Side Effects of Drugs Essays [antikvár]

Foreword Once upon a time, when knights were bold and apothecaries' scales uncertain, science was only the poor handmaiden of philosophy. Reason, proceeding from one logical argument to another with words as the building stones of knowledge, was valued more highly than observation and measurement. The wheel has come full circle indeed since then, and scientific method has become the basis of almost all that we discover and conclude. Up to the point, that is, where scientific method leaves us in the lurch; for then it is time to reason, and to speculate, and to reason once more in an attempt to proceed a little further. The study of adverse reactions to medicines is as scientific as we can make it, yet at times our methods let us down. We fail to predict or we fail to interpret in time; and as a result we may act either too rashly or too hesitantly in our attempt to strike the delicate balance between efficacy and risk. For fourteen years, since its foundation in 1977, the Side Effects of Drugs Annual has opened with an Essay in which one author or another (and sometimes two at a time) have taken a problematical issue and tackled it thoughfully. Those fourteen Essays are brought together in this little book. The authors, you will find, have not always agreed with one another, yet why should they? The facts which they took as their starting point have sometimes been supplemented by new knowledge since the time they were written. Yet their several approaches remain valid exercises in constructive thinking. Forget then, for a moment, meta-analysis, algorithms and every other brave attempt to make silk purses out of sows ears. "Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making" ran a quotation which headed the very first Essay. Add the opinions of two good women, and you have this book. Graham Dukes S^borg, Denmark December 1990