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Monday, October 8, 2012

Sick With Middle Ear Infection

Hence the relative quiet here.

UPDATE: Miracles of Augmentin.  I am still not completely well, and I'm not sure if I will be well enough to go into work Tuesday or not.  But it is at least a possibility this evening that I will be well enough to go to work tomorrow.  Imagine a world without antibiotics, or at least without working antibiotics.  This is one of the minor arguments against doctrine libertariianism, which asserts that restrictions on drugs like antibiotics so that you can't just buy them without a prescription are unnecessary limits on liberty.  This is exactly the sort of problem of individual benefit vs. collective injury were the most doctrinaire views do not work as well as a little bit of restriction--sort of like prohibiting handgun vending machines.

5 comments:

  1. Back in the day when I associated with Rick Henderson, Virginia Postrel and Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine, I don't recall ever discussing the free availability of antibiotics or handgun vending machines as subjects of libertarian doctrine.
    I wonder how long it would take for unfettered antibiotic use to produce totally ineffective antibiotics as all strains became resistant because it is the natural response of people trying to save a buck to not use all the antibiotic and save a couple of pills for something else.
    I think it would only take a couple-three years and the resistant antibiotics would produce a situation similar to the AIDS epidemic in the early 80's.

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  2. Perhaps "cdesign proponentsists" should stick with Amoxicillin or PCN.
    Due to misuse,antibiotic drugs are getting iffy. I hope Scientists can keep new and better drugs in the pipeline.
    Science, not superstition is the only way mankind will survive.
    Any way, hope you get well soon

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  3. In the days when I was a small child, before penicillin, pediatricians used to do tympanotomies on kids at home. That means sticking a curved blade (#12 blade) into the ear drum of a screaming kid. Now, if kids have recurrent middle ear infections, they get tiny little tubes put in the ear drums under anesthesia. They eventually fall out but middle ear infections are a lot less frequent in adults.

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  4. The real reason I oppose handgun vending machines is all the times that I bought a candy bar, but it hung up on the spiral dispenser.

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  5. Michael: had that done to me - twice - each ear. I was supposed to get them new-fangled tubes in my ears as soon as a doctor who could perform the procedure got within 500 miles of my home. I outgrew the infections before that happened.

    After the childhood I had, the once every couple years I still get inner ear infections I drop to my knees and sing the praises of whoever it was that invented Suprax.

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