Scared into submission You've heard me railing against the government's increasingly "zero tolerance" stance against purchasing prescription drugs over the Canadian border, right? Why, in just the last few months, I reported on the busload of senior citizens detained by jack-booted FDA thugs simply for taking a city-sponsored road trip - which they've done every month for the last year or more - into Canada to stock up on prescription meds (many of which they no doubt don't need, but don't get me started on that). Well, now the Fools on the Hill have figured out a new way to keep the drug profits close to home: Instead of Gestapo tactics like detaining border-crossing seniors at gunpoint, they've shifted gears into good old fashioned scare tactics - using the terrorist threat as leverage. According to a recent Associated Press report, the Food and Drug Administration is claiming that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and others are planning to contaminate the drug supply with Allah-knows-what. But get this: They maintain that only those drugs brought in from Canada and other sources are potentially dangerous… What a crock! The vast bulk of the prescription drugs sold in this country are produced in factories far from the Land of the Free. In fact, one leading drug company has something like 60 plants in various parts of the world, some of them no doubt not-so-friendly to the Stars and Stripes. If a drug is mass-produced and poisoned in, say, Bangladesh, how is buying it here in the U.S. any safer than buying the identical pills from a Canadian pharmacy? In fact, if Al Qaeda were really targeting drugs meant for the U.S. market, then wouldn't it be SAFER BY FAR to buy them in another country? According to the article, the FDA is sounding the alarm about airwave "chatter" that they're claiming indicates a plan to launch such an insidious attack. How they concluded this I don't know, since the last time I checked, the Food and Drug Administration wasn't equipped to be a counter-terrorism unit (who knows what those meddlesome morons are doing, though, right?). Plus, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security - the folks that actually monitor the "chatter" - stated that they have NO SPECIFIC INFORMATION about where, when, how, or even IF such an attack might occur. Don't get me wrong - a terrible scenario like this could happen, and quite easily. But the FDA shouldn't be leveraging people's fear just to put a few more bucks in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. Shame on them! Next Dose: The FDA looks the other way… Retiring the necktie in the name of health? At about this time last year, I wrote to you about how some research shows that neckties (specifically, wearing them too tightly) can contribute to glaucoma (Daily Dose, 8/29/2003). But now there's some new evidence suggesting that neckties can contribute to even more diseases - and not just for the wearer! A recent Reuters Health online article outlining one of the marquis studies to be presented at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (a rockin' party, no doubt) contained this one, overlooked gem of preventive medicine: Doctors' neckties may be contributing to the spread of disease in a big way. According to the study's results, the average doctor's necktie is EIGHT TIMES MORE LIKELY to harbor pathogens (harmful bacteria) than are ties worn by other hospital personnel, like security guards. The research found two ways in which bacteria from these microbe-infested ties could reach patients: First, because during routine exams, a doc's necktie often drags against patients' bedding (or their person); and second, doctors almost always adjust their neckties AFTER WASHING THEIR HANDS! Proposed solutions to the problem include switching to bow-ties, using a non-damaging anti-microbial spray, or even using plastic "necktie condoms" (!) Listen, we've all heard the horror stories about the chances we take with infection every time we set foot in a hospital - the risks are well documented. I say this: Anything we can do to reduce this risk is worth doing, even if it means our MDs have to wear their button-down Oxford shirts without neckties… Because feeling good (for you) really IS better than looking good (for them), isn't it? Tie-ing up medicine's miscreants, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
