Perfect Example! February 22, 2009

So as some of you may have heard during class, I have been hacking away with a terrible cold and cough the past few weeks. So after much coaxing from my mother I decide that going to the doctor is much better than to have her worrying about me being sick at school.

So after a 2 1/2 hour wait at Palo Alto Medical Foundations Urgent Care, I finally see a doctor. She is obviously over stressed and just wants to go home. She asks me if I have any of the following symptoms:

• a sinus headache
• pain behind my eyes
• sinus pressure
• any other kind of facial pain

All of which I do NOT have. So naturally, this doctor prescribes me medication for a sinus infection. I’m no doctor, but I would believe that the general rule of thumb is that if you don’t have symptoms of a common illness, then you don’t have it. Then a funny thing happens, I look up to find a sign with big red letters saying that Palo Alto Medical Foundation is taking severe action against prescribing medication to patients with viruses(which is what the common cold and flu are). I have looked all over for a PDF of this flier, but I can’t find one.

Bottom line, doctors like the one I was treated by are the number one reason that we are in the midst of an epidemic of antibiotic resistant infections. Here is an overview of antibiotic resistance put out by the FDA (who, in my opinion is one of the biggest evils helping out the pharmaceutical industry – more to come).

The First of Many.. February 11, 2009

I know we don’t have to do an introduction, but I think I might need one. In this amazing blog I will be expressing my many negative thoughts about the pharmaceutical industry and the effects of the medications that the FDA approves for them. Your thought is probably who is this random girl to have these opinions and how on earth did I form them? Well when I was 17 I began to volunteer in an Oncology and Hematology unit and became really close with many of the nurses and nurse aids I went on to work there for 2 years. I just got really interested in all of the drugs these poor patients were falling victim to – don’t get me wrong, some of these drugs do save lives and I’m quite aware of it. I am certainly not a fanatic about this. I simply happen to think that in other countries people are being cured of (and not sometimes) of the same diseases that are “curing” us in the United States with holistic and alternative medicine, with none of the terrible side effects. The reason I use quotations is because while millions of patients are cured of their disease they are left with livers that can no longer function or immune systems ravaged. My hope for this blog is that maybe next time you are feeling under the weather you take Suma and Goldenseal Root instead of popping Tylenol and cough medicine. So sit back, enjoy, and look up your local natural health food store, you won’t regret it!