Ben Goldacre talks: ‘what #doctors don’t know about the #drugs they prescribe’ |

We need to be informed about the drugs we are taking. Here are some questions to ask:

1. What am I taking?
2. Why?
3. How long for?
4. What are the side effects?
5. What is the plan to reduce the dose and hopefully come off the medication (naturally there are some conditions or problems where this is not possible).

Believe it or not, the effects of medication can be affected by our own expectations about the treatment.

Here is Ben Goldacre talking about drugs and trials. Here is the bio:

‘When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world — except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported instances of negative data are especially misleading and dangerous.’