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Saturday, March 09, 2002posted by Sydney on 3/09/2002 12:38:00 PM 0 comments
Friday, March 08, 2002posted by Sydney on 3/08/2002 07:40:00 PM 0 comments
Thursday, March 07, 2002It's hard to believe someone would endure complicated surgery and oppressive immune supressing drugs for the discomfort of pregnancy and the torture of child birth, but evidently in the Muslim world it's worth it. I guess some women would do anything to avoid being considered an "empty vessel." This really can not be considered a success, and I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone if it had been a success. There's an awful lot of risk involved: complicated, prolonged surgery, side effects of drugs to suppress the immune system, and then the risk of bearing a child in a transplanted uterus. Who knows how well a transplanted uterus would respond to the stress of childbearing? It's far too much risk to justify it as a means of achieving the romance of motherhood, which like all romance quickly fades in the face of reality. Wouldn't it be easier for Islamic law to change their edicts and allow adoption? posted by Sydney on 3/07/2002 11:02:00 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 06, 2002posted by Sydney on 3/06/2002 09:07:00 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 05, 2002Lump this with "executive physicals" as a way for physicians to work the system and exploit the fears of the worried well to make a quick buck. There are many diseases these scans would not detect: colon cancer, for example, or prostate cancer. They would not tell you whether your heart functions properly, or whether you have colon polyps or kidney disease or asthma or emphysema. In these cases, they would only give a patient a false sense of security. In addition, the chances of a total body scan finding a meaningful abnormality in a healthy, asymptomatic person are exceedingly small. It is aggravating to see physicians promoting such garbage, especially when the ones doing the promoting are those who stand to profit from it. Shame on them. They taint all of us when they behave this way and only further undermine the trust between patient and doctor. posted by Sydney on 3/05/2002 08:49:00 AM 0 comments
Monday, March 04, 2002This is worth noting. One of the arguments of the pro-herbal movement in this country is that they have been used for years in Europe without any problems. Wrong. As this article makes clear, products have been pulled off the shelf in Europe and in England because of toxic side effects and drug interactions. In the United States, however, no one has the authority to police these herbal drugs. They are considered "dietary supplements" as if they were as harmless as Flinstone vitamins. If only that were the case. Some choice excerpts from the article: "In the year 2000 evidence surfaced that St John’s wort could interfere with certain prescription medicines, including drugs used to treat transplant patients (cyclosporin), heart conditions and blood clots (warfarin, digoxin), asthma (theophylline), depression (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — SSRIs) migraine (triptans), HIV infection and the Pill." "But that is only St John’s wort. “There is a real lack of research into drug-herb interactions,” says Dr Jo Barnes, of the Centre for Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy at the School of Pharmacy, University of London. Lists of potential interactions are compiled on the basis of what is known about the chemical constituents of plants and conventional drugs. This knowledge is considerable. Dong quai, feverfew and ginkgo could all theoretically interfere with the anticoagulant warfarin. Ginseng, if taken with caffeine, could increase blood pressure. Echinacea can be toxic to the liver and should not be combined with drugs that can cause liver damage. A recent study, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, one of the few carried out so far, found that garlic supplements halved the effectiveness of the anti-HIV drug saquinavir, valerian is inadvisable with sedatives and so on." And so on, indeed. posted by Sydney on 3/04/2002 09:44:00 PM 0 comments
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