Drug addict

There were some kids being treated with gene therapy for SCIDS (kid in a bubble syndrome- they have no immune system), and yes, they did develop leukaemia.

Coquina, those links look good, I think the key thing to point out is that the thyroid hormones (T3 & T4) play a key role in control of the body's metabolic rate. Luckily both are easy to treat. Hypothyroidism is treated with thyroxine to compensate for the reduced amount synthesised by the body. Hyperthyroidism has a number of treatment options: surgery to remove part of the thyroid (which may result in too much being removed and thyroxine needing to be taken), use of 131-I to reduce the size of the thyroid, or carbimazole or propylthiouracil, which interfere with the synthesis of T3 & T4, though there is a risk of agranulocytosis. Cap'n Refsmmat: night time coughing is a classic sign of asthma, and for your doctor not to pick it up is quite appaling. Asthma can be controlled very well most of the time, providing the correct medication is prescribed and it is taken correctly. Ian Botham was asthmatic.

Your argument in post 15 was 'socialism is the restriction of prosperity'. To evaluate this claim, you need to compare markers of prosperity, such as GDP, life expectancy, etc., from capitalist and socialist countries, so why not compare Sweden and the UK? Which countries would you compare? Some figures from the article: The Guardian is a left of centre newspaper,yes, and it certainly takes a progressive stance on many issues, but the source for a lot of the data in that article was from the Economist, a publication that supports neoliberalsim and argues that the more freedom you give the rich the better the poor will be and that "punitive taxes" condem a country's people to remain poor. Yet this arguement is undermined by their own statistics. So can you tell me how socialism restricts prosperity?

and?

here's a comparison of economic indicators between the UK and Sweden with a commentary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1387530,00.html

Just a few quick points while I'm on a break: Drug testing & safety: clinical trials in patients with the disease which the drug is going to treat is the final stage of testing. Prior to this you have trials in healthy humans, in animals and in cells. I'll expand on this later once I've had time to check some references. Considering how rare some side effects are, it is unfeasable to expect them all to be detected. As an example, the occurence of rhabdomyolysis with statins is 1 case in 100,000 patient years (I'll try and find a source for this other than the BNF), i.e. to detect this in a clinical trial, before releasing the drug, you would have to test 100,000 patients for a year to even pick up one case. Thalidomide: more than anything else I'm professing my ignorance at what teratogenicty testing they did back then, and what the regulatory systems were like. The drug wasn't licensed in America, but I'm not sure why. My comment about the reform of regulatory systems wasn't meant to sound trite, I was just illustrating the cliche that every cloud has a silver lining. The FDA in America gained their current powers in the late 1930s after people were killed by a sulphanilamide solution made with diethylene glycol. At that time it was not an offence to sell dangerous, untested or poisnous drugs.

I would hope that other people using these forums can come to their own conclusions regarding my posts. you know absolutely nothing about my education, current or past, so you are in no position to make that statement. as I've said elsewhere, I misread it. So you've never heard of Bayer, Aventis, Schering AG, or Boehringer Ingelheim then? And then there's this: Which you haven't referenced properly... And if you look at ISI journal citation reports (http://portalt.wok.mimas.ac.uk/portal.cgi?DestApp=JCR&Func=Frame), you see that the European Journal of Surgery has an impact factor of 0.516 (rank 108) and in 2003 was cited 1961 times (rank 49). On the other hand, Annals of surgery had an impact factor of 5.937 (rank 1) and was cited 20540 times (rank 3) in 2003. I think its fair to say that the European Journal of Surgery isn't a particularly prestigious journal. Just having loads of references doesn't actually tell you that much. Where and when they were published are also important.

Ok I misread it... because I was laughing too much. And anyone who followed the link would have seen that. like I said I misread it. And my maths is perfectly up to scratch thank you. Or at least I hope it is given I've got a calculations exam on Thursday...

John, I'll post a reply when I've had some sleep; I've been up for about 36hrs solid now so anything I posted would probably not make much sense [insert joke here] One little caveat though, I think if you look back you'll see I said medicine was based on science, not that it is a science. A subtle but important distinction.

ok then... if you really think BNP policies are no more aggressive than SNP policies I think you need to do a little bit of research into the respective parties. the SNP website is http://www.snp.org/ I refuse on principle to post a link to the BNP site, but here's a story about their leader: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1373951,00.html you want to know about employment statistics? fine. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=462&Pos=3&ColRank=2&Rank=1000 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=979&Pos=1&ColRank=2&Rank=1000 and here's something about stop and search: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/Newsletter_30Nov.pdf so don't give me any of that rubbish about equal opportunities or political corectness gone mad. YT what part of Brum do you live in?

It used to be used as a purgative (laxative), or to treat syphilis (by IM injection). Locally it was used as an antiseptic or for treating syphilitic ulcers. Organic mercurials were used as diuretics . Probably bitter as the powder had to be mixed with sugar when giving it to children.

