Thanks for the update, Lee.

Yay! Thanks for the update. Bored is not good, but thatsagoodmama listening to doctors orders. I think if I ever go to the hospital again I will take my laptop before my purse or toothbrush.

Gessh - am offline for a bit and I come back to almost 300 posts. Though I'm glad I come back to find that the weenie is staying put - as she should. And that Hec and JZ are coping well. Hang in there all. I'm not home yet, but once there if I can do anything, please holler.

We are in Ashland and the matinee's are sold out. We are hunting for scalpers.

Thanks for the update, Lee. I feel so bad for her being stuck there, but I'm also so grateful they're being conservative with her.

hang in there hollowennie. DH sent me an email ( to my phone) about the time everything started so I have been sending the stay put ma since then.

In strange news - i seem to have lost a towel... how that happened I don't know.

Sometimes, the dryer socks need a new leader, so they abscond with a towel.

i seem to have lost a towel... how that happened I don't know.

No matter, you are still a hoopy frood, beth.

If I may be seemingly random here, I gotta mention this book chapter that I'm editing right now. It's for a pharmaco-epidemiology textbook; the chapter I'm editing is on the history of how pharmacoepidemiololgy developed (mostly in the US).

So basically it's a chapter full of stories like "New Drug was introduced to fight Icky Disease; soon, an outbreak of spontaneous combustion was noticed among the population. Clinicians connected the spontaneous combustion with patients who took New Drug. Dude."

And one of the stories was on thalidomide. I vaguely knew that it caused birth defects, so it was pulled from the market back in the 1970s -- what I *didn't* know (until I edited this chapter) is that, while the FDA was considering approving the drug, the manufacturer went ahead and distributed samples of thalidomide to over 1,000 doctors, because they (the manufacturer) were expecting the FDA to approve thalidomide.

You know what's coming. The 1,000 doctors who received the thalidomide samples gave them out, like you do with samples. Over 20,000 patients received the samples -- and there were never any records kept of who received them.

!!!

I didn't realize that's how it all went down. Damn skippy, that's really fucking irresponsible.

And so now, class, we have stricter legislation about the drug approval process and regulations that make sure that the only drugs that are provided as samples are drugs that are already approved by the FDA.

Consider this your history lesson for the day.

(Thanks, Professor Peabody!)

(Not interesting enough to warrant a double post, though....)

Good grief, even the doctors didn't keep notes? I mean, I"d expect the company to know which doctors they gave it to, and the doctors to be able to say "hmm, let's see...here's a note in Mrs. Smith's chart, gave some to her because she was complaining of nausea..."

Records, people! It's all about keeping records!