Were they all elderly people who decided that intervention was pointless at their advanced stage in life? That can be a reasonable decision if you're over 80.
oh my gosh , Steroids ... , but that's the devils spawn , it suppresses the immune system ... that can't be good ....can it ??We live in a very sheltered environment in Australia . Northern beaches of sydney would have to be one of the most blessed places on this planet ( assuming you want to live in a city ) . Nowadays too many people take their health for granted .
One of my pet frustrations is a reluctance to take antibiotics . Fine they can be over prescribed by some , but ....they're not the evil that it's becoming trendy to portray them as .
Today I had a patient with a badly infected middle toe . Nasty blister on the tip , with most of the toe red , tender and swollen , early cellulitis . Needs antibiotics . But when I suggest this , she baulks ..... No ..... not antibiotics !!! . She then says " what happened before antibiotics ?
" ah ... Before antibiotics , well the risk you ran was the infection would go into your foot , up your leg , into your blood stream , you develop septicaemia , septic shock , then you die ...
I assured her that it didn't happen all the time , but there was a reason ( outside lack of effective birth control ) which Victorian families had 8 kids and three survived to adult hood ....
I gave her a script of antibiotics . I wonder if she'll take them .
.... end rant ....
Cliff
I'm asthmatic .I think part of the increase in incidence is due to better diagnosis . Myself as an example . I can remember that long ago ..
Running in something like an 800 m race at school I'd be ok after 200 m but then gradually drop back . I was " unfit ". Fast forward 20 years and I'm showing a patient how to use a peak flow meter and instead of blowing 600 I blew 450 . I used a ventolin puffer and I was blowing 600... Oh ....
Most weeks I'll see someone who is wheezing but hasn't previously been " diagnosed " with asthma .
Food allergies . No one was looking . There are numerous tests that weren't thought about . Personally I'm a bit sceptical about some of the diagnosis . I've seen numerous people who tell me they are coeliac or have a food allergy and when I check their past results they don't show that .
Recently there has been a change in the testing of faecal samples ( it seems to pick up more positive results ) and I've had several people who have come in saying they have Irritable Bowel Syndrome or coeliac , but testing shows they actually have a pathogen and they get better when treated with .....antibiotics
Cliff
There is a huge volume of medical research going on into all sorts of diseases, the vast majority of which is done in universities, hospitals, and research institutes, and has zero funding from private sources.
If you think academics - most of whom are on contracts that don't allow them to benefit financially from their discoveries anyway - would pass up the chance for a Nobel Prize by suppressing a finding that hemp oil can cure cancer (or whatever), then I would suspect you don't know many academics.
They're all about the excitement of solving the problem; money is - for the vast majority - of no concern, or barely registers.
Money for their research, for sure. I was responding to the suggestion that seems to lie behind so many conspiracy theories, which is that scientists would say anything when paid by pharmaceutical companies.
