Salon: Doctors Without Orders

Now they want to put dog tags on us to monitor when we take our meds. What next?

Doctors Without Orders
THE MYSTERY OF PATIENTS WHO FAIL TO FOLLOW PRESCRIPTIONS.
By Jessica Wapner
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008, at 10:21 AM ET

Many patients do not take medicine as prescribed
Earlier this month, scientists at Georgia Tech announced their invention of a necklace that records the date and time at which a person swallows his prescription medicine. The device (which looks more like a dog collar than jewelry) responds to a tiny magnet in the pill as it travels down the esophagus. Other recently developed similar technologies include a drug-filled prosthetic tooth that slowly drips medicine into the mouth and a pill bottle that sends a wireless message to your pharmacist every time it's opened.
Are we so bad at taking medicine that we need false teeth to do it for us and pill bottles that tattle on us when we don't?

Do SSRI's Cause Lesions in Brains of Elderly?

"Antidepressant linked to worsening white matter in elderly
Reuters
Tue, 18 March 2008
The results of a study employing serial cranial MRI suggest that elderly adults who use tricyclic antidepressants may be at increased risk for progression of white matter lesions, which have been linked with late-life depression by previous studies."
Article here

For Anxiety: Try Niacin, not Valium

Image: Edvard Munsch, famous for his painting THE SCREAM, might have had his inner turmoil reduced with nutrition.
Niacin can improve your mood, aid with sobriety, lower cholesterol, heip the heart, reduce arthritis, and add to longevity.
Orthomolcular treatment of anxiety disorders
Dr. Andrew Saul on How to tell if you are getting enough Niacin
Linus Pauling Institute on Niacin
Technical information about Niacin

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.

Are Big Pharma murderers?
A New York Times book review focuses on the work of Melody Petersen, a former reporter for the Times. She has written a book against Big Pharma's marketing tactics called Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. Petersen asks if drugs could be killing people but never being blamed, allowing them to harm even more Americans until someone, finally, catches on. Petersen calls for non-government watchdog agencies and closer oversight on published studies, which she says are ghostwritten by pharma spokespeople.
The review is here

Video: We'll Take Care of You - 1 and 2

Media Doctor

Alan Cassels takes on the disease mongerers

"Alan Cassels has managed a variety of research and evaluation studies over the past twelve years primarily focusing on the impact of provincial drug benefits policies on consumers. He led the first ever evaluation of Canadian newspaper coverage of new drugs (published in April 2003 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal) and has lectured at Canadian journalism schools on issues surrounding pharmaceutical reporting in Canada. He is currently affiliated with the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Victoria, and is co-author with Ray Moynihan of "Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us all into Patients" (Greystone books, 2005)."



Selling Sickness blog is here

Visit Media Doctor here

Healing Traumatic Brain Injury

War Wounds and other brain injury articles are here