Say Yes to Drugs

If you wanted a quick summary on drug-resistant bacteria, there's a nice one on Skepchick. The post talks about research in antibiotics, how drugs develop resistance to them, and potential new areas for exploration.

It also notes that "We are basically in a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ relationship with bacteria. We develop new drugs and they evolve."

This makes the whole process sound a bit futile and depressing, but I suppose if the alternative is to just shrug and drop dead from bacterial infections...well, keep up the good work with that research!

Also, don't go around taking antibiotics for viral infections, and if you have a prescription for antibiotics, take all of them as directed. Do your part to resist drug-resistance!

If You Must Smoke

I see that smoking marijuana has been found not to measurably damage your lungs the way smoking tobacco does.

So when I take up smoking, I know which way I'm going to bet.

The study does not seem to have examined whether or not smoking marijuana is associated with reefer madness and a higher incidence of jumping out of windows and killing oneself. But then, we're also still waiting to hear the verdict on that with regard to tobacco.

Late Night Ramblings

I would just like to say that parents are junkies, according to this article that theorizes that people choose, often repeatedly, to become parents (even though research suggests children don't actually make people happy) because children do make people happy, but in an intense, yet rare and unpredictable way that keeps a parent chasing that child-love high despite stress, ill health and personal expense.

I would also like to note that dialogue is a word-goal-having writer's best friend. I have said this before, but I really cannot stress it enough--just have some characters talk about stuff and the words will pour onto the page! And yeah, they may have boring and obnoxious conversations that, if you overheard them on the train, would make you want to punch yourself in the ear to avoid listening to them, but that is irrelevant when the goal is wordiness.

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Mmm...Nicotine

This is something I, with the vast information resources available to me, ought to just look up, but my lunch break is almost over, so I don't have time to get really into it: how bad is nicotine/tobacco for you if you're not smoking it or holding it in your mouth for long periods of time?

I ask because of this Healthbolt post on a new nicotine-delivery method that's being developed: dissolvable, flavored tobacco in the form of strips or tablets. Yum!

The post raises the question of whether this would appeal to children, and certainly something that's a bit like candy or those dissolvable breath freshener strips seems intuitively to be a lot more kid-friendly than a cigarette. I could see it working for grown-ups too, though, since one could unobtrusively use such a product in a way that you can't just unobtrusively light up in public places in the U.S.

So I wondered, is it really super terrible if it does attract users who might not be able to use cigarettes? I mean, I'm not saying "run out and imbibe substances, kids!" but how bad for you is the nicotine/tobacco itself? Isn't it inhaling smoke or holding chewing tobacco in your mouth all day that's really awful?

Maybe getting people interested in this non-smoking, non-spitting product will be better for them! Maybe we should be cheering this new health triumph! Go R.J. Reynolds!

This is when we must turn to research. Doing a quick and dirty PubMed search for ("Nicotine/adverse effects"[Mesh] NOT "Smoking"[Mesh]), one finds interesting references to SIDS, "neuroprotective and neurotoxic effects," effects on renal function and bone repair, and plenty more...

Plus of course from the MeSH definition: "Nicotine is highly toxic alkaloid." Yum?

So there's definitely a lot going on with nicotine in addition to the smoking and chewing, and it may well be that it's a terrible idea to make it available to young people in a tasty candy.

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced flavored tobacco is the worst idea anyone's ever had, if only because I don't enjoy smelling smoke or getting tobacco juice on me (not that this happens often), and if people are going to do nicotine as their drug of choice, they might as well do it in a way that inconveniences me personally as little as possible.

Yeah, it is all about me, thanks.

Seriously, though, I'm curious about this product, and could see its ultimate health effects, if it were brought to market and made widely available, being potentially either good (if it were associated with decreased use of smoked tobacco) or bad (if it were toxic to the body in the way that cigarettes are).

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Not Just One Saint

Well, here it is November. All Saints Day! That's got to be way cooler than Some Saint's Day. Time to party!

I party in celebration of the return of Drugs and Poisons, a nifty little blog about, well, drugs and poisons, which is presently discussing mouthwash. I don't generally use mouthwash myself, but I like those bits Wired does on "What's Inside" various things, and I'm likewise pleased to know that mouthwash is not poison.

If anyone in the world reads blogs but does not have an RSS reader, I would highlight this as a fine example of something they do that's good: a blog can lie quiet for months, but as soon as something new is posted, I've got it!

Now if I had been just going to look at the site every so often like an RSS-less mariner drifting on the internet seas, I would have been disappointed many times by now, and perhaps even given up.

This particular blog, which is rendered in white text on black, also makes me grateful for the ability of feed readers to make everything come out in a uniformly readable way. White on black looks cool and all, but I swear it makes me a little cross-eyed after I read it for a while.

