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Contributed Essays
Popular flu medication associated with suicide
By Moira Terese Dolan, M.D. | A spokesperson for Tamiflu maker Roche was quoted as saying that "several teenage patients with influenza who were also taking Tamiflu had fallen from buildings after taking the drug."
Children on the drug have also "fallen through windows". Does gravity somehow become stronger for these victims? Are we going to see a label warning on Roche’s Tamiflu and Glaxo’s Relenza to keep users away from windows, balconies and tall buildings? Roche’s weak attempt to avoid the word suicide does not explain the child on Tamiflu who tried to strangle his mother, the children who were killed after inexplicably running out into traffic while on the drug, and hundreds of others with self injury, delirium and confusion.
(read complete essay) |
Is it true about the flu?
An alternative to the flu type and hysteria
By Moira Terese Dolan, M.D. | "Scientific studies do not support claims that influenza vaccine largely prevents illness, reduces missed workdays, shortens hospitalizations or lowers death rates in the general population."
If flu shots and drugs are being pushed on you, you should have the right to full informed consent regarding flu prevention and treatment. This should include an explanation, in understandable terms, of these topics:
What is the flu?
What is not the flu?
What are the flu preventions and treatments?
What is known and not known about the safety of flu vaccines and drugs?
What is known and not known about the effectiveness of flu vaccine and drugs?
What are the alternatives, including the consequences of no vaccine and no treatment?
(read complete essay) |
Protecting Your Heart From Your Heart Doctor: Informed Consent For Cardiac Procedures
-Replacing Medical Coercion With Knowledge
By Howard H. Wayne, MD, F.A.C.C., F.A.C.P., F.C.C.P. | Editor’s Note: Patients with chest pain are routinely not given the opportunity for informed consent. Dr. Wayne’s common sense discussions on heart tests and treatments go a long way to filling that gap. They are scientifically sound and thoroughly researched. Health professionals are invited to access the website of the Noninvasive Heart Center for references to the pertinent medical literature. This essay is composed of excerpts from Dr. Wayne’s written works, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher.
(read complete essay) |
Another bad idea: Cholesterol screening in children
new guideline threatens young brians - What the American Heart Association is not telling you
BY Duane Graveline, MD MPH | Vermont family doctor, aerospace medical research scientist, USAF flight surgeon and NASA astronaut, Duane Graveline MD MPH now resides in Merritt Island, Florida. Graveline still is affiliated with the space program as consultant to the special cosmic radiation hazards our astronauts face and their “return to the moon and on to Mars.” Doctor Graveline is the author of the books, Lipitor, Thief of Memory (Amazon) and Statin Drugs - Side Effects, available at his website www.spacedoc.net.
The most frequently prescribed drugs to lower cholesterol are in the class known as statins. These include atorvastatin (Lipitor), fluvastatin (Lescol), lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor) and rosuvastatin (Crestor); statins are also found in the combination drugs Advicor and Vytorin. Children are increasingly being targeted as statin consumers, aided by The American Heart Association’s new screening guidelines. (read complete essay) |
Not so miraculous: Telling the truth about the new vaccine Gardasil® - Does it prevent cancer? A guide to informed consent
BY Moira Terese Dolan, M.D. | © Medical Ethics, Inc.
TV commercials plug it, the FDA approved it, news highlights tout it, but there are serious concerns about the new vaccine Gardasil® from Merck. Medical Accountability Network Executive Director Dr. Moira Dolan has reviewed the information made generally available to physicians and outlines here the essential components of informed consent for what is being billed as a miracle anti-cancer vaccine. Gardasil® vaccinates against four types of human papillomavirus (HPV). The vaccine targets the HPV types that are the cause of many cases of genital warts and the virus infections that are closely associated with cervical cancer.
