General Blog

The practice of medicine should be all about the evidence. The FDA starts off the regulatory process with the right outlook. Before it licenses any drug for use, there must be extensive clinical trials to show clear benefits for patients with no serious risks of side effects. Unfortunately, once the drugs are licensed, the regulators take their foot off the gas. There are systems for doctors to report unexpected effects in the day-to-day use of all drugs and devices but few reports are filed. The reasons are complicated. Well, clearly there’s some the influence of the manufacturers. Profits would be at risk if there was a consistent stream of news showing any drug was unsafe. When millions of dollars have been invested in getting the drug to market, doctors must look the other way. This is encouraged by financial and other incentives. It’s only when people die that there are statistics for the regulators to look at.

Sadly but quite often, deaths are considered “routine” and little effort is made to find anything to disturb the calm. The one area where coroners tend to be honest is in reporting deaths through prescription-drug overdoses. This is not seen as threatening the profits of the manufacturers or the professional standing of the doctors. Perhaps it’s not surprising that, given our country takes more drugs per head of population than any other country, we also have a rising tide of deaths through overdoses.

Washington state decided to take action and has published some tough new rules due to come into force on January 1, 2012. This is a complete reversal of policy. Back in the 1980′s, studies suggested our doctors were failing to offer effective support to those in pain. Doctors responded by prescribing painkillers in increasing numbers. Medical boards smiled reassuringly and said they would not penalize doctors who prescribed drugs to relieve pain. Sadly, as opiate drug use grew, so did the number of deaths. This liberal regime is going to end.

Doctors must prepare for the new procedures wich requires a detailed consideration of every patient’s records to decide whether continuing to prescribe opiates is justified. Interestingly, many patients are now being cut off from supplies. Desperate people in pain are now flooding into clinics and hospitals. This is not what was expected. Even more interesting is the refusal of the medical board to reconsider the regulations. They did what the politicians required. Now it’s left to the politicians to deal with the fallout.

There’s already evidence that there’s abuse of over-the-counter painkillers as people denied access to opiates try to find alternates. Inevitably, Tramadol pills has been caught up in the confusion. Hospitals and clinics are refusing to take on new patients for medium- to long-term pain management. However this restricts patients access to Tramadol pain reliever even though it has an unblemished track record of safety. Hopefully, this situation will be resolved in Washington and will also serve as a warning of the chaos if prescribing rules are changed without thinking through the consequences.

It may be a statement of the obvious but the way business is run today is rather different to the ways of two hundred and more years ago. We often forget the first insurance company was created in 1752 by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. At that time, the main risk to any business was fire because, without alarm systems and rapid response pumping equipment, a building and stored merchandize could burn to ash before help arrived. The risk profile today includes fire but we have moved on to a much wider range of situations never dreamed possible by our ancestors. Can you imagine trying to explain the problems of a cyberattack and data loss? So, in our modern world, what is the best strategy for getting the best insurance portfolio?

Getting the best business insurance portfolio

The answer has not changed since the early days. When the Philadelphia Contributorship was the flagship for the new insurance industry, all the businesses involved complained about the amount they were having to contribute. It was ever the case the premium rate was the key. Business owners today are always looking for the best trade-off between the extent of the coverage and the cost. The fact the premium payments are a business expense and therefore a partly subsidized use of gross profit does not change the drive for every business to maximize its profit. So the directors of each company, regardless of size will be thinking about their exposure to risk and the economics of providing against the worst. The actual needs will vary significantly depending on the type of business. Particularly when the business is small, it is very important not to buy too much cover. The only heading on which no one should skimp is the cost of defending against third party litigation. Today, people use the threat of legal action as a means of gaining leverage over their opponents. Without business insurance, it’s very expensive to get the right quality of legal advice to fend off nuisance actions. The scale of costs asked as an advance against attorney costs can make settlement of the claim look very attractive.

At this point, it’s appropriate to warn against one type of insurance as a one-stop solution. Many agents are advising small businesses to buy a Business Owner Policy (BOP). This is presented as an excellent deal for the replacement of property and equipment used in the business. As a package with a liability element, it looks like a cheap solution to the insurance problem. But, before you sign up for this type of policy, look very carefully at the extent of the cover. In a small wholesale or retail operation with no delivery service, BOP may fit. But the moment you send out employees to make deliveries, you are likely to hit problems because the standard BOP policy does not cover loss and damage caused by your employees, say, as drivers. So always ensure the insurance you buy fits your actual business needs. If you are at risk through vicarious liability, i.e. the potential negligence of your employees, buy the right business insurance coverage to meet your particular needs. Although there can be a temptation to buy the one-stop solution at a low price, cheap business insurances is often a false economy.

Pain is a sensation that accompanies most of us throughout our entire life in different forms. If you aren’t the rare person with pathological analgesia, which is a condition when the person doesn’t feel any painful sensations, you have certainly felt pain and know what can cause it. There are many situations that can trigger pain and the pain itself can be described using dozens of different characteristics, some of which being antonyms. But why do we feel pain in the first place? And wouldn’t the world be a better place if there was no pain at all?

The easiest part of this question is the second one. A world without pain would be a rather young and empty world without much humans living in it. According to statistics most of those rare persons who are born without the ability to feel pain don’t ling longer than their teen age. Why? Because pain is the strongest caution signal we have in our body and if there’s something going wrong or threatening our lives it’s the pain that makes us take some measures. So when you don’t feel any pain you can never tell that there’s something wrong with your body and you can easily die from a simple inflammation just because you’ve spotted it too late. That’s why a world without pain isn’t the happiest place to live in.
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There’s a rumor going round the town that pain is a bad thing and should be eliminated at all costs. Big Boss Pharma has been lining up all its big guns and, no matter what level of pain you may be experiencing, there’s a pill with your name on it, assuming you get a prescription, of course. You may therefore look at the headline here and be a little surprised. How on Earth can anyone think pain is a good thing? Well, let’s go back to basics. Darwin, that inconvenient man who thinks we all evolved rather than were created, argued only the best-adapted species survived. When it comes to survival, the animal needs to know when it’s under attack. If it’s injured, it decides whether to fight or flee. So pain is a vital signal to the brain. It warns when the body is injured. We benefitted from that when we were less well-developed. Today, it’s still useful to know if we have accidentally injured ourselves or just picked up something too hot to hold.
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The colorectal cancer or cancer which attacks the colon and rectum as other cancer characteristics has the characteristic that it can grow up quite fast, can infiltrate (infiltration) to other cell and cause the damage.

Though it is not yet known exactly what the cause is, but a newest analysis shows particular eating pattern can reduce the risk of this cancer. The research shows that the high vitamin D eating pattern can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. This finding is reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology.

In 18 studies which involve more than 10,000 people, it is known that those who get much nutrition of vitamin D, the risk of getting the colorectal cancer is 33 percents lower than those who just get a little nutrition of vitamin D. Meanwhile, those who get the vitamin D through supplement and foods have the risk 12 percent lower of getting the colon cancer.
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