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Animal Drug Investigation Reveals Pet Medication Often Doesn't Work
KentuckyFC writes: "Americans spent an estimated $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013 — and that doesn't even include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Factor in the emotional energy we invest in keeping our companion animals healthy, and you'd hope for high confidence in the end results. But when one journalist investigated the science behind the meds being used to treat his aging dog's osteoarthritis, he was in for a nasty surprise. Glucosamine and chondroitin food supplements? Next to useless. Tramadol to kill pain? It's probably just getting dogs high. The one treatment that's been proven to help, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called carprofen, is often left on the shelf because of fears — likely overblown — that it might damage dogs' kidneys. In part, you can blame this sorry state of affairs on a lack of financial incentives for drug companies to run clinical trials on animals. But often, vets aren't paying attention to the studies that have been done. If we want our dogs and cats to receive the best possible medical care, we need to ask our vets some tougher questions about why they think the drugs will work."
So? Often the HUMAN drugs don't work either, but we still pay billions out each year for them, and don't get me started on the "homeopathic" and "vitamin" crazes.
I felt like our initial visit was almost like getting cased by a grifter; like they wanted to see how much I was willing to shell out. They started me out with a sample of a deworming med then asked for a stool sample from the pup which of course showed some parasite that had to be treated with another med. So, I've had her 2 weeks and besides vaccinations she's already been exposed to 2 medications. And, each visit has been a setup for another visit in the weeks to come. I just feel like i'm getting sucked into a merry-go-round of perpetual medication and unnecessary care. But, I'm not a professional so I don't have much ability to make judgements.
A human doesn't need that much attention if he's healthy.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Why would you want to risk getting attacked by PETA and other animal rights organizations by doing testing on animals? Heck, you can't even shampoo a dog without someone getting upset!
I'm not sure I spend $850/year on my own medical care.... ....although I'm sure that'll go up as I get older -- before ending abruptly.
"A woman in England paid over $17,000 for her cat to spend six days in an oxygen tent to cure its paralyzed larynx. The cat showed its gratitude by briefly holding eye contact."
Dental health is probably the only real thing you do can stay on top of that really helps.
Bad teeth == much shorter life
And humans are no different.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
But or dog has had hip trouble for 6 years. The first 5 we did nothing but keep him on glucosamine. The few times we took him off due to laziness or questioning it worked due to the Vet mentioning conflicting research, our dog noticeably declined. And within 2 weeks of him going back on it, he got better.
The primary reason why opioids work as painkillers is specifically because they get you high. They dont really kill pain so much as they make you not care that you're in pain. So tramadol getting the dogs high means its working. Except the biggest problem with tramadol is that it works as an SSRI/SNRI first, and then its primary metabolite, O-desmethyl-tramadol, is what works as a pain killer (affecting the kappa and mu receptors). Tramadol is more of an antidepressant than a painkiller, which makes its addiction significantly worse (ask anyone who has withdrawn from antidepressants).
It's not clear if that $850 is figured out by dividing dogs owned by dollars spent, or if that's gleaned from veterinarians and pet med providers divided by their customers.
I suspect it's the later.
I know numerous pet owners who haven't ever spent a dime on their pet outside of bags of kibble and a flea collar or two. $850 might be the average, but it sure isn't realistic of what one might actually spend. Double or triple that, I'd hazard. More if you're in a "nice" neighborhood.
That is way low for 2 of our dogs and way high for the other 2.
Gee. Just like in humans. Imagine that.
Don't forget to buy your dog and cat food with lots of grains and carrots in it, for their health! [nods furiously with shit-eating grin].
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It could well be. While the average may be $850, the amount spent does not follow a normal bell curve distribution. IIRC, it takes the local human society about $200 to $300 to get a puppy ready for adoption (shots, spay/neuter). The average is dragged higher by spay/neuter, foreign object surgeries (dog ate something it shouldn’t.), oncology, knee surgery, etc. I know that a few cats get kidney transplants each year – owner of the sick cat has to adopt the donating animal.
Which is why I had my dog put to sleep when she had a seizure, probably treatable, but she also had cancer and was 14 and had lost hear hearing about a month prior to the seizure. At that point all I could picture was leaving for work in the morning the dog having a seizure upstairs and taking a tumble down the stairs in the dazed and confused moments afterward and then lying there in pain broken for 8 hours until I got home to find her.
She went to the emergency vet that night and was put to sleep.
She is loved and missed, this was 4 years ago.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I'm a cat owner. This average sounds about right to me. But keep in mind that this is an average, not a median, and the average is skewed upward by a small number of people* who spend thousands a year to fix problems that inevitably arise in their older pets. Cat chemotherapy, for example, costs about $100 a week.
*Who are these people? The wealth distribution of the united states is also highly skewed, with a long tail at the high end.
When I read this, I was surprised that there was no mention of Rimadyl, as that's been the go-to NSAID for our dogs after surgeries. One google later let me know that Rimadyl was, indeed, carprofen, and I read the article again with that in mind.
