Antibiotics for sinus infections are an old and established treatment approved by medical science. However recent reports are building doubt over the functioning of these antibiotics. Further the rise of alternative medicine and alternative treatment methods have displaced the applicability and popularity of antibiotics for sinus infections.

So before taking antibiotics for sinus infections, let’s take a look at its pros and cons for deciding right.

Pros:

#1 Antibiotics for sinus infections work as anti bacterial and thus stops the spread of sinus bacteria, or kill the bacteria or enhance the body immune system to fight against the diseases. With this anti-bacterial feature, application of antibiotics to treat sinus infection has become the most common method.

# 2 There are mainly two types of antibiotics for sinus infections – narrow spectrum and broad spectrum. Narrow spectrum antibiotics work against few limited bacteria, while broad spectrum antibiotics work against a wide range of bacteria. So there is always an option to apply the stronger broad spectrum antibiotics for sinus infections if at first the narrow spectrum ones fail.

#3 Also there are four distinct classes of antibiotics for sinus infections – (i) Penicillins, (ii) Macrolides, (iii) Cephalosporins and (iv) Fluoroquinolones. Each of these antibiotics works differently into human body to stop the spread of bacteria.

For example, penicillin interferes into the cell wall formation of bacteria to stop its spread. Eventually these antibiotics for sinus infections kill the bacteria as they find no place to spread without cells. Cephalosporins work quite the same way but with lower side effect chances.

Macrolides are other antibiotics for sinus infections that work by stopping the bacteria to create new proteins, while fluoroquinolones work by disrupting the DNA replication process of the bacteria. Thus each group of antibiotics functions differently. So you may choose one among these that best suits you. Even there are options to change from one to other type of antibiotics for sinus infections, if one does not work.

#4 Each of the type of antibiotics for sinus infections are manufactured by different companies. So also there is a chance to choose from wide options of antibiotics even under the same class. The choice should be in best interest to the patient. So it is always safe to follow a doctor’s prescription while taking antibiotics for sinus infections.

Along with all these positive applications, there are also few negative effects of antibiotics for sinus infections.

Cons:

#1 A recent study conducted by the University of Southampton of England on the effectiveness of antibiotics for sinus infections has proved that though antibiotics work at some extent to fight against the bacteria, but not definitely in a great extent. A comparison between two patients - one who has taken antibiotics for sinus infections and one who has not – proved that both are in same condition after three weeks.

#2 In many cases it has been seen that antibiotics for sinus infections have side effects upon the patients. It can be an allergic reaction or any other form of illness. This is definitely a big negative point of the application of antibiotics for sinus infections.

#3 If the patient is suffering from another disease along with sinus, the application of antibiotics for sinus infections should be planned with well precaution. Otherwise it may affect and rise complications on liver, kidney, bone marrow or heart.

#4 Each person has different reaction to antibiotics for sinus infections. So figuring out the best suited one is rather a difficult job, especially with so many options available. So there is always a risk for wrong application of antibiotics leading to minor or even severe negative effects.

For these reasons it is always best to consult a doctor before taking any antibiotics for sinus infections.

Many home remedies for acne that have been passed down through the generations simply don’t work. How many times have you heard that teenagers have more acne because they probably eat more pizza or cheeseburgers? Stop eating chocolate and your face will clear up. Stop eating greasy food. People keep repeating these “cures” and other home remedies for acne, even though medical science has proven they’re not based in fact.

Eating pizza, chocolate or cheeseburgers will only affect your skin if you’re sensitive to something in the food. No doubt there are some people who will break out after eating pizza. That doesn’t mean that greasy pizza causes acne in everyone, just those people. So blanket cures like that aren’t effective, but they keep getting passed along because they sound like they make sense.

Most home remedies for acne get passed along for the same reason. It sounds good to think that if you do this or use that it’ll clear up your skin. But unfortunately for many people those great sounding remedies just don’t work.

Acne isn’t just annoying or troubling to your appearance. When your face is broken out it can do serious damage to your self-esteem and self-confidence. It’s more than just sighing with irritation as you look in the mirror and see a pimple. It can become a serious problem emotionally, and if there’s teasing about it as is often the case with kids, it can do long-term damage. It can cause long-term damage in the form of skin scarring, too.