Speaking of eyes, I also party in celebration of the fact that I finally got around to buying some new glasses. It's only been since July that I had my eyes checked to get a new prescription. And since April before then that I barely passed the vision test at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and narrowly avoided having to come back and wait in line for three hours again to get my license renewed.

I think no one would imply that I don't get stuff done. Sometimes. Eventually.

I also party in celebration of the end of Daylight Saving Time, which promises a little more light in the morning. Getting up in the dark is just no fun.

On the other hand, this also promises that soon it will be deep night by the time I get out of work, but these are the trade-offs we must make.

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Not a Drug! At All!

Interestingly, Cheerios has been called out by the FDA for claiming to be a drug. Dangerous Intersection has the news.

You can't just go around making specific health claims about your product, you know. People will start thinking they can rely on a specific result if they take a specific dose, and stuff.

I like Cheerios, but them's the rules.

This is why I like to make only broad, unverifiable claims about anything I talk about. Possibly, to a certain extent, not that anyone could prove it.

Considering Bones

Our Bodies Our Blog has a post about the way osteoporosis has become a condition to be treated.

The post raises the question of whether, in women with various risk factors for osteoporosis, it makes sense to take protective drugs pretty much forever, even though these may have side effects and may or may not be that effective.

This issue is somewhat close to my heart (as close as my ribcage anyway--hahahahaha! I love a dumb anatomy joke). I had a bone density scan a few years ago, and, indeed, my bones are less dense than the average woman my age.

They call it osteopenia, which is not osteoporosis, but is--well, like I said, less dense than average for the age. I think that's all it means.

I felt suddenly fragile for a while after I found out, as if I should be afraid to lift boxes or something, but it doesn't actually mean anything right now, for me just sitting here with my slightly-less-dense skeleton.

But risk factors! Bristling with them!

I was a subject in a research study for a potential drug to reverse, prevent or otherwise treat bone loss (I can no longer recall the details, although I have the paperwork somewhere), and I had to wonder: if it turned out this drug was effective for me, would I then feel I ought to keep taking it, assuming it made it onto the market?

As it happens, I either wound up in the control group, or else the drug didn't work that well, because there was no change in my bone density after the year of the study period. I was sort of relieved, in a way.

I don't want to take expensive medication for an imperceptible condition, but if it were an option, and could stave off some potential problem, maybe I'd think I should.

Whether or not we tend to be overmedicated in U.S. society is a valid question, I think, but complicated.

Well, enough self-centered musing about my skeleton. For now.

Careful with the Drugs

Our Bodies Our Blog, discussing a NY Times article about the extent to which the drug industry influences medical education (specifically Harvard), pointed me to this nifty PharmFree Scorecard from the American Medical Student Association.*

The scorecard site, conveniently searchable by state and city, grades U.S. medical schools based on several components of Gifts/Industry Relations (gifts, consulting, speaking, disclosure) and Education (on campus, off campus, industry support, curriculum). 

Naturally I had to look up my own place of work, which received a B. There are a few As, a bunch of Bs, not many Cs, and a whole lot of Ds, Fs, and Incompletes. So a B is pretty good--woo hoo! 

I'd like to personally take credit for the university's good policies with regard to drug industry influence, but it would be immodest of me to claim any responsibility. 

Not to mention that it would be an insupportable assertion leaning right into a blatant lie. See, there are a lot of things I'd like to do that I refrain from; remember that if you ever hear anyone talking about how self-indulgent I am.

*I think that was a reasonably impressive number of links to put into a single sentence, right?

Oh, Drugs, Drugs, Drugs...

An interesting article in the New York Review of Books discusses the familiar concern of pharmaceutical company sponsoring research, conferences, continuing education, and physicians' general well-being (everyone loves those free pens!).

The piece, which reviews three books, is also a nice, concise overview of several other drug-related issues we may remember from previous reading, including: 

• incompletely revealed study results, where write-ups of negative results are unlikely to be published and positive ones may be written to make a drug seem more effective; 
• promoting drugs for off-label uses for which they haven't been proven to be effective; 
  
• highlighting vaguely-defined ailments like social anxiety disorder as serious and requiring medication; 
  
• advertising directly to consumers to convince them they need particular drugs.

Even the hallowed DSM is based more on "a complex of academic politics, personal ambition, ideology, and, perhaps most important, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry" than on hard evidence.

It doesn't even talk about the much-lamented high cost of prescription drugs and how that could be tied into the promotion of new medications of generics and all that. But let's just sum up thusly: 

Drugs: a Complex Issue. (I also considered Drugs: Gimme Some!)

The article is rather disheartening, concluding that 

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines

but it's a good read. Well, I'm off to fling my prescriptions out the window.