But the cartoon character is more three-dimensional…
I have no doubt he “learned” this from conservative talk radio.
Nah, he probably got infected by antivax/conspiracy websites. Or Andrew Wakefield.
I have worked with dozens of pharmacists over the years (mostly immigrants from East Asia, West Africa and the Caribbean) who did not believe in “western medicine” and “chemical drugs”. It was just a profession with a defined educational path and very reliable employment. Though the latter has changed somewhat.
Several of them were peddling “traditional” medicine on the side in their immigrant communities, no doubt with their credibility boosted by their PharmD.
My general impression is that pharmacy seems to have more than its fair share of right wing nuts. Many with substance abuse issues. I cannot believe how many seem to escape disciplinary action.
Where is this? (General region is OK; you can PM me if you want to be more specific.)
I certainly believe in the holistic approach when possible, but that’s not always the case, so that’s where “we” come in.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD said, “If the whole of the materia medica were to be dumped on the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the fishes.” I agree with that as much as I agree with an early 20th century naturopath who was also a devout Christian, who said, “God has made the remedies for all diseases, and is waiting for us to discover them.” In other words, not totally, but a lot.
Mid Atlantic 1988-1996 approximately. I worked for a large chain as a computer technician. Couldn’t be behind the counter without a pharmacist with me, so lots of time to chat while stuff loaded and ran. Software updates on diskette or CD in those days.
In the fall, and again in the spring, I spent a lot of time on the phone with pharmacists in various southern states, transferring prescriptions for snowbirds.
Whenever I called a Walgreens in Florida, I would almost always get an Asian woman who barely spoke English. Don’t know if that’s still true.
As this quote dates from 1860*, it’s not that unreasonable to doubt the value of drugs from that area (Holmes notably excepted opium, which he thought was God-given, and anesthetics). Relevance to currently available drugs and vaccines is dubious.**
There’s a species of pharmacist who goes beyond the legitimate role of pharmacy in serving as a potential check on improper prescribing, and believes (s)he knows better than physicians and patients regarding what drugs should be administered. Case in point: the “conscience” pharmacists (my term) in the news awhile back who decided they wouldn’t fill prescriptions for meds that in their opinion were intended for “morning after” pregnancy termination.
*note that this apparently comes from the father of the well-known Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
**believing in this advice makes even less sense than modern-day woo-sters worshipping Hippocrates for saying “let thy food be thy medicine”, since Hippocrates and his fellow docs were even more deprived of useful drugs and treatments.
I’ve known many pharmacists to push homeopathic (ie worthless) preparations also. And also known pharmacy techs who present themselves to patients as ‘experts’ on pharmaceuticals (they are not).
In other words, many pharmacy professionals are just as looney as physicians and nurses and respiratory therapists. Advanced degrees/licensure in a scientific field are no guarantee of rationality. I’ve terminated the employment of a number of physicians who brought woo into their practices and refused to follow evidence-based guidelines.
Even somewhat later, Mr. Clemens had this to say:
If I were required to guess offhand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value. […] The prevailing tone of old books regarding new ideas is one of suspicion and uneasiness at times, and at other times contempt. By contrast, our day is indifferent to old ideas, and even considers that their age makes their value questionable, but jumps at a new idea with enthusiasm and high hope—a hope which is high because it has not been accustomed to being disappointed. […]
So recent is this change from a three or four thousand year twilight to the flash and glare of open day that I have walked in both, and yet am not old. Nothing is to-day as it was when I was an urchin; but when I was an urchin, nothing was much different from what it had always been in this world. Take a single detail, for example—medicine. Galen could have come into my sick-room at any time during my first seven years—I mean any day when it wasn’t fishing weather, and there wasn’t any choice but school or sickness—and he could have sat down there and stood my doctor’s watch without asking a question. He would have smelt around among the wilderness of cups and bottles and vials on the table and the shelves, and missed not a stench that used to glad him two thousand years before, nor discovered one that was of a later date. He would have examined me, and run across only one disappointment—I was already salivated; I would have him there; for I was always salivated, calomel [mercuric chloride] was so cheap. He would get out his lancet then; but I would have him again; our family doctor didn’t allow blood to accumulate in the system. However, he could take dipper and ladle, and freight me up with old familiar doses that had come down from Adam to his time and mine; and he could go out with a wheelbarrow and gather weeds and offal, and build some more, while those others were getting in their work. And if our reverend doctor came and found him there, he would be dumb with awe, and would get down and worship him. Whereas if Galen should appear among us to-day, he could not stand any body’s watch; he would inspire no awe; he would be told he was a back number, and it would surprise him to see that that fact counted against him, instead of in his favor. He wouldn’t know our medicines; he wouldn’t know our practice; and the first time he tried to introduce his own we would hang him.