Three times does "carprofen" appear in the article:
"Its examples include one relevant to Kaleb, considering the effectiveness of glucosamine and chrondroitin versus an NSAID called carprofen in treating dogs with osteoarthritis. The bottom line: “Carprofen is superior to glucosamine/chrondroitin supplements in reducing the clinical signs.”"
and
"We plan to get some fresh tests to see how stable his kidney function is, and talk to our current vet in San Francisco about whether it’s time to try carprofen. "
If you're using non-proven supplements to treat your pet's pain instead of veterinary-recommended NSAIDs, then, yeah, perhaps it's time to talk to your current vet about whether it's time to try the painkiller that is clinically superior.
Its much cheaper if you go to 1-800-PETMEDS..com
and you save a trip to the vet too..
(but seriously, how do you know whats wrong with your dog if you don't take him to the vet first?)
Not a clinical trial or a valid sample size but our elderly cat was making a noise that seemed to indicate she was having some discomfort whenever she jumped down from wherever she'd gotten to. Our vet suggested glucoamine so we gave it a try. Seemed to help. Cat no longer makes what sounds like a pain noise as she does her normal cat things. We've had her on glucosamine for a couple of years now. Ditto for the neighbors and their rottweiller with hip problems. Seemed to help her, too.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I have a PhD from a veterinary school in Australia, but I've also worked extensively on research in humans, including work funded by a branch of the US military. My undergraduate degree was Mechanical Engineering; I work in biomechanics. My wife is a vet.
My response to this article is that this guy ought to do more digging in human medicine. He clearly cares about his dog, and that has prompted his discovery of just how little actual science is being done. Good start! However, the situation is not dramatically different in human medicine, especially in areas without major financial drivers. Sure, more papers are being published for humans, but the actual rate of progress and clinical evidence for many practices is roughly comparable. His observation that human medicine leads the veterinary world is entirely correct, but that's simply because more people are able to get funding for research in humans, which is reflective of the vastly larger human medical industry in comparison with the veterinary one. Welcome to the world of research!
Instead of complaining about vets, who are under-paid by the standards of other medical professionals (just Google the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, for example), the author should be advocating MORE money be spent on animal care, which would then increase the industrial incentives for research. As someone in the business of getting grants in the veterinary world, I can attest to the fact that there simply isn't money available to pay for most of what we would like to do. So sure, this is something to complain about, but complaining about the veterinary profession itself for the shortcoming, while simultaneously accusing them of disinterest or financial motives, is just plain stupid.
Yeah, but that comes with all kinds of shit... morphine is awesome, then you come off morphine and go "oh man this sucks". If I'm already in pain, I think I'll just live with it. Or kill myself. Nobody has ever given me a good story about having had morphine in the hospital. Ditto Xanax... had a coworker who said when he left his Xanax prescription behind it was ... a bad couple weeks.
The only real reason they give you opiate drugs for pain is because of the whole killing yourself thing. Yeah, pain can be that bad.
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+1 SadButTrue
Thankfully, I am 100% confident that my kitty's thyroid medicine does work; she has hyperthyroidism from a benign tumor on her thyroid. It was VERY obvious that it was having a positive effect when the vet put her on it and I saw her plump up and feel tons better. Vomiting was another symptom... and that ceased. Another symptom was that she was dropping weight, which was scary because she was always hungry despite getting skinnier and skinnier. In fact, once she was on the medicine, she got a bit chubby and we ended up having to lower her dosage. She then trimmed down to normal weight and we keep her on a managed dose; she needs to be on it forever. No doubt at all that this particular med works. Forget the name offhand, though.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Same as with a human, when they get older you can focus on hospice care to reduce pain and make sure they feel loved, or you can just kill them as soon as they have some aging pains.
There is generally not a need to give a lot of veterinary care to a pet outside of that analysis. The article suggests why; there is a lack of real and helpful medical care available for pets, even if you go to a vet.
What surprises me is how many people come up with a totally different answer to that for their pets than they do for their human relatives. So much for being part of the "family."
$850 a year - the heck? For our cat, we pay about $110 for yearly checkup/vaccination, and that's it. An occasional infection/irritation with steroids+antiobiotic was another $80 or so. That's in a US city of more than a million, BTW.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
When it comes time that you have to treat an infection how do you know which to use? Honest question. Are you skilled in making that judgement and/or have microbiological facilities?
has your beloved pet been forced into the SLASHDOT BETA program?
Having taken tramadol myself I can say that it is quite effective at relieving pain. It also tends to keep me from sleeping. The withdrawal from it was unpleasant, just taking it once can give dizziness and nausea for hours after it wears off.
I hate tramadol but it seems some people really like it because of the intense high it can give. After the bad experience with tramadol I was able to convince my physician to give me codeine and hydrocodone (not at the same time) which works much better for me. Because of the crazy laws we have I could get truly high inducing levels of tramadol without much issue but getting opiates without liver killing levels of NSAIDs to go with it requires an act of Congress.