There are some good “don’ts” that have gotten passed down through the years, though, even if most of the cures don’t work.
Don’t pick or squeeze your pimples. This is an almost certain way to end up with a scar. And if you’re worried about your current appearance, picking and squeezing will only redden and irritate the area, making it even more noticeable.

Don’t squeeze your skin to remove blackheads. You might think it’ll be great to remove that blackhead that you see every time you look in the mirror. But squeezing it out actually makes it easier for another blackhead to form later. When you squeeze, it might pop out of your skin but you’re putting pressure in the other direction also, making the pore deeper. This lets oil and dirt get a little deeper into your skin, and makes another blackhead more likely, and more difficult to remove. There are home remedies for acne that tell you to steam your face and then squeeze, but if you have issues with blackheads you might want to talk to a dermatologist about the best methods of removal.

Instead, do wash your face gently but thoroughly with a textured cleanser or a textured cloth and your ordinary soap. Don’t scrub hard and irritate your skin, however. Some home remedies recommend light scrub-textured pads of or even mixing a little salt into your cleanser to remove built up dead skin cells and oil so blackheads can be gently washed away.

Introduction

Phase 1 trials are the gatekeeper of clinical research as they are often the first time a potential new drug treatment enters humans ( First-in-Man or FIM trials). In the past FIM trials usually enrolled between 20 and 80 healthy volunteers carefully screened for the absence of disease and in part paid for trial participation. However, this is no longer the case. Due to recent concerns over drug safety - for example the Northwick Park experience with TGN1412 causing serious adverse reactions in healthy volunteers - and with the advance of medical science leading to the development of treatments with greater specificity Phase 1 research now increasingly considers patients.

The involvement of patients brings a new dimension to research; patients can conceivability benefit from clinical trials and in considering entering a clinical trial both the patients and the attending doctor must consider the alternatives of treatment. For this latter reason, perhaps, many clinical trials involving patients only consider the terminally ill as candidates for the clinical trials. The perception of benefit also means that patients in Phase 1 clinical trials are not paid. There are also ethical considerations when considering the enrolment of patients. In the conduct of medical care the free will or autonomy of the patient is seen as prime. Failure to respect the wish of patients in deciding their treatment is seen as morally wrong, and in most countries subject to legal sanction. Coupled with the demands of autonomy, and in support of it, are the requirements to fully inform patients about the potential effects of treatment and the alternatives available. Balancing these roles and responsibilities on the medical profession are the requirements that doctors should do no harm and also ensure the just use of resources. These ethical principles are enshrined in the ethical principles of deontology.

In this school of ethical thought it is the intentions not the outcomes that determine morally acceptable behaviour. For example if you have acted in a way that respected patient autonomy, and fully informed them of the outcomes of choices, and the patient has a bad outcome, you have still acted in a morally acceptable manner. In contrast scientific research has a different ethical perspective. It is the magnitude of the outcome that matters in Phase 1 research in order to select a dose for a subsequent trial or the determination of a toxic dose (Shamoo, 2008). Another factor in the conduct of research is that the results should be generalisable to a population of patients in order to extrapolate the meaning of results. In this instance the intention is not to select a treatment for an individual patient. The focus on the outcome of the clinical trial, and the intention to gather generalisable information gives the ethics of clinical research - and Phase 1 clinical research in particular - a so called consequentialist approach. Consequentialist ethics are concerned with the outcome of an action, rather than the intention of the action. Perhaps the best known consquentialist approach is utilitarianism - acting in a way that leads to the benefit for the greatest number. Phase 1 research is often said to be utilitarian in nature as it seeks generalisable knowledge.

The deontological and consequentialist and approaches often lead to different definitions of what is morally correct and acceptable. Consider this. You are standing at a bus stop when a man comes up to you and says he is being chased by an axe murderer. He says he is going to hide in the bushes till the person passes and does so. A few minutes later a man carrying an axe runs up and asks if you have seen anybody, what do you do?

As a consequentialist, you would say you saw nobody as the consequences of your action would lead to murder. As a deontologist in a strict sense you would say he is in the bushes as it is always morally wrong to deceive anybody!

