Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne is the President and Founder of MedShadow, and the Executive Director of DES Action USA.  MedShadow’s mission is to preserve quality of life by ensuring everyone has access to the risks, benefits and alternates to using drugs to manage healthcare. Read More

Did you know that women have different side effects to medicine than men have? For example, a beneficial side effect of aspirin is prevention of heart disease, right? Not for women. Because women were not included in the original research on aspirin and heart disease, doctors were unaware that women get no cardiac benefit from prophylactic aspirin. For 20 years, women were prescribed aspirin for no reason, noted Nieca Goldberg, MD, Keynote speaker. And yet, since 1985 more women than men have died of cardiovascular disease, stated Dr. Goldberg, and 2/3 of the women who died never even made it…

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Aspirin has many benefits and some serious risks. Along with lowering the risk of heart attacks (for men), the USPSTF (US Preventative Task Force) recently indicated that for a specific group of people, those aged between 50 and 70 years of age, aspirin’s benefits for lowering colorectal cancer might be worth the risks. The American Academy of Family Physicians has more information on the guidelines. Will aspirin be recommended for skin cancer prevention also? There’s some evidence that skin cancer prevention might be one of the benefits, but don’t move too quickly Here are some of the pros of Aspirin:…

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Studies Link Regular Use of Aspirin to Macular Degeneration Two observational studies link regular use (three months) of aspirin to macular degeneration even if that use was TEN YEARS ago. Reported on NYTimes Well Blog, “Aspirin Use Tied to Rare Eye Disorder,” 12/18/2012. “It may be like smoking and cancer, where some people who have stopped years and years ago then get cancer,” Dr. Klein said. “It may seem out of the blue, but there’s something about latent exposure that carries forward.” A correlation such as this does not definitively prove causation. I can’t tell from the article how much aspirin…

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