I believe that codeine should be over the counter medications. The NSAIDs I was given before were ineffective and were likely poisoning me. I got a clue on how bad that stuff was when my physician scheduled me for a liver and kidney function test. The number of people that are hospitalized or die from Tylenol overdose every year is staggering. The people that die from opiate overdose do so largely because the quality control of street drugs is questionable.
I also have to wonder how many opiate overdoses were not actually an overdose of the opiate, but instead an overdose of the Tylenol or NSAID that is usually mixed with it. I'm sure the big money in medicines want to keep any overdoses quiet when they can. When they can't they'll blame it on the "evil" opiates. It not only makes the drug makers look good, it makes the DEA look good.
Got off on a rant there. Anyway, tramadol isn't so great. NSAIDs and Tylenol work for mild pain. The best stuff is the natural stuff, codeine. People, and their pets, have been taking it for thousands of years. It's safe and effective. Overdose is only a real issue when concentrated to insane levels to get high. If you're getting high off codeine then you're doing it wrong.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
They're careful enough in hospitals to only give you enough morphine to take the immediate edge off the pain. They also won't give it to you for very long unless you're an ICU patient. Then you get "lesser" pain meds, which they seem a whole lot more likely to give you lots of. Everyone I know always has leftovers, we even took a bunch of bottles to a pharmaceutical dump to prevent them from getting into the general environment.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Yep, same as for grandma.
Rather than a one-page cheat sheet, try keeping a copy of the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy handy. It’s available online for free, but the printed form is inexpensive considering the extraordinarily extensive coverage. The Brandon/Hill list could get you a few more references in case you have to survive without any access to medical expertise.
In ordinary life you should still see actual medical professionals, but if you’re isolated from any sort of medical care then appropriate books and emergency drugs are the next best thing. Study up too, there are a lot of emergency conditions that need immediate treatment.
Belief - "My dog is my best friend. My dog loves me!"
Reality - "You live alone with your dog. Your dog will be eating your remains 8 hours after you drop dead."
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
This is a bullshit article. The basis for it is that food supplements didn't (and don't) work but an NSAID would probably have worked. No shit. It's well known that the supplements industry for people is mostly snake oil. Of course it will be more so for pets. There are plenty of references on the net if you search, but in case you're lazy I just found this one. If a drugs works, there may be side effects (as with the NSAIDs in the TFA). This doesn't mean that "pet medications don't work." It means you need to do your research and not believe the crap it says on the packet. If people stopped buying this shit, the companies would stop selling it.
soylentnews.org
Look my older cat is 8 year old, and I paid 60 euro per year for it. About 36 euro in 3 vets visits 12 euro per visits, the rest was the price for , 2 vaccination, and 1 de-worming. My younger cat is 5 year old same price. Even counting the castration which was maybe 60 euro , how the heck do they cam eto such horrendus price ? I have to count all food, cat toilet stuff and playtoy to come to 700+ euro top.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Transdermal methimazole works a treat, too!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It isn't just about the financial aspect, its also about the cruelty part of experimenting on living creatures that cant say they are suffering.
At least a human can say something: ' hey, i don't feel right '...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The real question is why does the owner's medical treatment cost so much more.
Honestly I hadn't thought that far ahead
Gotta love someone who has a bunker full of fish antibiotics but forgets to think ahead...
Mod parent up. Sometimes it isn't about "curing" diseases, it's about comforting the patient.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This is why the average is a terrible metric to quote in this case. A couple pets having major surgical procedures done will skew it very high. The median would be a better statistic for this.
Out current vet is great. He makes house calls which is much less stressful for our cats. He doesn't seem to be aggressive about prescribing medication but will often tell us if there is a human OTC equivalent we can use when possible.
A good friend of ours has a cat that was chewing its fur off and required a cat food that is only available by prescription and she wasn't able to get it where she lived. Our vet recommended something similar and wrote us a prescription so we could get the cat food for our friend. After about 7-10 days there was a noticeable improvement in her cat's fur and about 6 months later her fur is fully grown back. She has the cat on 1/2 prescription food now and it seems to be working.
As with anything else, one should be wary of vets that are treating illnesses that are not visible and cost money to treat. As with human doctors, it's also wise to get a second opinion on these things.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
I think unfortunately most Americans are asied on bits and lumps of dried meat and canned foods. I'm American and our culture here is very much to toss in our mouths anything tasty. There is absolutely zero awareness that our bodies are both physically and chemically comprised of the nutrients we ingest. I try to inform others about this and am often looked upon as a health nut for just encouraging ingestion of real food. Nothing extreme, just actual food. We are raised on foods that solely come from packages, whether plastic or metal so the idea of real food perplexes many.
Dustin - A different story...
...that most pets only live around dozen years, so the vast majority of pet owners are going to see them die regardless of how well they're being taken care of.
True, but it's a cost/benefit calculation, with some very subjective factors.
