Firstly, let me introduce myself, I stumbled across steemit today and immediately found potential to see a rise in demand of this coin. The blogging style of this site is quite influential. I have been reading a lot into medicine blogs and have found more than enough controversial stories, whether it be cancer ideologies or vaccination and its link with autism etc. Immediately I shake my head in disbelief, being a graduate in pharmaceutical sciences, and currently taking on a master’s degree in pharmacy, I can see a lot of inconclusive and bias findings from many people.
After studying for many years in the field of medicine and 'the drug process' I can tell you all, there is a lot more to be learnt behind the scenes of what really goes into the development of therapeutics. All therapeutics are heavily regulated, especially where I am from, Australia. Here the Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA – our regulatory agency) regulates many products such as, medicines and blood products, including complementary medicine (in which I will write more blogs about as I know this a controversial field for many people), medical devices, such as implants, in vitro diagnostics and low risk medical devices. The TGA also regulate biologics, whether it be human stem cell(s)/therapy or cell-based products etc.
The term ‘regulate’ can create a mind map in itself, it involves the process of analysing hundreds, possibly thousands of pages of clinical trial information, before the drug registration process even begins. The TGA will analyse information from processes before clinical trials also, which is subsequently referred to non-clinical data (no surprise), such as safety and toxicity trials in small animals during drug development stages (post development stage), they will also maintain post marketing analysis (otherwise termed pharmacovigilance here in Australia) to prevent cases such as the disastrous thalidomide case that occurred in the early 60's (if you are unsure of this case I can also write a blog on this, it changed the quality use of medicine to how we know it today). I could ramble on and on about the safety of medicines due to regulatory authorities. However, my point is that medicines and medicine products are highly regulated interventions, they have been put onto the market for a reason, this is due to its efficacy, or in easier terms 'because it works', it serves as a purpose, to treat, prevent or in some cases cure a disease.
Sure, there are risks with taking medicines (I mean to be honest there are risks with any endeavour in life) but, being a future pharmacist - my job will be to balance the risk with benefits or in better cases outweigh the risks with benefits - to guarantee my patients follow a safe and efficacious drug regime to treat their symptoms or disease.
Any who I digress a lot when I write, I just want to say everything you read on the internet is going to mislead your views on medicines. Many people write articles in conjunction to affiliation with companies and have an extremely bias proposal, whether it be a good or bad result to a medicine, etc. So, if you need accurate data and information on any drug regimes, comment them below and I’ll give my professional advice to anything you require, whether it be medicine advice, illicit drug advice, current stages of therapy or if you just need someone to talk to, that is my job and I will be here for you all.
Subsequently, please jot down ideas about future blog stories, I can write about the pharmacology of certain drugs, pharmacokinetics, therapeutics or anything, I love to teach the quality use of medicines.
Thank you all for reading!
NB. I know there are probably many gaps in this blog, I could write for days about medicine, but in my following posts I will try to be more concise and include less jargon.