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As a patient of any chronic ailment you need to know that every medicine that reaches you comes through a strenuous process that begins in a lab where a molecule is "designed" to unlock a physiological mechanism in our body that has gone awry. A drug then enters animal studies or sometimes "in vitro" studies where the effect & side effects of the drug is seen in animals and in cultured human cells. Once through, comes a pilot study where the drug is assessed in a small group of healthy volunteer &/or selected patients. Multi centric trial involving several patients from multiple centres spread across countries or even continents comes next. This eliminates the bias the original inventor may have.
Repeatability of an observed effect or side effect is also determined through these trials. A safe dose that would ensure the desired action without any side effect is also worked out.
This whole procedures aleady consumes several yearsbefore the safety profile is worked out and many a times potentially promising therapies disappear before they reach you!
As a person belonging to the scientific community, I find it painful to hear that "modern drugs are bad since they have side effects!".
Medicine would not have advanced thus far if a rationalist approach had not been taken up since the begining. In contrast, all kind of alternative drugs remain mystic and occult. The knowledge pertaining to these also known to "a chosen few", some of them claiming to be "practicing" over generations! A gullible patient religiously takes them for months and years and the disease is either cured on its own (some diseases affect only certian age groups or are influenced by certian external conditions that may improve or disappear), or the patient perishes. In either case, it's advantage, "occult thearpist!".
What do you take for your ailment?
Something prescribed by a qualified doctor or a quack?
Beware.
To be continued.....
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3 comments:
hi MJ,
I think there are two sides of the coin. I will wait till i read the next part and then say a few things!!
Dear Kaustubh,
You go ahead with your comments; the other part (or parts rather) will appear now and then. May be I already have some other facets in mind....
Manish
more often than not, what u sy is true MJ.
but i would like to put down two facets more.
1) as fat as alternative medicine is considered, who do we define as a quack. is a quack a person who is not qualified and still practices medicine or a person who practices a pathy other than he is qualified to practice.
As u know that there is no cure for Hepatitis in allopathy. we have a person here in dapoli. a gentleman, renownwed fo his honesty, and piousness.
he prescribes medicines derived from herbs to patients free of cost.patients say it benefits them.
i am not a believer in alternate medicine. but results speak for themselves. so i dont know what to say. he doesnt charge at all. he is quite well to do and gives off these medicines as asocial obligation imposed on his fore fathers.
2) drug research:
r u sure that every drug reaches u after a thorough research. it is supposed to. but does it so?
one of my maternal uncles ( my mothers mooh bola bhai) was suffering from CML
he was prescribed glivec by a renowned haematologist.
ultimately he developed ca Colon and succumbed to it.
when my mami went thru literature, she found that glives is still not authorized to be used, and that it seems it is under trial ( would like any information on this). splenic flexure Ca colon are a known complicatiion. but she had not been informed by the doctor about anything of this.
she went ahead with the costly drud just because a leading haematologist had prescribed it.
so now what to say!
BTW. we as ophthalmologists are using bevacizumab and ranibizumab. OFF LABEL.
want ur comments on that!
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