Pushing fake cures is bad, but destroying real medicine due to delusional beliefs about what it does is another.
At least actual homeopathic medicine is harmless.
Not if it’s used in place of effective treatments.
True, but I don’t see that happening at a pharmacy, where you’re already there for actual medication, let alone at a hospital pharmacy.
Thise who won’t take real medicine go to the health food stores or slt med stores instead.
Got any evidence for that assertion? Pharmacies are big movers of OTC/health/nutrition/alt med/groceries/lifestyle products these days. Most folks in them are NOT picking up prescriptions. Or so my many pharmacist friends and colleagues who have worked for the big chains have told me.
They get folks who want to treat their diabetes/htn/heart disease with alternative/herbal/homeopathic products
If I pick up a prescription at a drug store, right at the counter where I’m waiting I can see probably a dozen woo magic cures right there begging me to grab them. Practically shoved in my face. (Generally around here we use Walgreen’s for convenience.)
True on all counts.
Pharmacists who do not believe in dispensing this or that should go work at a place where they don’t have to - and I know of several who did exactly this, for instance a place that services nursing homes. Most of them have few female patients of reproductive age, and if a patient of any age or gender was sexually assaulted, s/he would go to the emergency room and be further treated there.
The best known homeopathic product is Oscillococcinum, which is a 200x concoction of duck heart and liver, and includes vitamin C which in this case might be helpful. By 200x, this means that it’s been diluted in a 1:10 ratio, shaken, and then diluted 199 more times, meaning that it’s unlikely that it contains any molecules of duck heart and liver.
When I had my cancer diagnosis, my doctors all said, “You do what the other doctors recommend.” Since I didn’t need chemo, I did joke that now I could go raw vegan after all. (UGH - I’d rather have taken chemo!) However, they’ve seen lots of people over the years whose treatable cancers spread under “alternative” treatment, and by the time they sought conventional therapies, it was too late to help them. Steve Jobs was an excellent example of this.
I do remember one customer at the grocery store who had us order Lydia Pinkham’s for her once a month or so; nowadays, it’s a liquid vitamin preparation but back in the day, it was a concoction of herbs that happened to be in an alcoholic vehicle, which made it legal to sell during Prohibition. She admitted that she didn’t believe in traditional medicine and used this to stay healthy, and if it worked for her, what was the harm?
In the meantime, Mr. Brandenburg has told authorities that he tampered with the vaccine as a prank, because that way, the people who got it would think they were protected even though they weren’t. Yeah, yank his license and his freedom.
I’d have customers ask about this or that herbal remedy or natural therapy for this or that disease, and in some cases, they were legitimate questions. My grandmother read about using cider vinegar to treat arthritis in a supermarket tabloid, and swore it worked for her. No harm in that, really. Using ginger for morning sickness was another; if it works, use it. Baby’s constipated? Dark Karo syrup. One of my technicians said that her late mother had really bad psoriasis that didn’t yield to standard treatments available at the time, and a friend who sold Shaklee (Amway knockoff) suggested Shaklee vitamins. The doctor said, “Sure, you have nothing to lose” and not only did they work, the psoriasis didn’t come back when she stopped taking them.
In other cases, we would tell them that if they want to use herbs to make their food taste better, that’s fine, but using them medically might not be a good idea. There was a woman who seemed to always call on the weekends that I was working; AFAIK I never met her, but she would tell me that her father was on dialysis and he was orders all these herbal remedies out of the classified ads of magazines and what should she do? All I could do was recommend that he consult his doctor before taking them.
I live in the home base of chiropractic, and while that is useful for some things, it’s NOT useful for many others.
Another thing, which some of you may disagree with, are the people who think marijuana and its derivatives are a cure-all. They do have their uses, that’s for sure, but they will not guarantee that you won’t die.
Pot’s an iffy medication for most of the ailments that it’s touted for. Medically it’s been found to be helpful in certain chronic wasting diseases like severe AIDS, nausea from chemotherapy, and as an adjunctive treatment for certain pain problems, mainly malignant pain. Paradoxically it can cause a hyperemesis syndrome that’s tough to treat.
Since this is a message board devoted to fighting ignorance, if a pharmacist isn’t an expert of pharmaceuticals what are they? I’ve always thought that the whole reason they exist as a profession is to have an expert who understands the drugs we take, how they interact with other drugs, etc., etc.