The conflict between the deontological approaches of medical practice and the utilitarian perspective of clinical research in Phase 1 has lead some ethicists to conclude that it is not ethical to enrol patients in Phase 1 studies. The foundation of this claim is that as these are patients their care is paramount, and patients cannot exercise autonomy in their choice as:

1. Phase 1 clinical trials causes more harm to patients than potential benefits.

2. Patients cannot provide a valid informed consent, as they are not consenting for themselves but the collection of generalisable information.

3. Patients whom are terminally ill are vulnerable and so are liable to be manipulated.

Taking these factors in turn:

1. Phase 1 clinical trials causes more harm to patients than potential benefits.

This statement leads to another question - more harm that what or more benefit than what? Both the deontological and consequentialist approaches to medical ethics requires careful consideration of the risks and potential benefits of a medical intervention be it an operation or a clinical trial. In making an assessment of the intervention it is usual to have some form of comparator. In Phase 1 clinical trials three methods have been used. The first is to compare it to the alternative of palliative care - particularly in cancer, but also in inflammatory diseases. The second way of comparing risks and benefits is to look at the approved cancer treatments and draw parallels with the currently licensed medications available from the FDA or the European regulators. The third is to draw parallels with the use of off label medications in cancer (Joffe & Miller, 2006).

The use of a comparison to palliative care is not valid. The patients whom enter a Phase 1 clinical trial have already rejected it as an option at the moment they enrol in a clinical trial. In addition they have not rejected it in the future by enrolling in a trial.

A comparison to existing treatments is also misleading. Many Phase 1 patients have exhausted treatment options so marketed treatments are not a valid comparison. In addition drugs on the marketplace are often registered on the basis of different clinical outcomes than those being measured in clinical trials. Finally as 90% of drugs fail in the development process, the use of a benchmark to existing drugs sets a very high barrier.

Instead perhaps it is more valid to consider the risks and benefits of enrolling in a clinical trial against the use of off label medication by doctors and patients. In this case the treatment population is the same - both patients enrolling in clinical trials and those wanting to use off label treatments have rejected palliative care in the first instance. In addition of label use outcomes are often expressed in terms of anecdotal outcomes rather than registration endpoints. The problem is that this data is hard to obtain. However, what is known in the field of oncology is that approximately 4% of patients have meaningful clinical endpoint outcomes in Phase 1 trials (Joffe & Miller, 2006). This contrasts with the reported rate of toxicity death rates of 0.5% (Addoler, Taylor, & Wendler, 2008). These figures argue against the proposal that Phase 1 clinical trials in patients cause harm, as in the population that enrol in clinical trials have risks and benefits comparable to off label use of existing drugs (Joffe & Miller, 2006).

A second argument for the fact that patients suffer harms in Phase 1 clinical trials is that the usual outcomes cannot measure harm, and that the harms are best expressed in terms of Quality of Life (Qol). The harm it is argues is a decline in Qol due to clinic visits and procedures. There is little data available on this aspect, but what does exist suggests that many patients Qol is not changed by enrolment in a Phase 1 clinical trial as the majority of these trials are short in duration (Addoler, Taylor, & Wendler, 2008).

Based on these findings it is difficult to argue convincingly that the risks and benefit balance of Phase 1 clinical trials in patients are better or worse than the alternatives, and therefore to argue that their exclusion from Phase 1 trials can be justified on the trials cause harm.

2. Patients cannot provide a valid informed consent, as they are not consenting for themselves but the collection of generalisable information. The foundation to this objection is that patients do not appreciate or understand that they are participating in clinical research, and do not receive or perceive the information they are given and therefore informed consent is not valid.

Empirical studies cast doubt on this assertion (Addoler, Taylor, & Wendler, 2008). Interviews with patients enrolling into clinical trials have shown that the majority of subjects do understand the nature of the trial into which they are enrolling, albeit the primary motivation for enrolment was the hope of some benefit.

Of greater concern in the process of informed consent is the issue of voluntariness. In other words that the participation in a clinical trial stems from pressure from a physician whom is also acting as an investigator. There is some evidence that doctors over-estimate the chances of benefit from clinical trials mostly unintentionally (Addoler, Taylor, & Wendler, 2008). However, in interviews with patients, the role of physician advice in enrolling in trials appeared to be low. On the other hand the fact that patients cannot give informed consent to enter into clinical trials also seems weak.

