Madness of modern medicine

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1670

Published 16 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1670
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1670

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Antipsychotics and stroke risk

Madness of modern medicine

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

Douglas and Smeeth’s study of the risk of stroke withantipsychotic drugs highlights modern medicine’s flawedperspective.¹

Medicine once served to make patients better, alleviating symptomsand healing disease. Now it seems to have degenerated into arisk reducing, patient stratifying, life years adding biosciencedisregarding the individual patient’s needs. To deny apatient good treatment for disturbing and harassing complaintsbecause of worries about possible side effects is unethical.Nobody would question prescribing morphine for terminal analgesia.Patients at the end of their life with dementia related behaviouralproblems should be able to expect proper treatment. To withholdthis treatment for spurious and debatable reasons is "madicine."

Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1670

Philipp Conradi, general practitioner¹

¹ Otto-Dix-Ring 98, 01219 Dresden, Germany

pconradi@hotmail.com

Competing interests: None declared.

Douglas IJ, Smeeth L. Exposure to antipsychotics and risk of stroke: self controlled case series study. BMJ 2008;337:a1227. (28 August.)[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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Exposure to antipsychotics and risk of stroke: self controlled case series study: Ian J Douglas and Liam Smeeth
BMJ 2008 337: a1227. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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