed, they can foist any new drug on the public without sufficient regard as to its safety. And they do.

(Source: Daily Telegraph, July 19, 2006; BBC news broadcast).