Some thoughts on overuse of sedatives, opiates, and stimulants A recent article over at the Why is American Health Care So Expensive blog discussed the patterns in overuse of sedatives, opiates, and stimulants, noting:There is no good evidence that these medications are either safe or effective when used long term. In fact there is good evidence that they are NOT safe, and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that they are not effective. We prescribe many times the number of controlled substances now than we did a decade ago, and overall Americans are not less anxious or less in pain or better able to concentrate than they were before....
Amazing Advocates: Canadian D-Mom on Phoenixes and Tats Grassroots advocates, we love you! That's why we recently launched a new series to showcase these oft-overlooked activists working so hard out "in the trenches" to raise awareness and help fellow patients. Today, we're talking with Canadian Barb......
Cold weather is a bigger killer than extreme heat – here’s why For every death there’ll be many more hospital admissions for things such as strokes and heart attacks. Vladimirs Koskins/ShutterstockMost people are acutely aware of the toll the heat can take on human life, particularly since the extreme heat of Black Saturday in 2009 and the European heatwave of 2003. So it may come as a surprise that more Australians die from the cold than the heat. A new study published in The Lancet shows 6.5{c754d8f4a6af077a182a96e5a5e47e38ce50ff83c235579d09299c097124e52d} of deaths in this country are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5{c754d8f4a6af077a182a96e5a5e47e38ce50ff83c235579d09299c097124e52d} from hot weather. Most deaths will be from cardiovascular and respiratory disease,...
Climbing the tree: the case for chimpanzee ‘personhood’ Should primates such as chimpanzees be given rights normally reserved for humans? phil/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SAHercules and Leo don’t know it, but a decision about their future has made history. In granting an order to show cause on whether Hercules and Leo (who just happen to be chimpanzees) are illegally imprisoned, a Supreme Court judge in Manhattan has kept open the possibility that some nonhuman animals will be granted legal rights under common law. The plaintiffs are currently used for biomedical research at New York’s Stony Brook University. What the lawyers running the case hope to show is that Hercules and...