This is a report from Al Jazeera on some of the amazing work accomplished by Cuban medical personnel. I’m fortunate to know personally a Cuban Neurologist and a nurse and this article could be talking about them. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/cuba-medical-magicians-150430073632978.html
I finally finished reading Dr Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Pharma and what a tale it tells. The premiss of the work is that the doctor who treats you, no matter how rich or poor you are doesn’t know all the data regarding the drugs that he or she is prescribing you. That’s scary, or at least I find it scary. I think I would like to know if drug A has a higher probability of harming or killing me than drug B. Although there is a supporting cast in what has happened to medicine over the recent decades the main culprits are the large pharmaceutical companies and the selective publishing of data in regards to drug trials. Ben and others have set up Alltrials.net , http://www.alltrials.net a campaign to bring all that missing data into the public domain. This is sensible for all of us. So please read and if you feel motivated then sign the petition.
I’m still working my way through Ben Goldacre’s excellent book on the pharmaceutical industry, “Bad Pharma” and apart from being so well researched and written it has some interesting comments. Ben relates the story of how in Thailand there are two million women and 800,000 children involved in the sex trade and how the Thai government decided in 2007 to copy a western company’s drug, Abbott’s, drug for the poor. Abbott’s retaliated by withdrawing 7 drugs in total from the Thai market. His point was that the sex industry serves many western men but his knock out comment for me was, “some of whom you may know personally”. Look around you and maybe you will see some of them.
revoche 