The extraordinary side effects of drugs

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Defined in its strict pharmacologic sense, side effect is any effect of a drug, desirable or undesirable, other than the one sought for a particular therapeutic purpose. Thus, the therapeutic effect of a drug for one case can be the side effect of another. This presentation deals with extraordinary side effects: side effects due to drug interaction, nutrition, age, enzyme abnormality, ecologic disturbance, drug resistance, social problems, and inferior therapy. The best way to limit the side effect of drugs is by basic understanding of drug action obtainable only by well‐controlled, well‐designed experiments in man. Otherwise, drugs will be used without this vital information until, in clinical use by trial‐and‐error method, sufficient data are haphazardly collected to provide conclusive evidence of drug effects. This is the common medical experiment in man, a mass experiment of a retrospective type in which the patient plays the role of the unwitting subject and the phYSician is the unwitting observer. It is inefficient, exposes more patients to poorly understood drugs than necessary, and, until the necessary information is obtained, is marked by avoidable catastrophe.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: