Dr Michael Evans throws caution to the wind in a recent Globe and Mail article titled "When the best remedy is nothing, why is it so hard to accept?". Here are some interesting excerpts:
"Earlier this month, a panel of advisers to the U.S. government recommended that popular over-the-counter cold and
cough medicines not be used for children who are two to five years old. Reports of potentially dangerous side effects had already led pharmaceutical companies to pull products for children under 2 off the shelves.
These cold medicines, the committee concluded, have no effective use in children."
"One consumer health group estimates that 95 million packages of children's cold medicines are sold in the United States each year for a total of $311-million (U.S.)."
"Deep down, much of society can't quite accept that for all our medical wizardry,
we don't have a better antidote for the common cold than chicken soup."
"The decision gets even more complicated when the truth is not black and white. Let's take a kid over 2 with an ear infection. It used to be our storyline that antibiotics were a must for kids with ear infections. Research now tells us that the benefits of antibiotics are modest for childhood ear infections.
One in 15 benefits, and one in 17 has an adverse reaction."
"Cough medicines have "worked" for years, but in truth they haven't."
"In medicine, if we want both sides to get out, we need to get better at telling stories based on the evidence."
The full article may be available
here.
