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- Page navigation anchor for Bad medicineBad medicineOnce again, Des Spence manages to articulate what many of us are thinking. It has crossed my mind more than once, that if the QOF has not led to the significant benefits in mortality and morbidity that it should have done (despite us prescribing vastly more drugs for blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes), does that mean the underlying evidence for all of this is much less certain that we would like to think? I would echo his call for the professors and statisticians out there to look into this (and ideally as a matter of urgency, as we are still being reminded that we 'could do better' in the prescribing of drugs for primary prevention).Competing Interests: None declared.
- Page navigation anchor for Bad medicine: Polypharmacy - time for a new directionBad medicine: Polypharmacy - time for a new direction
It is always refreshing to read Dr Spence’s views. He does not hide behind the parapets, colluding silently with a system that is now so seriously broken as to be almost irreparable. He is of course not the only doctor speaking out. Prof David Healy on SSRI antidepressants, Dr Aseem Malhotra on statins, but the numbers are too few. They do not shy away from making public the fraud in medical research, the misleading clinical guidelines, the criminal and immoral activities of the drug companies. There are also many patient groups demanding action. Two petitions on prescribed drug dependence will be discussed in the coming week.1,2 Patients are putting a great deal of time and effort into this and it would be heartening if more support was forthcoming from the wider medical community. To keep doing more of the same is surely unthinkable. The only beneficiaries are the drug companies and their shareholders.
Dr Spence suggests that pharmacists be given a greater role in monitoring and stopping medication. I am sure this is part of the solution. However, to prescribe is easy, to de-prescribe less so. Doctors cannot differentiate between side effects, withdrawal symptoms and mental illness in patients withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. Patients’ views are frequently dismissed. Doctors apply diagnostic labels such as CFS, somatisation, bodily distress syndrome, MUPS, functional disorders. All of these imply a psychological component to what is esse...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.