Monthly Archives: May 2007

Pet Food Recall, Nasty food preservatives, and the Everlasting Bagel

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal carried two articles that were obviously prompted by our pet-food recall problems.  The first is about an apparent widespread use of unsafe additives for local consumption on a routine basis across Asia. Formaldehyde, which has been linked to cancer, has legitimate uses in adhesives and embalming.  But in Indonesia, Sutikno, a […]

Triage

One of the difficulties in being a solo practitioner is that you can really only do one thing at a time.  Sure, you can "multi-task", working on multiple patients in the same time period: some patients will be in a holding pattern while waiting for lab results, or their initial ear cleansing can be done […]

Unusual reactions to vaccines and other things

An idosyncratic reaction is a reaction that is peculiar to one individual (or at least to a very small minority of patients). Some reactions might be called an "intolerance".  Everybody else can take this medicine, but it always makes me sick.  For example, the orthopedic surgeon gave me a sample of an anti-inflammatory medicine when […]