Given that doctors kill more people every year than anything else, you'd think they would be a little less surprised when you question their judgment.

We've erected a wall of infallibility around doctors, and most people believe doctors unquestioningly. This was not always the case.

"This was not always the case." I think you have it backwards. People question doctors a lot more now than they did in the past. While before our time look up stories for when doctors used to sell cigarettes. Particularly for the treatment of Asthma, bronchitis and sore throat.

BTW have you tried Roquefort cheese again to make sure you are in fact correct? The cheese could be coincidental.

Something that's a big deal right now is that FDA approval is giving corporations that make drugs/medical devices protection - even if their product was bad. It prevents consumers (VICTIMS) from being able to sue companies even if something really bad happens that could have been prevented with better labeling and more thorough, explicit information going to the doctors who give this stuff out.

The main goal was to bar superfluous lawsuits but it in effect gives too much power out of the hands of the people who are subjected to these medicines.

Check out the film "Access Denied?" over on www_afj_dot_org. A woman lost her arm when a drug was injected incorrectly into her arm causing gangrene. The whole thing is effed.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought that the most disturbing thing by far in these articles was the fact that so many thousands of children are on drugs that should be reserved for mass-murdering lunatics in padded cells. "Popular" extra-strength antipsychotic medicines?!? I suspect that 100 years ago, any case of "pediatric bipolar disorder" would have been diagnosed & treated by parents with a quick trip to the woodshed. Nowadays the same paranoid parents (see yesterday's post) who don't let their kids climb trees or play softball rush them off to be medicated after every tantrum.

Who's more at fault - the quacks who are willing to prescribe these pills to children, or the pathetic parents who create the demand in the first place?

Science and medicine have made some remarkable, miraculous advances. The polio vaccine. But one, or even many successes, can't be used to project that every doctor is a Jonas Salk.

Sadly, in so many cases, if you point out the systemic incentives to reward corruption (lying about data to get the grant, the promotion, the new lab, the patent, ...) and show that the testing is flawed, you're accused of being an anti-science luddite.

Martin - it could be the doctors convincing the parents that they need to drug the kid.

I had a doctor for a short while (change of insurance and my doctor wasn't covered) who would reach for the prescription pad before he even finished diagnosis.

Needless to say, I ran away as fast as I could when the opportunity presented itself.

My rule, as a parent, before popping meds in my kids is 2-fold:
1. Has this been around a long time and does it effect a cure? Penicillen and things of that nature get a pass here
2. If my child incapable of living a normal life without this? People are sad sometimes. And pissed off sometimes. And irrational lots. I agree that autism is on the rise. I also think it's way overdiagnosed in people who would, a generation back, just been a little less than social. Ditto with ADHD/ADD. Some people have higher energy than others. Doesn't always require a pill.

Having been pregnant 3 times now, it's insane the # of category C drugs (no testing/unknown safety to fetus) are given to pregnant women. Apparently that's their new way of testing it. For instance, they give Ambien out like candy in the hospital and drs offices now, pregnant or no. Safe? Who knows? Like above, it needs to be lifesaving (and not fatal to the baby) for me, or around for generations already.

Poorly educated medical consumers are a problem. We expect car salesmen to be after our money. We need to expect it of the drug companies as well.