Need to see evidence before accepting assertion that female sexual problems are normal. Why shouldn’t women have viagra?

Scientific-technological orthodoxy has grown to such dizzying proportions in Finland that it is not uncommon to hear all manner of Orwellian health care reforms, such as the nomination of a scientific committee to supervise the brain chemistry of the president, from even the most eminent scientists in the country. My personal favourite in the way of mind-boggling quackery passing as respectable medicine is the suggestion that the problem of alcoholism could be solved once and for all by obliging the manufacturers of alcoholic beverages to supplement their products with anti-depressants.

Only a handful of disillusioned professionals in this country have openly raised doubts as to the scientific rigour of current diagnostic practices, and these are very quickly drowned out by such a flurry of protest and defensive ridicule as is only matched by the fervour of the religiously converted. The childish confidence of the general population in the protective magic of medical professionalism is in fact such that it reminds me of the saying “pious in medicine.” I encountered that phrase in a passage on the unwavering trust of King Louis XIV of France in the lunatic medical practices of his court physicians. In other words, some things never change.

Ralph Catalano, and John Franka, Journal of clinical epidemiology doi:10.1016/S0895-4356(01)00348-1 )

As that article goes on to say you can see the effect of medicine but the improvement in death rates comes with the sanatoria rather than streptomycin. And not everyone did the byronesque coughing either. Outcomes were strongly nutrition and housing and other conditions related. Miners died, mine owners didnt. Indeed dependent on the strain TB can be eminently survivable without treatment if you are well fed, warm and housed. In fact the whole area should be metanalysed a bit more thoroughly…what, for example, is responsible for the twelve year cycle in TB? what made the pulmonary to non pulmonary statistics vary so wildly between 1917 and 1953?

May I suggest Staph Aureus sepsis as a less problematic example?

I’m still quite sceptical about scepticism about the role of serotonin in mental health, or at least the role of fiddling around with serotonin. But an idea that’s just occurred to me is to suppose that depression arguably consists of poor self mood management, and SSRI treatment takes the brakes off your mood control completely and compels you to improve your own mental discipline or go mad. Coming out the other side, you can use your improved skills to cure yourself – or you could do the same thing with talking instead of a drug.

But I’ve gone through drug treatment for depression twice, which kind of torpedoes the theory. But the second episode was with my Mum suffering fatal cancer (as it turned out) and elderly Dad needing care, so maybe it was the advanced course in not letting it get you down, that I needed, that time.

Still, this idea is probably unoriginal, and also just as reductive as taking pills to sort yourself out in the first place.

run “sigh”

Medicalization may be a good thing, if we applied evidence based reasoning the world might be a better place. We dont always take medical advice, we weigh it up against the benifits of the lifestyle we have. I know that certain foods may be bad for me, i still eat them as i enjoy them and thats more important, I dont exercise for the same reason.

I just listened to your podcast btw ben – you say you would allow Boots to lie to their customers about the beneifts of homeopathy to exploit the placebo effect. The trouble is i would prefer that doctors are the only people who can perscribe a placebo and only with previous aggrement by the patient to placebo treatment.
Id be rather annoyed if an gardener came in and said he would make my plants grow faster and then do bugger all and proclaim ‘Your plants are taller, they have grown faster, see…’

Latest news from the European Congree on NeuroPsychoPharmacology held over a few days recently in Barcelona – SNRIs and fibromyalgia! Plus mGlu2/3 receptor antagonists, quetiapine for everything, depot antipsychotics are back in vogue and pharmacogenomics/genetics have a great future.

BTW the lovely weather, blue skies and hot sunshine – not to mention the many lovely ladies just walking around in Barcelona – have lifted my mood enormously from the grim, grey and damp summer skies in the UK!

BTW, agree with people about restless legs. A relative of mine suffered from it for about 30 years before it was finally correctly identified and treated. The drug treatments have worked very well for him. I can’t comment on whether it is over-diagnosed, but the symptoms are so very distinctive and unusual, I imagine it would be hard to diagnose a case that didn’t exist.

Unfortunately so. So if big pharma has anything remotely likely to work, bring it on I say.

Neither Requip nor Mirapex works for you? Ouch.

Neither Relpax nor Mirapex works for you? Ouch.

It’s not just in the realm of medications that we see society being medicalized. The number of mental health employees and classifications for psychiatric disorders have mushroomed over the past decades. Alongside this we see a professionalization of friends (counsellors) and some neat excuses to avoid personal responsibility (sex addiction)

Yes, it’s not the first time Ben has targeted RLS unfairly. What’s happening is just the opposite: a set of symptoms whose cause is unknown (central nervous system) and afflicted people looking for a cure.
“Easily treated”? : I wish it were.