Medical
Resources
Online Resources
MEDLINE
MEDLINE is the United States National Library of Medicine biomedical database. It contains articles from a wide spectrum of research journals and is the first and most important place to look for data on diseases and their treatments.
Do not accept the contents of any single journal article as definitive. It is in the nature of scientific inquiry, and human fallibility, that many studies contain errors, many conclusions are false, and many reports flawed. Even research conducted and reported over many years may eventually be proven false (e.g., stress as a cause of ulcers).
It is probable that if you do a comprehensive MEDLINE search you will have more information on the search topic than does your physician. The odds are also good that if you take your search results to your appointment your physician will have no interest in them and consider you a crank for bringing them. He may be offended by the implicit challenge to his medical authority. If your doctor won't (within reason) examine and discuss the search results with you, then find another one who will and tell the resistant physician why you have terminated his or her services. You are paying for the doctor's services and you should expect to be heard. Physicians often refer to "patient compliance"; perhaps it is time for patients to start discussing "physician compliance."
Pub Med
NLM's search service to access the 9 million citations in MEDLINE
and Pre-MEDLINE (with links to participating on-line journals), and other
related databases.
GENERAL MEDICAL INFORMATION
HealthGate
free pages
Discussion of medical tests, nutrition, pediatric
disease, drugs, sports injury, and "healthy sexuality." We are
bewildered as to what "Rekindling your romance" has to do with
medicine, but then ours is a country in which the Surgeon General pontificates
about masturbation. In a medicalized kingdom the physician is king. Or
queen.
Psychiatry
Citizens Commission in Human
Rights
Documenting and opposing psychiatric abuse
A few thoughts on electroconvulsive
therapy (shock treatment)
From neurologist John M. Friedberg's
fascinating and disturbing site.
Drugs
REFERENCE GUIDES
Pharminfonet
RXList
DrugDB
Drug Formulary,
University of Wisconsin
CURRENT HEALTH NEWS
That the general media should do a poor job of covering medical issues is not surprising given the antipathy of physicians to scrutiny and the lengths to which they go to remain inscrutable. (Why is it that Latin is still used for writing prescriptions?) The following links take you to a minefield in which you should tread most carefully. Today's breakthrough is often tomorrow's miscue.
Reuters Health Info
CNN Food and
Health
Medscape
New York Times Your Health
Daily
Nando
Times Health and Science headlines
Internal
Medicine News
Doctor's
Guide Mednews