Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

Every fall I remember my son’s middle school experience of nearly being bullied by the principal and the teaching staff into taking Ritalin. When my son was 12, my husband and I arrived for the normal teacher conference a few weeks after he started at a new school. Two teachers told us flat out that he had ADHD. All his other teachers complained of his inability to sit quietly through a lesson and that his homework was incomplete. We explained that there had recently been seismic disruptions in his life and asked that he be given time to settle in.…

At MedShadow, we love pharmacists. That’s because our mission is to protect you from the side effects of drugs. Doctors are great; they are disease and health specialists. Pharmacists are medication managers. We consider pharmacists to be your last line of defense before a medical prescription error reaches you. Your pharmacist makes sure you get the medicine your doctor ordered, in the amount specified, and clearly explains to you how to take it (with food? In the morning? etc.). If the prescription is unclear or if the doctor ordered a drug that will conflict with your other medicines or supplements,…

The world has gone crazy, or maybe it’s just the doctors. Every doctor knows that every medicine has side effects. A core ethic of the profession requires doctors to balance the expected benefits of the medicine against the risk of side effects. The simple question is: is this drug likely to do more good than harm? If yes, alert the patient to the risks and then prescribe. If the answer is no, look for another way to treat the patient. What is the result when research finds that a medicine doesn’t have the beneficial effect earlier studies indicated? Simple: a…

Every drug has side effects, so it’s important to ask a few questions before taking it. The side effects can be mild (nausea, headache) or life threatening. You want to know what the known side effects are of a drug so you can prepare for it, even if only to not be surprised.  Use medicines wisely — for the shortest duration and at the lowest dosage that’s effective. Clinical trials done prior to market release can identify many common, and even some not-so-common, side effects of drugs, but many more are discovered years after a drug makes it to market.…

A week or two ago my adult niece, an Ivy League graduate and generally all-around smart person, said she didn’t know what to believe about vaccinations, and she’s completely given up on trying to understand it at all. She talked about the avalanche of conflicting information during the COVID pandemic and the continuing controversies (mask or no mask? Kids in school or out?) that have never cleared up.  She felt she didn’t have the medical education or the stamina to plow through it all herself. So she stopped. And that has led her to question a lot of the medical…

This past weekend I had a horrifying conversation. My husband and I were at a garden party in Central Park, New York, enjoying the early evening breeze and chatting with other guests. A woman we just met mentioned she was a nurse, working in an infertility clinic run by her OB/GYN husband. I mentioned what I do and how happy I was that Makena was now off the market.  Makena, a synthetic progesterone hormone, was given “fast track” approval by the FDA about ten years ago because early studies indicated it might help women carry births to the full term…

This isn’t another lengthy blog on the multitude of problems with America’s healthcare system. Well, OK, maybe it is. But, instead of just droning on about the countless ways the system could improve (because, let’s face it, there are plenty), what if there was a way you could make a difference? It doesn’t take a massive donation of finances. It doesn’t take writing to or running for Congress. It doesn’t take lobbyists or legal battles. It just takes you. John Q. (or Jane Q.) Public can make a difference. Want to know more? Keep reading. Just How Bad Is America’s…

As I write this, it is one day after the 60th anniversary of the first oral birth control that was approved for use in the United States. It was part of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and access to “The Pill,” as it was called, famously separated sex from procreation. “Oh pish posh,” you say, there were many types of contraceptives available for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. The Pill, however, was dramatically more effective than other birth control methods available until then. Here’s a diagram from Perrigo Company (manufacturer of OPill) illustrating that the birth control methods  available…

A Texas judge recently decided that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a drug that has been used for 23 years safely was wrongly made and that the drug should not be allowed to be used.  It doesn’t matter what drug it is and it doesn’t matter that the judge’s decision was riddled with inaccuracies, loaded phrasing, and partisan wording.  What matters is who decides what drug is safe and effective to use. And who do you think is trained to make those decisions? Who has a process in place for evaluation? And, who is the leading organization…

Do you want drugs to get to the market faster? Is safety a higher priority for you? What about who gives advice to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), should it only be people who have no financial conflict of interest?  I had the opportunity to meet with Robert Calif, Commissioner of the FDA, a couple of weeks ago. I went as MedShadow’s representative member of the Patient, Consumer, and Health Coalition, a group of organizations that educate, inform, and empower those concerned with the overuse of medicines and medical devices. As a group, we are supportive of the…