About Medicine

Posted on August 18, 2009
Filed Under History |

In the mid-nineteenth century was a cracked papyrus 3500 years ago. The document had sought a doctor showing that the ancient Egyptians used herbal teas made from willow bark to treat various kinds of pain. In reality, willow bark has a long tradition and its use was common in medieval medicine.

The growth of medical chemistry in the late nineteenth century and early XX took various forms to try to synthesize the active ingredients of the sauce. The most effective was the development of Arthur Eichengrün, which led to the patenting of aspirin. But Eichengrün Bayer was Jewish and was a supplier to the Nazis, so the inventor of the best-selling drug in history was censored. He gave the assistant Eichengrün called Hoffmann, who was convincingly Aryan, while the true discoverer of aspirin was sent to a concentration camp.

It was not the only time you changed the information on Bayer aspirin. It also did its best to minimize what is known about Reye’s syndrome. This is a very rare but very serious and often deadly, which is triggered in children who have been treated with aspirin. That is why many countries have banned the pediatric aspirin.

Yes, I mean those little pink pills, which can be purchased without a prescription anywhere and we have given our children as often as an act of love, not knowing the risk they were running.

There are many medications that have a hidden history and represent potential risks for users.

Of course, this is not rejecting scientific advances, but to block flow of information has been omitted. For that the UN has prepared a book called “Consolidated List of Medicines banned or severely restricted.” This is a report on how different countries deal with the drug product by product and country by country.

List of Banned Drugs

This book is a work tool. We live in a society which is dominated disinformation. We share the paradox that, surrounded by a barrage of irrelevant news, we hide the merits.

By a concomitant paradox, the professionals we are among the less informed. Because we were taught to believe in our sources of information. While ours is a society that has placed excessive trust in big business, trust that many of them do not deserve.

The result is that the main source of professional development of many doctors is the advertising that makes the same laboratory that sells the drug. Jorge Luis Borges ironically on advertising and wondered why believe the benefits of a product to someone who is interested in selling it.

This is exactly what happens to the drugs. Prospectuses of many medicinal preparations hide their contraindications. There are laboratories that continue to sell products abroad that have been banned in their countries of origin. Refused to professional information needed to make the necessary calculation of benefit / risk.

The result is that poisoning with drugs is much higher than they could be, not only for self, but also professionals working with incomplete information.

Neither governments nor citizens’ associations have, limiting their actions fairly. In the City of Buenos Aires established “the prohibition of entry and use of methods, products, services or technologies not approved or banned in their country of production, patenting, or original development. The law shall establish the deadline for the conversion of those who are currently authorized. “

Just how to find out which medications have been banned in other countries? We know that there are certain products that are sold only in the South, and have long been banished from the pharmacies in the North. But what are they?

The United Nations has done an excellent job comparing the status of medicinal preparations in different countries. It is, as we said, a working tool for professionals and for the authorities. Therefore, it should be readily accessible, the website of the Ministry of Health and World used daily in all the Faculties of Medicine of the world. However, under pressure from certain vested interests, it is very difficult to find and few people know of its existence.

So our intention to publish and make available to those who can use it. We provide you the text of UN, with the only change interspersed with a commentary in the beginning, which occupies two pages as it is necessary to correct the location of two pages for each product according to the index.

This is not to alarm anyone but to provide evidence that professionals and managers of health policies can better guide their decisions.

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