Thank you very much for the helpful comments, Poohel. I am working on the PDFs right now because I can see an immediate use for them. The issues are just about how to arrange the questions and the information. There is no doubt in my mind as to the need for some standard approach to the form. I want to try to bring some consistency into lives that are often chaotic at the point where the forms will do the most good. Ultimately, if the forms could become a first port of call for people who are being considered for statin therapy, they may even prevent some people from being harmed.
The fundamental issue in that case may be one of pure legality. It is difficult, if not impossible, to usurp the role of the medical practitioner anywhere in the developed world. Anything that smacks of medical advice, that is delivered by a non-medic, is likely to cause a heap of truble for the miscreant who believes that medics need educating. I have no wish to appear to the medical profession as if I am trying to do their job. In the UK, if any person acts like a medic, they are judged in court by the standards that a normal medic would be subject to. I have no wish to go there, hence my disclaimer on the web-site. Normally, this built-in safeguard against any fool setting up and selling snake-oil, is a useful barrier that protects people.
The system was not designed to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from selling snake oil to an uncritical medical profession. In this case, it may be possible, under European laws, to relieve the medic from his duties of providing healthcare to the patients... on the grounds that he is harming rather than helping the patients, but it would be a long hard fight and the legal costs involved would be astronomical in getting the case to Europe. The law is often an ass and no more so than when a doctor's right to be wrong is being messed with. For years there has been a groundswell of opinion in France and other European countries that the triple vaccine is linked to autism. The vaccine is administered as protection for measles, mumps and rubella. One mother in the UK had fought against it. She had wanted to obtain single vaccines for her child. The health authority took the case to court and won.
The mother was ordered by the high court to let the health authority administer the triple vaccine to her child. This heavy-handed state interference was an outrage and not what I would have expected from a democracy. I recently read of research that positively linked autism and many vaccines. It seesm that the mercury-like substance (yes, mercury!) that is used as a presevative, is the responsible agent.
I think we can take it as a given that the drug manufacturers are not interested in public health. The only motivation they have is to find the next big thing and make a killing (sadly, all to real a possibility) in the name of business. The bribes to the medic are legion and if they do not look like money is changing hands, the nice dinners, the educatiuonal conferences, the kit of sugeon's tools are all designed to grease the wheels... when the wheels have rather too much grease already. The limpet-like attachment of the pharmaceutical companies is ultimately what is damaging people. Add to that the very busy medical practice that is almost a guarantee that the medic wont be up to date and the recipe for disaster is almost complete. Throw in the onerous regulations, government initiatives, the lack of real supervision of clinical trials and the suppresion of findings that would prevent publication, publication status and the need for it to advance a career in medicine and mix well.
You may have spotted that the ingredient that is missing from this little cake is YOU, the patient. The cake tastes perfectly good without you and patients are a nuisance that have to be dealt with, to keep the whole shaky system in place. It is little wonder that medical practice has become so very corrupt. Money and status cloud the judgement of people. I once worked in a place where a newly qualified junior medic drove around in one of several Porsche cars he happened to own. He came from a family that had independent wealth.
As it happened, he was a very nice person and was genuinely interested in doing a good job. Within a few weeks of his arrival, the supervising clinician (senior consultant) had put the guy on his hit list. He ensured that the fellow received an indifferent reference after his 6 month assignment was over (making it more difficult to obtain and complete the required hours and specialties required for training posts). It seems that the consultant could not live with the fact that his young charge was driving not just a better class of auto than he personally owned but it really got to him that the young medic owned 3 of them!
Kind regards,
xrn