3. Patients whom are terminally ill are vulnerable and so are liable to be manipulated.

This argument is closely related to the other two objections, and suggests that as patients are unable to assess risks and benefits and give full consent they are vulnerable to manipulation. This argument also does not stand up to empirical analysis. Studies have indicated that the population that enrol into clinical trials are not economically or socially disadvantaged (Addoler, Taylor, & Wendler, 2008). Furthermore, other wishes of terminally ill patients are often respected in terms of Advance Directives. So it is hard to argue that the patients whom enrol in trials are vulnerable.

Conclusions

This review has made the argument that patients should be enrolled in Phase 1 clinical trials, as it enrolment in a trial appears to do them no harm, and could provide benefit no worse than other interventions. Arguments that these patients cannot consent, or are too vulnerable are not valid objections to patient enrolment.

This conclusion has some impact, for in many aspects it argues that patients and healthy volunteers face identical ethical issues in their participation in Phase 1 research. This begs the question, should we not pay patients for enrolling in Phase 1 research. It is hard to argue against if we accept that the ethical dilemmas are identical. What the review has highlighted is that there is a genuine concern over the voluntary nature of consent in clinical research in phase 1, and there may be a need to redefine the doctor patient relationship in circumstances where a physician is also an investigator. It may be a necessity to put in other patient safeguards such as other doctors or nurses besides the investigator obtaining the informed consent.

Bibliography

Addoler, E., Taylor, H., & Wendler, D. (2008). The Ethics of Phase 0 Oncology Trials. Clinical Cancer Rees , 14, 3962-3967.

Joffe, S., & Miller, F. (2006). Rethinking the Risk Benefit for Phase 1 Cancer Trials. J Clin Oncol , 19, 2987-2990.

Shamoo, A. (2008). The Myth of Equipose in Phase 1 Trails. The Medscape Journal of Medicine , 10, 254.

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic

- Dr. Benjamin Rush Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Benjamin Rush accurately foretold a grave possibility facing Americans today, namely, that the art and science of healing be restricted to a select class of allopathic physicians, who have the sole legal right to recommend and administer medicines, and whose pharmacopeia excludes - as a matter of principle - all the healing foods, vitamins and herbs which have been used safely and effectively for countless millennia in the prevention and treatment of disease.

We have entered an era where medicine no longer bears any resemblance to the art and science of healing. The doctor no longer facilitates the body’s innate self-healing capabilities with time, care, good nutrition and special help from our plant allies. To the contrary, medicine has transmogrified into a business enterprise founded on the principles of pure, unbridled capitalism. Diseases are created and rolled out like new markets, each representing a veritable gold mine of symptoms, and each symptom of which provides the justification for the prescription of a new toxic drug-commodity. Healing has not simply been forgotten but intentionally exorcised as it represents the antithesis of perpetual profitability which requires the incurability of the human body. Were the truth be told, and the body’s self-regenerative capabilities acknowledged, the entire superstructure of drug-based medicine and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue it generates annually, would crumble overnight. When a handful of turmeric has more chemotherapeutic activity than any drug yet to receive FDA approval, one begins to understand why the hundreds of studies proving that turmeric kills cancer are never discussed. You can’t compete with free, effective and safe in a medical marketplace dominated by expensive, ineffective and unsafe drugs.

If this degeneration into quackery and snake-oil salesmanship which is modern pharmaceutical-driven medicine were simply a lesson in what bad things can happen when Health Care is no longer a basic human right but strictly a profit-driven Commodity, perhaps Americans could find it within themselves to once again free themselves from the shackles of oppression. After all, do we not consider ourselves the very originators of freedom, independence and democracy Have we not such great faith in these principles that we practically trip all over ourselves in our Promethean effort to export these values overseas whether we are invited to do so or not Would we stand for less, when it comes to our own health freedom

Sadly, the “undercover dictatorship” Benjamin Rush foretold is not simply a homegrown one we can root out from the inside, as it were. Although the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) behave as if they are at the top of this pyramid of secret power relations, they only represent the tip of the iceberg. The United States government and American corporate lobbying groups may appear to be behind the FDA’s shameless pandering to the interests of the drug companies, when in fact it is transnational corporations and organizations that are actually pulling the strings. The United States no longer enjoys global economic and cultural hegemony. We are now embedded in an international playing field where multinational and transnational organizations like the drug company Novartis International Ag, or the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have power and influence that overshadows the US or any other particular government or nation-state. These larger organizations blur the divisions traditionally drawn between public and private institutions, insofar as their agendas are mandates are consistent with global economic imperatives which do not account for the self-proclaimed sovereignty of any particular nation-state’s constitution or laws above its own. For example, the United States may soon no longer be able to allow the over-the-counter sale of dietary supplements if the World Trade Organization decides it violates our membership agreement to do so. (This process known as Codex Alimentarius is already far enough along, that prescription-only-vitamins are already making it onto the market and herbs like ephedra have been classified as illegal drugs).

