2011 February

Smile and you’ll live longer.

I picked up some Alavert–a non-drowsy OTC allergy medicine. I glanced at the side effects and didn’t see any notes about “rare” cases of cancer or heart attack. So I took a dose. And you know what? It worked. My allergy symptoms disappeared. But by the next day I was wishing I’d just suffered through them.

Apparently many nurses feel that flower handling interferes with their work. And someone at Southend University Hospital in Essex, UK, agrees. The administration there has banned all flower arrangements, claiming the flowers posed a safety risk.

The medical world is panicked about the rise of superbugs like MRSA, and partly because, as one LSE researcher puts it, there are only a handful of new antibiotics in the drug development pipeline.

My friend Chris sent me a shocking news item about a pregnant woman who received another customer’s prescription–a cancer drug with a known side effect of potential pregnancy termination. She had the same last name and a similar first name as the person who should have received the prescription.