Here's a list of the excipients in US vaccines, compiled by the CDC and last updated almost a year ago.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf

I don't normally watch TV.  When I stay at my mom's house it is running all the time.  My first impression is that the programming is sensational, and that there is very little depth to any of the reporting or storytelling.  There is a lot of redundancy with so-called news programs repeating clips over and over.  Next impression: pharmaceuticals dominate the advertising.  I saw an ad for the "female viagra", and one for Humira that says "don't take this if you have an infection" and others that speak of liver failure and other dire consequence.  Direct advertising of pharmaceuticals should be BANNED.  As a doctor I would rather that people come to me with concern and complaints from their lives, not requests for drugs.  Television programs Americans to be shallow, ignorant, and demanding.  So unappealing.

I don't remember the stats but I saw in the news that most 4 or 5 year old Americans already have a television and a "mobile device" of their own.  Most babies are exposed to mobile devices before age 1.

In this morning's medical news, Pfizer has issued a nationwide recall of Effexor/venlafaxine (a SSRI or SNRI), because a drug used for heart arrhythmias has shown up in somebody's bottle. The two drugs are packaged on the same line, suggesting to me that the pills are of a similar size and shape, and perhaps a pill or two could get stuck inside the machines and rattle out into the next batch being bottled.

But the hazards of taking drugs for depression are much broader than that. The pills themselves could have ingredients that aren't desirable. The drugs could have side effects that we don't understand yet. The drug companies could know about possible side effects but keep that information hidden to protect sales. They're recalling these three batches because accidental ingestion of the heart drug could kill someone. If it just make you a little sick, or did something that wasn't traceable to them, do you think they'd recall product? Or that doctors would stop prescribing them?

One glance at the list of adverse effects given on the wikipedia page for Venlafaxine will boggle your brain. There are a lot. These occur in over 10% of people taking the drug: headache esp when you start taking the drug, or increase the dose, nauseam insomnia, weakness, dizziness, trouble climaxing, sleepiness, drymouth and sweating. And these are a little less common: constipation, nervousness, abnormal vision, anorgasmia, hypertension, impotence, paresthesia, tremor, vasodilation, vomiting, suicide attempts, bruxism, so many more. The list is too long to reproduce here.

SOURCES
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/821631
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venlafaxine

RECALLED
Lot #V130142 and V130140, both expire 10/2015
Greenstone lot #V130014, exp 8/2015.

WORRY IF YOU TAKE VENLAFAXINE AND
you feel faint, get dizzy, pass out, or have a very fast heartbeat

My notes are behind the cut. These ladies review some recent FDA approvals and critique the process. The upshot is that the FDA is fast-tracking drugs without following their own rules regarding the supposedly scientific and independent review process. My take: Don't Use New RX drugs until they've been on the market at least 10 years. Otherwise YOU are part of the longterm followup studies that they aren't doing before approval.

SOURCE
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/01/25/antibiotics-when-science-and-wishful-thinking-collide/
( my notes on Zuckerman & Yttri articleCollapse )

The Russians have known about phages and used them to treat severe infections since the 1930's. New research shows that lots of phages live in mucus. Wherever there is mucus there is likely to be a large population of phages--including mucus produced by other species such as sea coral, plants, etc.

Phages are viruses that use bacterial cells to replicate in. They can also insert new DNA into bacteria, and they are able to evolve quickly enough to keep up with changing resistance patterns. Big Pharma is not putting any money toward phage research because phage therapy would compete with antibiotic sales, and as we know, for them, the bottom line IS the bottom line. They want us to think that phages are dangerous. But according to Dr Mercola a normal human produces approximately a quart of mucus (snot) daily in the upper respiratory tract, most of which we swallow. So we are phage central already.
( notes from Mercola's new article on phagesCollapse )

We are all, to some extent, crazy. If you come to know any human being well enough, you eventually gain access to the basement where the traumas and wounds and deprivations are stored; rummage in there for a while, and you begin to understand the neuroses and fixations that shape his or her personality. The successful, reasonably happy people I've known are nuts in a way that works for them. Those who struggle and suffer fail to turn their preoccupations to some meaningful use. Next week, the American Psychiatric Association release the latest version of its bible of mental illnesses, the DSM-5, which catalogs about 300 categories of crazy. Critics of all kinds have lined up to assail this dictionary of disorders as subjective and lacking in scientific validity--assembled primarily to justify the prescribing of pills of dubious value.

About 50 percent of the population, the APA admits, will have one of its listed disorders at some point in their lives. Shy, like Emily Dickinson? You have "avoidant personality disorder." Obsessed with abstractions and numbers? You have "autistic spectrum disorder," like Isaac Newton. Suffer form "narcissistic personality disorder," with some hypersexuality thrown in? You must be a politician. To be skeptical of these neat categories isn't to deny that minds get broken, stuck, or lost, and need help finding their way out of misery. But psychotherapy remains an art, not a science; there is no bright line between nuts or not. If you're an old lady who lives amid piles of newspapers and personal treasures, you have "hoarding disorder." If you're a CEO who exploits sweatshop labor to pile up countless billions, you're on the cover of Forbes.

--William Faulk (editor-in-chief) in The Week, May 24, 2013 issue.

There are no poisons, only poisonous doses.
--Paracelsus

This is an old quote, but it comes fresh on my reading today that the FDA has reduced its recommended dosing for Zolpidem, that is, Ambien. Turns out, many people still had a lot of the drug in their blood in the morning, when they needed to function. Of course we the people already knew that. Women process the drug more slowly. And it also interacts in an unpleasant way with opiates. Many times modern medicine is guilty of overdosing people, especially as we get older and our liver and kidney function decline. So when in doubt, take the smallest possible dose, and if you're into homeopathy, take none and call it some.

Here: https://www.rxisk.org/Default.aspx
Looks like an interesting new site. Not sure how scientific or clinically useful it will turn out to be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-drug-industrys-influence-over-research-grows-so-does-the-potential-for-bias/2012/11/24/bb64d596-1264-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html?wpisrc=al_economy

2/3 of all articles about new drugs in the NEJM are at least co-authored by drug company employees. And it's getting worse. So don't believe what the "science" tells you about new drugs. Use old, established drugs, if you're going the Rx route. Wait until a new drug has been in use at least a decade before considering it. Let other people be the experimental subjects. That's my two cents.

I would have voted for Mitt if:
( hell froze overCollapse )