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In article Edwin Partridge <[log in to unmask]> writes: >The FDA encourages the doctor and the patient to report such side >effects. My neurologist was not interested in reporting my experience. >Perhaps it was because she had not observed the effects personally. She >did give me a form to fill out to report my experience to the FDA. I >filled out the form --- a typical governmental bureaucratic form --- and >mailed it in. I received a nice letter that informed me that my report >did not constitute the basis for a law suit. It also enclosed an >identical copy of the form that I had already submitted. It requested >that I fill out the form and return it. It is not unusual for citizen contacts to government bureaucrats to receive anymore than the above. Reporting adverse effects or interactions is generally left to the doctors to report to the involved drug companies who in turn report it to the FDA on one of their reports. FDA does not have much expertise dealing with patients or "real people". About the only adverse effects that get reported promptly or those where a number of patients die as the result of...and then only if the doctor reports it to the drug company's 24 hour adverse effect hotline. Older people that take a lot of medicines to counter act other medicines, increase their risk, especially if several doctors are involved. In those cases, a diary and a current list of medications should be a must to take to every doctor's appointment. Older folks tend to visit more with their doctor rather than presenting the new facts and letting the doctor use his knowledge and skill to treat the whole problem. My frail, 85 year old mother would rather talk about her garden for her 15 minutes than tell him about her dizziness or incontinence due to the diuretics which would go unsaid if I didn't have his fax number and alert him on what questions to ask between garden stories..., before her appointment. I tend to believe that Mother gets better care in spite of herself. We all need a care-giver or a concerned friend to keep our facts straight. John Cottingham "KNOWLEDGE is of two kinds: we know [log in to unmask] a subject, or we know where we can OR find information upon it." [log in to unmask] Dr. Samuel Johnson