Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

If your chemotherapy drug is making you feel miserable, you might be able to have your dose lowered without it losing effectiveness.  The dose makes the poison, noted the Swiss chemist Paracelsus more than 500 years ago. For example, you could take two acetaminophen pills (Tylenol) for a headache and get good relief, or you could take 20 of them and end up in the hospital, having poisoned yourself and harmed your kidneys. Or you might simply drink two glasses of water, take a walk and then notice that  your headache has gone away without taking any medicine. The popular…

America has been in an opioid overdose crisis for more than 10 years. For nearly all that time, the medical community has understood that opioid addiction often starts at home with a legitimate prescription

Trauma Drama is Kat Peloso’s novelization of nurse Goldie’s first few weeks transitioning into the emergency room (ER) after a decade of being an operating room nurse.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now approved the diabetes drug Wegovy (semaglutide), previously okayed for diabetes, for weight loss. I wonder why? I was the consumer representative on the FDA advisory panel that voted to approve Wegovy (semaglutide) for diabetes. I voted for it reluctantly and only because the drug helped slightly improve life for those with diabetes. A small weight loss is one benefit of Wegovy. Patients given Wegovy in clinical trials lost between five and 10 pounds. That’s helpful for a person with type-2 diabetes, but for the average person, it’s minor. The average weight of…

Happy Independence Day weekend! This is the most important holiday to MedShadow because we celebrate our ongoing independence from pharmaceutical influence.  We are one of the few, free, nonprofit sites that refuses pharma money because we are committed to giving you the unbiased, honest facts of health that you need to keep yourself and your family safer from medical harm.  Misleading information, even lies, from drug companies is nothing new and a reality across our nation’s history. In the winter of 1905, Mark Twain himself sent the world’s most eloquent angry letter to a drug company selling bogus patent medicine…

Malcharist is a book about how pharmaceutical companies allegedly can harm patients with their drugs and get away with it, while profiting mightily from their unethical ways.

As recently as last fall, I was dead set against getting the COVID-19 vaccine. I thought the trials were rushed, the science too new and the chance that I would be harmed if I got COVID-19, small. I emphasized my stance in the blog 6 Factors to Consider About a COVID-19 Vaccine. In December and January of 2020, a lot of information became available about the various vaccines, the testing and history of the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, which both Pfizer and Moderna used. It was then I realized the science is not new. Medical researchers have been working on…

Like you, I’ve heard a lot about the Frontline Doctors organization that materialized, seemingly, out of nowhere to stand on the Supreme Court steps in July and declare that much of the COVID-19 information that the CDC (Centers for Disease Prevention and Treatment), the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and individual state authorities were giving out was a lie. While garnering headlines, the Frontline Doctors produced its breakout star, emergency room physician and attorney Simone Gold, MD. Because a good friend asked my opinion of Gold’s recent video, I spent an hour watching her YouTube lecture. Although the video has…

At MedShadow, we envision a world where pharmacies encourage people to exercise, not just take pills, and where doctors feel responsibility to restore joy in their patients’ lives, not just remove sickness. 

Q. A visitor to www.MedShadow.org asked: “I’ve used Retin-A daily as an anti-aging cream for 15 or more years. Is this safe?” A: Probably yes. Remember, we at MedShadow are not doctors. We are a group of consumers and patients who sift through the internet and talk to doctors and other healthcare providers to dig a little deeper and uncover more information than what is commonly known about a prescription drug. The FDA has approved Retin-A, generic name tretinoin, for “acne vulgaris” and nothing else. On the Retin-A label it states: “The safety and efficacy of the long-term use of…