A few years back, I had a dachshund that was roughly 14-ish years old (the rescue we got her from had to guess at her age when we got her at ~2yrs old). She had a habit of chasing squirrels at all costs - the last one had her hit a tree wrong and break her back. The choice was either a $6,000 surgery that would have still left her paralyzed and in need of care, or a $100 lethal injection and cremation. I wrote the check for $100, but only after having to talk the missus out of the more expensive option. Why? Well, my wife was already an emotional wreck over the ordeal, and putting a .38 slug through the dog's head, while perfectly humane IMO, would have definitely made for an ugly turn in my marriage.
To the missus, the benefit still outweighed the cost. To me, it was the opposite: the dog had lived a long and happy life, she was an awesome companion, but putting it out of its misery was the best course of action IMHO.
That was five years ago or so... now we have two more, and they're a positive joy to have around.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, pets are pets. They share no genetic lineage or source with you. Pets completely lack senescence.
I figure that unless there is at least some emotion disturbance, there is a clear and sharp distinction between Fido and Grandma, and how you would treat each of them at the end of their lives.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
They share no genetic lineage or source with you.
So people who are adopted don't take care of grandma? Or wait, do they?
Pets completely lack senescence.
False. A complete absurdity.
Honestly I hadn't thought that far ahead, but I know you can go online and find information.
Today you can.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
hmm, I'll have to ask about this if the surgery on my unicorn goes well. :) She has a horn growing out of the side of her back leg the vet would really like to remove. She doesn't have a problem with it but the vet would like to remove it before it develops an absyss or something. Vet hasn't seen one so big or high up before...there really is an inch and a half long horn on her side. :(
My cat would probably like me to stop calling her a unicorn also
She is getting old (16 minimum) and you can see she is slower getting up and down now
The article seems to be loosely based around a single anecdote? Is there something I missed?
and also shorter intestines than humans: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/qu...
So, dogs can eat a lot of old stuff that would make humans very sick.
BTW, Dr. Pitcairn is a much better than average source of nutritional advice from a vet:
http://www.amazon.com/Pitcairn...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Sorry, no. Granny will have to almost certainly have to suffer through several pointless, painful, and expensive tests and treatments before we allow her to die. Generally, our end-of-life care is better for animals because there's no government or insurance company willing to keep a dead dog's heart beating while the owner persists in denial. Granny probably knows when she's dying (unless it's due to dementia), but will tolerate quite a bit if it makes her family feel better. So we'll do a few rounds of horrible, useless chemo, or perhaps put a feeding tube in her to prolong her misery when she can't think well enough to eat.
My wife is a veterinarian and I cringe when I see stories like this. Some sensationalist with no medical knowledge skims a few studies or reports and makes a sensationalist article that has no basis in science or fact.
Tramadol is a good drug that helps a lot of animals with chronic pain. Cosequin helped my dog with hip dysplasia to be more comfortable for his last few years. Like many human drugs, efficacy varies by the patient, but the reality is that veterinarians as a whole are great people who truly love animals and would not prescribe things that did not work.
- Vincit qui patitur.
And this is how I plan to survive the zombie apocalypse: advertise loud and proud that I'm a board-certified pediatrician and can tell you when to use all these cool drugs you looted.
My other sig is funny.
This was just after it came out around 1997. My wife and I had gotten a dog from a shelter about two years earlier, who turned out to be likely in retrospect much older than we had thought. Still, she was our "baby", as we did not have any kids then. And she was truly a wonderful dog, gentle as a lamb, but with a fearsome bark, looking a bit like a wolf. She would follow us everywhere and would spend all day laying by my feet as I programmed. She had started limping a bit from arthritis. I gave her baby aspirin which seemed to help. Our vet suggested this new "wonder drug" just out called Rimadyl. Our vet never to my recollection suggested any other options like glucosomine. I did not want to try Rymadil because the baby aspirin was working well and in general I think most drugs are best avoided, but my wife accused me of being mean to the dog, and I foolishly gave in and we bought the medicine from the vet (a conflict of interest?). We put our dog on half the prescribed dose.
Well, for a few weeks it was indeed wonderful. Our dog was prancing like a puppy at first. It was just amazing. Then a couple months later, she just collapsed in the middle of the day. We brought her to the vet. The vet did not know what it was. It was the early days of the web and we turned there for help. There were a bunch of report of Rimadyl causing just this sort of thing. A post my wife made from around then in our desperation (we got some private replies too):
https://groups.google.com/foru...
I can't prove Rimadyl killed our dog, but it was very coincidental. We took her off Rymadyl, and she lasted about a month after that, with me carrying a 70 lb dog outside several times a day to do her business in the yard, with her otherwise laying on the couch or a mat all day. We finally put her to sleep when she could not even keep her tongue in her mouth (probably we waited too long). The vet denied the connection to the end, saying instead that or dog must have had liver cancer and the Rymadyl was somehow helping her with the pain, and encouraged us to put her back on it -- which we would not.