Given this unseemly state of affairs some believe we are on the precipice of “Pharmageddon” where medicine produces more ill health than health and where medical progress does more harm than good. This process has also been described by Dr. Rima Laibow as “Nutricide”:

Nutricide (noo trih side):

1. Intentionally bringing about our causing the death of a body of knowledge and information concerning the health promoting and curative attributes of herbs, food and food components

2. Intentionally bringing about our causing the death of large numbers of people through nutritional manipulation*

(visit Dr. Laibow’s website: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org)

After all, is there any greater absurdity than a medical model that treats the symptoms of disease with sub-lethal dosages of toxic chemicals and in which there is no attempt to uncover, understand or remove the causes of those imbalances

After all, what disease has ever been found to be caused by a lack of a drug

Is acid reflux caused by a lack of proton-pump inhibitors

Is heart disease caused by a lack of statin drugs Is osteoporosis caused by a lack of Fosamax Is cancer caused by a lack of chemotherapy Is depression caused by a lack of Paxil Absolutely not! Then why would anyone consider it sound practice to use potentially toxic chemicals as a first line treatment for conditions that are not caused by a lack of a chemical To the contrary many diseases are caused exactly by culminative exposure to toxic chemicals that not unlike drugs are biologically alien to the body. i.e we are treating poisoning with poisons!

Can we dignify this approach by calling it medicine Or, is it more accurately described as a form of sorcery The sole reliance on Pharmaceuticals reveals quite a lot about the agenda underpinning modern medical practice. The Greek word Pharmakon has the following meanings: “drug, poison, potion, charm, spell, enchantment,” and indeed, pharmaceutically-driven medicine serves the Pharmaceutical Industry’s ultimate agenda: throw as many expensive pills as possible at the problem to make as much profit as is possible. (if you can do this while generating the illusion that you are actually “treating” disease with poisonous potions, you have succeeded in casting the right spell).

In Benjamin Rush’s time the medical dictatorship of which he spoke had not yet come to pass, and though magical potions like mercury and questionable techniques like bloodletting were used in colonial times, herbs were still considered and employed as legitimate medicines. Even if many wise women herbalists were eliminated as competition by being branded witches and sometimes murdered, the herbs themselves were not categorically demonized because no vast armory of pharmaceutical drugs had yet been created to supplant them.

The herbs and foods themselves have now been both vilified as dangerous and lampooned as completely ineffectual, generating the ridiculous contradiction that we are supposed to be dumb enough to accept as truth: namely, that they are both impotent and unsafe. Given these circumstances confidence in the safety and efficacy of natural substances in the prevention and treatment of disease has not only waned, but the positive association between food and healing has been outright denied by medical authorities. It is illegal for non-doctors to make health claims for natural substances even if thousands of years of use in folk medicine and a vast emerging body of scientific research now confirms their benefits. You can’t say cherries cure gout even if its true. (truth is no longer the criteria that decides what you can or cannot say; rather, its who profits more from the information being freely disseminated or censored).

There are websites out there which provide free and convenient access to the massive amounts of research that have accumulated on the health benefits of natural substances over the past 50 years. The government database known as Medline (which can be searched without special permissions or charge) contains over 18 million biomedical citations from over 5,000 scientific journals, many of which focus specifically on the therapeutic action of foods, vitamins and spices on serious, even life-threatening disease.

I believe that it is only through the free, uncensored and democratic dissemination of health information that we can secure our health freedom and through speaking truth to power, expose the fraud which is strictly profit-driven pharmaceutical-based medicine.

*Definition #2 may strike some readers as paranoia or pure madness, but consider the fact that Gary Null, PHD recently estimated that 786,000 Americans die annually from iatrogenic or medically caused deaths.