Tag: pharmacies
What do consumers think about homeopathic remedies?
A new survey gives insights into how consumers view homeopathy, and how they feel about homeopathy once they learn what it actually is.
What are health professionals telling consumers about dietary supplements?
The popularity of dietary supplements continues to grow. A few weeks ago I described how dietary supplements have become a $34 billion industry, despite the fact that there’s very little evidence to support their use. While there are absolutely some medical circumstances where specific supplements may be warranted, the vast majority of supplements are taken for general purposes, such as “wellness” or...
Pharmacists Selling Snakeoil
Edzard Ernst published an excellent editorial today addressing the question of why pharmacists sell bogus products. Our own resident pharmacist, Scott Gavura, expressed similar points here on SBM a year ago. Their points are worth emphasizing and expanding upon. Professional ethics The explicit premise of both editorials is that pharmacists, like physicians, are health care professionals. Being a professional means adhering to...
Genomic testing at your pharmacy: Ready for prime time?
Despite science’s ability to develop sophisticated and targeted new drugs, predicting the effect of a drug in an individual is still maddeningly difficult. Not every drug works for everyone that takes it. Similarly, the very same drug can be well tolerated in some, but can cause intolerable side effects in others. So-called “targeted therapies” were supposed to improve our accuracy, by focusing...
Bad News and Good News from Down Under: Science-Based Medicine in Australia
The bad news: in a disturbing attempt to woo customers, some Australian pharmacists are offering in-store consultations with naturopaths. The good news: Australian skeptics and supporters of science have had a lot of recent successes in combatting quackery. Non-Doc in a Box In an article in the Australian magazine The Skeptic, Loretta Marron reports on naturopaths in pharmacies. You can read it...