The important thing to be aware of is that Rimadyl/Carprofen is at best a pain killer. It does nothing to improve underlying health, and likely it can cause disease in some dogs. You roll the dice with your dogs life when you try it, as this other similar example suggests:
http://www.stevedalepetworld.c...
"For both dogs, the answer seemed like a no-brainer - Rimadyl (generically called carprofen), the drug is particularly suited to treat osteoarthritis. Within days, Bernie was his old self, bounding up and down stairs - at least as much as any corgi can bound - and again he loved to be petted. Today, he's still on the twice daily pill that his owners say brought Bernie back to life. George's results were less dramatic, but Townsend noted at least some improvement, so she continued to use Rimadyl for about a month. Then, one morning George suddenly got very sick. He could barely move, he couldn't keep food down. George's condition worsened and within days he was being cared for by vets around the clock; he was no longer able to stand and could barely keep his head up. Townsend fails in her attempt to hold back tears as she recalls, "I looked into his eyes and George told me 'enough.' We ended his suffering on October 13, 1997.""
See also:
http://www.srdogs.com/Pages/ri...
For some health advice on pet nutrition to fix underlying problems, try Dr. Pitcairn:
http://www.amazon.com/Pitcairn...
Part of that book on arthritis:
http://books.google.com/books?...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Smart brains taste better. so advertise away! nt
I was about to say the same thing. Expecting the internet to remain readily accessible while you hide in your bunker from the collapse of civilization seems... optimistic at best. I have no doubt many dedicated people will go to great lengths to try to keep the main arteries functioning and the most important data archives online, but that doesn't do you much good unless your bunker is in the basement of a major university or other internet nexus. I don't expect the phone/cable/cellular technicians responsible for bringing access to individuals will have anywhere near the same level of visionary dedication.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I just put my 16 year old dog to sleep about two weeks ago because of seizures. The first time she had a seizure I took her to the emergency vet ($200 and no real answers), followed up by a trip to our regular vet the next day to get blood drawn for labwork. The labs all came back normal, which strongly suggested a mass in her brain was the cause. Our vet had suggested getting a $1500 MRI scan, but after three seizures followed by long periods of restlessness and the fact that her personality had completely changed over the past year, we decided that it was simply time to say goodbye. I was with her at the end, and it was by far the most difficult experience in my life so far.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
you can blame this sorry state of affairs on a lack of financial incentives for drug companies to run clinical trials on animals unless the results can also increase breast size, lengthen erection times, or grow hair for humans.
FTFY
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
How do you verify whether they are still effective? Shelf-life is a serious concern, and antibiotics are stored under specific conditions to maximize their effective lives. Dosing with an expired drug can have all sorts of unpleasant effects because the resulting chemicals may be worse than just nonfunctional.
In general it’s true that animal antibiotics are largely the same as those intended for human delivery, and many a veterinarian uses their office supplies on themselves. But even animal antibiotics are stored under specific conditions and are disposed of when they expire. That’s not just for commercial gain, it’s to ensure that the drugs do what they’re supposed to and not something unpredictable instead.
Bullshit. Expiration dates are randomly created in order to push products through. There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.
And there is one class of antibiotic that is known to breakdown into something (relatively) toxic - that's the tetracyclines. Don't stockpile those. The rest of the drugs just get a little less potent. The bigger issue for most people in Scenario Zombie is 1) When to partake of your precious antibiotic store 2) which antibiotic 3) how much and how long. The Merk Manual is a good start, but best to friend your neighborhood doctor (or ICU nurse).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I really wish we could have put my dad down a couple of weeks before he died. Riddled with cancer, those last couple of weeks were not pleasant for him. Why is it that we treat our pets better then our old people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Tramadol to kill pain? It's probably just getting dogs high."
uhhh no it's not...i've taken Tramadol and it doesn't get you high at all. in fact alot Doctors like to prescribe it as a substitute for narcotic pain meds that actually *do* work and *do* give one a nice pleasant buzz.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
There was an FDA panel that recently recommended or closely recommended removing all acetaminophen from opiate medications because of the serious risk of liver toxicity from acetaminophen.
Doctors who under-prescribe opiate-APAP medications contribute to it because people who don't get enough relief pile on maximum doses of acetaminophen per that bottle without understanding the total amount they're getting when they include the acetaminophen-containing opiates they also take.
Doctors who prescribe adequate quantities (pill count) of opiate-APAP meds run into trouble when they under-prescribe the opiate content and patients take too many total pills to get relief without paying attention to acetaminophen content.
They'd be better off prescribing 7.5-325 vs. 5-325. Superior pain relief with far less risk of liver toxicity.
I recently had a severe hand injury that involved emergency surgery. Got sent home with 80 5-325 Percocets and had to do the math for my wife to make sure she didn't poison me with the acetaminophen. They could have given me a half dozen 30mg Oxycontin for the first few days and then a third of the Percocets @ 7.5-325 for follow on and had overall lower risk of drug diversion and addiction and liver toxicity. Whatever nominal anti-inflammatory value the acetaminophen has could have been replaced or supplemented with a methylprednisolone course.
