Medication recall

You read this:

The McNeil Consumer Healthcare Unit of Johnson & Johnson has voluntarily begun a recall of certain children's over-the-c0unter liquid medicines because of manufacturing deficiencies, the Food and Drug Administration said Saturday.

The deficiencies may affect the potency, purity or quality of products, the agency said in a statement.

Consumers should stop using certain lots of infants' and childrens' Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl products because some of them may contain too much of the active ingredient, McNeil said in a statement late Friday. Other products may contain tiny particles or inactive ingredients that may not meet testing requirements, the company said.

... and you have questions swirling around in your mind.

1. What standards are in place to ensure quality control?
2. Why couldn't they have discovered these deficiencies before the medications hit the stores?
3. What exactly are these "tiny particles or inactive ingredients that may not meet testing requirements?"
4. What medications are we taking today that will be recalled tomorrow?

Is Jesus Enough?

That's the question Brant Hansen has had on his mind.

My name is Brant, and I'm on mind-altering drugs. And that is both the best first line, ever, on this blog, and -- distressingly --it's also quite true.

Read the rest, please.

the (ab)use of Adderall

Matt Y. links to an article by Molly Young where the author talks about her use of the medication Adderall. Adderall was made to treat people with ADHD and narcolepsy, but since it's an amphetamine, it's often used in non-prescription ways. Young's article is quite similar to one written by Joshua Foer three years ago.

Matt writes:

Some people, though, clearly experience great effects and it does raise some questions. Do we really want to create a situation where some students may feel that they have to abuse prescription drugs to stay competitive in school? Then again, if there's a pill out there that's safe to take and helps kids learn a bunch of stuff, doesn't it seem like we should be prescribing more of it? I'd want to know more about what the real medical affects of taking the stuff before I made any kind of judgment. I will say that I was a bit shocked to hear about some of the younger faculty using it to help get their work done, but even though at the moment Adderral seems to mainly be a vice of college students there's no particular reason it couldn't be useful (in good ways or bad) for a much wider range of people.

Some people say that they smoke pot because it helps them to relax after a stressful day. Should we encourage them to continue using it? While Matt may be focusing on a drug that is manufactured by a company, whose to say (given his reasoning) that we can't examine the impact of other substances and their effects on human performance? I think there are moral implications to relying on a pill to help someone "learn a bunch of stuff." Couldn't Adderall be used as "mental steroid?"