You need to work out how much of each component you need to have to make that buffer so that it has the required concentrations. The SDS would be the easiest place to start - you either need 1g (if its % weight/volume) or 1ml (if its % vol/vol) as a 1% solution is 1g (or 1ml) per 100ml. The NaCl and EDTA are pretty straight forward as well. Once you get the g/L figure just divide it by 10 to give g/100ml. The tris-HCl is a bit more complex as you need to use the Henderson-Hasselbach equation, pH=pKa + log([base]/[acid], and then buffer concentration = [acid] + [base]. for a quick overview see http://www.haverford.edu/chem/Scarrow/GenChem/acidbase/buffer_prep.html and for more detail http://www.emdbiosciences.com/SharedImages/Calbiochem/Calbiochem_Buffers_Booklet_CB0052_E.pdf Hope this helps

Clinical trials involve relatively small numbers of people and are conducted over a relatively short period of time, yet if you have a successful drug, there may be millions of people taking it. That is why you have post-marketing surveillance and pharmacoviligance to pick up effects which are unlikely to show up in trials. It is likely that medicines are going to be discarded as time progressess. Not because they are useless, but because more effective alternatives have come along. Whenever looking at medical treatment the words 'at present' should always be foremost in your mind. but helicobacter pylori wasn't discovered until 1982 and even then it took some time for acceptance of the idea that it was responsible for stomach ulcers. See for example http://puck.ingentaselect.com/vl=5552385/cl=23/nw=1/fm=docpdf/rpsv/cw/rcop/14702118/v2n2/s19/p147 http://www.kjm.keio.ac.jp/past/52/2/80.pdf Inital research with thalidomide was for anticonvulsant effects, but it was found to have sedative properties instead. Remarkably, it did not cause death in overdose. This was before the discovery of the benzodiazepines when the only available sedatives were barbiturates which can be fatal in overdose, especially with alcohol. How the jump was made to it being safe in pregnancy I don't know. Some good did come from this though as regulatory systems were overhauled. Interestingly, thalidomide is making a comeback and is being used in multiple myeloma and for a number of tumours. http://www.pharmj.com/Editorial/20040214/articles/thalidomide.html Re hyperactivity and ritalin: I think hyperactivity is one of those conditions which was previously underdiagnosed, but is now being overdiagnosed. My younger brother was diagnosed with ADHD circa 1990 and prescribed ritalin. It made a huge difference to him, when he actually took it. Damn, I've gone and given some anedoctal evidence! That meta analysis does look interesting, though it is a few years old now and so could be out of date. Actually, here's a slightly more recent article: http://btuk.clinicalevidence.com/ceweb/conditions/chd/0312/0312_i1.jsp?btuk=1 ECT is still used today, and can be very effective in patients suffering from certain mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia who are refractive to treatment. It is very different to the popular misconception of the treatment http://www.medhelp.org/lib/ect.htm It looks to me like her therapy was inappropriate, or she had poor inhaler technique, which is incredibly common. In addition to the becloforte she should also have been on salmeterol (Serevent) and theophylline tablets or alternatives, according to the British Thorasic Society guidelines http://www.brit-thoracic.org.uk/sign/mainframe_download.html (see page 6) From doing a few quick searches, it seems the Helsinki heart trial and the MRFIT trial were done in the 70s and 80s (it does help if you include links!) Nowdays if you are hypertensive you are likely to be on aspirin and a statin as well. And here's a story about a trial using newer antihypertensives: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4080181.stm Of course no drug is 100% safe, but then life is inherently risky. Just getting out of bed in the morning can be a significant risk for some people. I want evidence to show that something works - data is not the plural of anedocte. 5000 might say something worked for them, but how many people did it not work in? That is one of the key questions.

I found another one! http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?thread=%3Cmod.1102028417-14330.1%40forum1.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&find=%3Cmod.1102028417-14330.1%40forum1.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&board=science.headlines&sort=Te I'm sure there are more, but the BBC site is horrendously designed and there is no search function for the message boards, nor can you add external links.

well here are some other links he has posted: http://www.cancer-treatment.net/New...Information.htm http://www.cancer-treatment.net/New-Alternative-Cancer-Treatment-Information_Nutshell.htm http://forum.aidworkers.net/message...html?1105057020 his posts elsewhere haven't been deleted yet, but I'm guessing it won't be long...

those links lead to complete and utter rubish.

Actually, this is complete and utter bollocks, as is the rest of the stuff he's posted. And apparently, according to his posts on the BBC science message boards wearing a bra increases risk of breast cancer by 125%. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?thread=%3Cmod.1104704094-17675.25%40forum1.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&find=%3Cmod.1104704094-17675.25%40forum1.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&board=science.headlines&sort=Te Amazing the stuff some people come up with! can a mod/admin either move his stuff to pseudoscience so we can all laugh at it or get rid of him please? Cheers

I'd like to know where the data quoted in the patent comes from, until then it's going in the pile marked 'rubish'.

try Pubmed at http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi for published papers

some stats on survival following lung transplantation from http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2980.htm (there are some lovely pics if you scroll down to the bottom of the page)

Life expectancy after any form of transplant is not fantastic, partly due to the need to take heavy duty immunosupressants to prevent rejection - which of course makes you more vulnerable to infection. I'll try and dig out some stats, but I'm fairly sure that 10 years of life after a lung transplant is pretty good going.

The problem at present is the fact that for a transplant to occur (with the exception of a kidney) someone has to die! In the future this could be solved by use of stem cells, but this is probably some way off. An alternative to mechanical replacement is pharmacological replacement eg insulin, thyroxine, sex hormones, but obviously this is not ideal.