The people who do like this risk are of course the drugs police who believe it helps stop diversion and illegal drug use because it lowers the street value of these meds because serious street users can't concentrate them into large doses for injection, which of course the most desperate don't care about and end up with liver problems on the taxpayer's dime.
Wow. I actually lost count of the number of ways you demonstrated being a complete fuckwit in that post.
Bullshit. Expiration dates are randomly created in order to push products through. There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.
The military has to stockpile medication for long periods of time, so they have an incentive to find out what the real shelf life is. Our military (deliberately obscuring who "our" is since I don't know if this was made public and couldn't be bothered checking) did long-term ageing tests on commonly-stockpiled stuff and found that medication stored for a decade was still 98% as effective as fresh stock. They're still waiting for the 20-year time period to come up to re-check it again.
Why are we applying our ridiculous, counter-productive calvinistic morality to pet comfort and pain relief?
It's bad enough that the drugs police, drug policy and our obsession with the idea that someone, somewhere may be enjoying themselves interferes with our ability to ameliorate pain in humans. But dogs? Even if the effect is principally anxiolytic, why would we worry whether a dog is high if its suffering is decreased?
There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.
Actually there's quite a lot.Talk to a formulation chemist. Every drug formulation that is legal to sell has been left in storage at various temperatures and tested over time. Companies that have faked doing this have been banned from importing drugs to the US. Most drugs do just lose potency over time, but manufacturers have the goad of liability lawsuits when setting expiration dates. In general if you want something to last as long as possible: seal it tightly, put it in the dark at a constant temperature of -20 C. No defrosting.
I used to take codeine with APAP until I complained of stomach pain to my physician. I don't recall how much APAP was in those pills, I think it was 500 or 600mg. The physician first offered some sort of antacid which bothered me, I was already taking something with side effects so I was reluctant to just take more drugs. I asked if I could instead get the codeine without the APAP, she reluctantly agreed.
With the new formulations of the opiate/APAP mixtures I recently switched to hydrocodone/APAP at 7.5/325. I usually cut them in half to reduce the amount of APAP I take at a time. I agreed to the switch to the hydrocodone/APAP because the process for getting the prescription is easier (less paperwork than with an opiate alone), the pills are larger (makes them easier to cut), and the APAP dose was small enough that I thought it'd be easy enough to tolerate. I haven't been taking it for too long just yet, seems to be working for me so far.
This is all a sham to me. The real druggies already figured out how to separate the APAP from the opiate. When surfing the web to find out what the clinic was giving me I found all kinds of ways on how to distill the good stuff from the bad stuff. I never tried it myself, found no need to. I don't take the stuff to get high, I take it for pain.
In researching my prescriptions I saw all kinds of ways people found out on how to get high. I also saw that our federal prisons are full of people locked up for drug crimes. It's got so bad that the US DOJ is thinking of ways to reduce sentences for these people. At some point the government is going to have to reconsider what we consider punishable drug offenses. I saw that an estimated 30 million people will admit to using a controlled substance, we can't lock them all up.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I think it's safe to say that if society is in a state of collapse and normal medical care doesn't exist anymore, the risk that a particular antibiotic will be sub-optimal due to age or storage conditions lies rather low on the hierarchy of concerns. Especially if it IS stored under optimal conditions from the moment of purchase.
One semi-drug that IS insanely unstable is methylcobalamin (which is actually vitamin B-12, in a form that can cross the blood-brain barrier and is a wonder drug for cats with diabetic neuropathy). The problem is, there's no shelf-stable form of it, so it has to be FedEx'ed in an ice chest every 2-3 months, stored in an opaque container in the refrigerator, and loaded into the syringe in the dimmest light possible to keep it from losing potency. You almost have to treat it like film in a darkroom. But god, that stuff was magic for my kitty and worth every penny. In two weeks, he went from being barely able to walk without twitching and resting with his nose on the floor to climbing stairs, climbing onto and off of the bed, and holding his head up.
There ARE oral sublingal forms of methylcobalamin, but every USP human formulation contains xylitol, which is toxic to cats. The only brand (as of last year) that's xylitol-free and explicitly made for cats is Zobaline (the feline-safe version of Xobaline). It's debatable how much benefit the cat will actually get from sublingal methylcobalamin compared to the injected form, but if you DO decide to try it, make SURE it's xylitol-free.
I'd wager that tramadol actually is working. Having been on it to recover from some *savagely* painful throat surgery a few years back, the stuff worked amazingly well. Possibly better than the morphine I was being weened off.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The teeth cleaning bit is NOT a scam.
The bacteria species that commonly reside in a canine mouth eventually migrate into the bloodstream via the gum line and LOVE to set up camp in the valves of the heart. The valves will then start malfunctioning.