(read complete essay) |
Family Caregiver Advocates for Ethical Treatment of the Elderly and for Informed Consent Regarding Treatment Decisions
BY JEANNE M. HANNAH, J.D. | | In September 2000, my sociallyactive, bright, healthy mother—aged 84—canceled her weekly bridge group. When my sister, with whom she lived, returned home from work, Mom told her that she had had a very frightening day and that there were monsters flying all around the outside of the house and trying to get in the windows, howling at her “Alice, it’s time to go.” Needless to say, my mom was terrified. My two sisters took Mom to the emergency room of a mid-Michigan hospital. They gave a brief history to the ER doctor. This history disclosed an active diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, which was being treated by Mom’s internist and was under control, hypertension and heart disease (she’d had a triple by-pass a few years earlier), no family history of mental illness, no diagnosis of mental illness by Mom’s regularly treating internist, and a recent fall. The ER doctor did a urinalysis that disclosed a urinary tract infection (UTI). Then he made an error common in treating the elderly. His error was in missing a diagnosis of delirium—confusion caused by the underlying UTI.
(read complete essay) |
While Rome burns: Collusion with pharmaceutical scientific fraud and the prognosis for dispassionate academic discourse
By Aubrey Blumsohn, MBBCh, PhD, MSc, BSc(hons), MRCPath |
The battleground
Universities exist for only one reason: to add to human knowledge and to disseminate that knowledge through publication and teaching. While our unions are fighting important battles over academic pay we are starting to lose the battle over what it means to be an academic and the raison d'être of a university. The chief battleground of this war is in medicine.
(read complete essay) |
PHARMACISTS NEED TO DO THE RIGHT THING!
By James T. O'Donnell, PharmD MS FCP ABCP | Ethics, noun: The science of human duty. Webster Dictionary, 1913
Pharmacists have a duty to patients. Pharmacists need to do the right thing. I’m concerned, based on some recent personal observations, that pharmacists are not doing the right thing. Pharmacists are not exercising their duties to patients. Pharmacists are abdicating their duties to corporate employers or allowing assistants/technicians to overextend their technical duties into the professional pharmacist arena, resulting in substandard care, potential and actual harm to patients, and a clear violation of professional duties.
(Read complete essay) |
The Doctor Will See You Now...an inside look at prescription drug pushing
by Gwen Olsen | “The doctor will see you now, Sara.” The impeccably well-groomed blonde, wearing a stylish summer suit, high heels and pantyhose in 90+ degree Texas heat, was quite a contrast to me and the other shorts and T-shirt clad patients waiting to see the doctor. Sara quickly gathered her detail bag and jar of candy. Grinning and chatting with the receptionist at the window, she deposited her candy jar and a handful of scratch pads and ink pens bearing her company’s logo and drug name at the nurse’s station then swept past the exam rooms to the sample closet. I could hear the doctor’s gleeful reception and greeting in the hallway before the door to the back office had completely closed. This rep was obviously one of his favorites. I had been waiting over 45 minutes to see Dr. Dogood. Some of the other patients waiting had been there when I arrived. Yet, Sara had gotten here only ten or so minutes ago, had left her business card at the receptionist’s window, and she was already in the back talking to the doctor. Probably has a lunch appointment, I thought to myself…just then, the deli delivery boy stumbled into the office with his arms full of boxed lunches.
(read complete essay) |
Another bad idea: Cholesterol screening in children
new guideline threatens young brians - What the American Heart Association is not telling you
BY Duane Graveline, MD MPH | Vermont family doctor, aerospace medical research scientist, USAF flight surgeon and NASA astronaut, Duane Graveline MD MPH now resides in Merritt Island, Florida. Graveline still is affiliated with the space program as consultant to the special cosmic radiation hazards our astronauts face and their “return to the moon and on to Mars.” Doctor Graveline is the author of the books, Lipitor, Thief of Memory (Amazon) and Statin Drugs - Side Effects, available at his website www.spacedoc.net.
The most frequently prescribed drugs to lower cholesterol are in the class known as statins. These include atorvastatin (Lipitor), fluvastatin (Lescol), lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor) and rosuvastatin (Crestor); statins are also found in the combination drugs Advicor and Vytorin. Children are increasingly being targeted as statin consumers, aided by The American Heart Association’s new screening guidelines. (read complete essay) |
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