So not cleaning your dog's teeth is a good way to shortening your dog's life from heart disease.
When I was in med school (I am a state certified veterinary technician), when we had a surgery lab, if the dog's teeth were NOT cleaned after surgery while the dog was recovering from anesthesia, you failed the lab.
Most people will not pay to have their dog anesthetized just for a teeth cleaning, so ANY surgery that is done, teeth cleaning is also done(in my experience at, no charge) because it is so important.
Three things you should plan on with a dog:
1.) Get them vaccinated properly.
2.) Heartworm prevention (the heartworm larvae are transmitted via mosquito bites, migrate to the bloodstream by TUNNELING through precious Fido's body, the camp out in the heart chambers to mature)
3.) Regular teeth cleaning (my personal recommendation is once a year, or at least once every two years)
Those three plus the usual common sense stuff like: good food, plenty of fresh water, comfortable lodging, and loving companionship all are an excellent ROI for you and your four legged pal.
The rest of the stuff you described sounds like quackery though, glad you found a good vet.
BTW, don't take my word for it, find someone you trust that's a vet or vet tech, and ask them about the teeth cleaning, or educate yourself. It is not hidden or secret knowledge.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Now that you mention it, as far as PETA is concerned, I would announce I was experimenting on animals WHOLESALE scale....just to lure them into the killing zone of the ambush...claymores and willy pete FTW!
I wouldn't actually do any experiments on animals, but I would not mind treating PETA with a dose of their own medicine. I have no animosity towards other animal rights groups that I have heard of.
BTW, shampooing dogs? Meh....I shampoo mountain lions just for entertainment! ;-)
A bit of hyperbole from us both, but in your case not by much, I'll admit.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I live in the upper midwest and I rescued a deep south catahoula. When the temp drops and the air dries out I have to clean his ears often since they dry out and develop some yuck in them. If I don't clean out the ears with q-tips or a wet rag, he'll start scratching them with his hind leg and cause himself some pain.
If I notice that he yelps when scratching, and kick myself for missing a cleaning, I clean up the ear with a warm wet rag, then swipe it with some benedryl gel, then feed him a "doggie aspirin" that my parents gave me that they had for their dog he's fine.
So a month or two ago, Beaker yelped, , so I cleaned him up, and did the bendryl bit, and went for the aspirin, but couldn't find it. So I drove to the open vet (it was a sunday) that I stopped going to over two years ago since they decided that all dogs they treated !!!HAD TO HAVE A YEARLY FECAL EXAM!! or else they wouldn't care for the dog.
I asked them why they had to have !!!A MANDATORY FECAL EXAM!!! once a year when if the dog had one, and the did some coprophagia a bit later, the MANDATORY FECAL EXAM was just a useless waste of money. They refused to answer.
So, since they were the only ones in the area that were open, I asked them for doggie aspirin. The lead Nurse looked at me like I was an idiot. I explained all I needed was an analgesic to help my dog from suffering for a day or so and I was informed that I had to pay 120 for the vet to look at the dog before I could get any help.
I tried to explain that i knew exactly what his problem was, and just wanted to ease some irritation for a day or two, but I was stonewalled.
Turns out that my doting parents with the "Doggie Aspirin" were referring to GNC's "Dog Aspirin" which is just acetylsalicylic acid. Humans can't have that any more, but it's still the pill of choice for horses, cows, pigs, and yes, dogs. Like anything, it's to be used sparingly with feeding, and a dose of that once in a great while helps if your animal is in pain.
Beaker did just fine on one tablet. Needless to say, the money mill that refuses to treat animals unless they get their tithe - does not get any cash from me. It pisses me off to no end that you can't walk into a vet and explain the problem and just get some simple pain medication for an animal without tithing the high priest.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Why are we applying our ridiculous, counter-productive calvinistic morality to pet comfort and pain relief?
Because the dog might enjoy the high, and not go to heaven? (sarcasm)
IIRC, there is no mention of animals going to heaven, but I could be wrong about that.
The "You're either with us, or you're the enemy" mentality predominately displayed strikes me as completely opposite of what Christianity is about.
It seems to be a 'with us, or against us' binary choice.
I honestly don't see much difference in Christianity and Islam. Both seem to follow the same rhetoric, just using different terms.
Blame the 'moral majority' is the answer to you question. They are trying to drag us all into their version of what I call hell.
Disclaimer:
There are some exceptions I've experienced to my delight, but they are overwhelmed by the above stated behavior of the majority I have encountered.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
(but seriously, how do you know whats wrong with your dog if you don't take him to the vet first?)
Because it's a recurring issue? Because you've seen it before on different dogs?
I don't read AC A human right
I have a hard time believing that people are spending hundreds of dollars on average in vet bills on their pets. My beloved but very evil black cat goes to the vet once a year to get her shots and a quick physical. $100 max. She's an indoor cat, very healthy, eats dry food mostly but gets a bit of Greek yogurt from me sometimes, and has never seen let alone eaten a mouse. Spending these big bucks on a healthy pet is nonsense.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
What's worse is we push profitable drugs. I put myself on phenotropil (a high dose--people recognize the stimulant effect at 100mg, but reading ADHD
The "push" for any ADHD drugs comes from the medical community's belief that they may provide the opportunity for ADHD patients to lead a better life. The reality though, is that it's easier to push pills than accept the fact that someone with ADHD will learn differently, socialize differently and may not have the same range of employment opportunities as the majority of people in the first world. Of course, no one wants to hear something along the lines of "You're not cut out for college and should just take up a trade.", so the pills start a'popping.
Interestingly, some long term studies have shown that ADHD meds aren't exactly Felix Felicis. It seems your likelihood of being successful with ADHD is roughly the same, regardless of whether or not you take medication. Link
You might want to give some thought to what's wrong with a society that expects you to overclock your brain to keep up with it. Not everyone lives this way.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I feel that pain. Like losing family.
I know what was worse for me was the feeling I somehow betrayed her.
I've heard it said that when our pets are ready they let us know, I know I had started to get the feeling it was her time months prior to the seizure. Still a hard thing to do, but it's much better than watching them suffer in pain.
Here we are 4 years later, I've thought about getting another dog, but there will never be a replacement for Knuckle-dog. (cross between a Knucklehead and a dog), that's what I called her. Sharp Pei Manchester Terrier mix.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Pets may lack senescence but you can not argue they don't feel emotion at least dogs.
I've seen dogs mope, be depressed when another dog dies, they get uneasy and panicky, they can be loving and gentle, they can be rambunctious.
I think it's these traits that have endeared dogs to us. They have four legs but are similar to that respect to us.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Everything can be abused. People will eat too much, run too much, sleep too much, drink too much water. I've read about people that get addicted to eating the stuffing inside couch cushions. People will take large amounts of antihistamines to get high. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
Every drug is dangerous. Have you read the warnings on the stuff you buy from the pharmacy? They all have some sort of overdose risk, risk of a certain population being sensitive to it, and side effects that can be dangerous. People die from Tylenol, the most used pain killer in the world. Just like certain people are sensitive to codeine there are certain people that are sensitive to Tylenol.
Everything is a precursor to something. Sugar is a precursor to alcohol. Gasoline is a precursor to desomorphine. Matches are a precursor to desomorphine and methamphetamine. Are we going to make matches and gasoline available only by prescription now? It might cut down on arson but I doubt it will have an effect on drug abuse. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
The same reason to keep codeine from being over the counter are the same for Tylenol, alcohol, and a huge number of other already readily available medicines and materials. Everything can be abused. Everything is dangerous, Everything is a precursor to something else that is even more dangerous.
Thanks to the ever increasing controls on whatever might get us high we can't get a decent cold medicine without a prescription. It had no effect on the number of people abusing drugs, they just find more creative ways to slowly kill themselves.
I remember when my mom could no longer just buy syringes off the shelf for my diabetic sister. It was about the same time that AIDS was making the news for spreading so quickly. I have a suspicion that this is more than coincidence.
Thanks to the DEA we have more people dead than high. I don't see that as an improvement.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Notice how completely different the last weeks of cancer are from, "I had my dog put to sleep when she had a seizure, probably treatable, but she also had cancer and was 14 and had lost hear hearing about a month prior to the seizure."
Imagine if your dad had a treatable seizure, early stage cancer, and was losing his hearing. He might still have years of life left. Certainly, most people would find it really awful to make that decision for him.
The poster never did say what stage the cancer was at and I assumed a later stage. He also said his dog was 14 which depending on the breed could have been awfully close to end of life so it's hard to judge exactly what he meant and you seem to have interpreted it more optimistically then I did.
But yes, the idea of putting my dad down was unthinkable in the earlier stages of cancer even though it was almost guaranteed fatal. (Had a friend who was given 6 months and he survived for over 10 years once he quit medical help so you never know)
The best part of the whole thing was that he wanted to die at home and my mom did everything possible to make that happen. Very little hospital time as that is what he really didn't want.
Also learned how fast a doctor could make a house call when it came to filling out a death certificate and how the funeral industry tries to take advantage of grieving family. Bastards claiming that you had to spend thousands for a cremation when all that was needed was a cardboard box rather then a fancy casket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It seems awfully convenient that *every* drug expires after exactly a year.
They share no genetic lineage or source with you.
So people who are adopted don't take care of grandma? Or wait, do they?
The adopted kid and Grandma do have distinct human DNA, or do you think differently? ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You and the dog do have distinct mammal DNA, in fact, you share most of your DNA. Or do you think differently? ;)
Bunkers aren't for using, they're like a pacifier for paranoid types. They don't have to be logical or work, they've never been needed before so they might as well be full of action figures and styrofoam peanuts.
Before somebody pipes up with their "this time the world's really gonna end part 32767" if the shit really hits the fan, your bunker ain't gonna help you.
Man, you really need that seminar!