Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/31/reader-reviews-for-animal-medi.html
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Yeah this is a dark timeline.
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Given the rate of exchange of canned goods for money in the zombie apocalypse I’m one hazardous waste spill away from being a billionaire.
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Well, to be fair, I can’t say I’ve not done this. I have some fish amoxicillin, I had to use it the last time my daughter was sick, and refusing to eat, and they wouldn’t see her at the E.R. and sent her home with anti-nausea medication for bronchitis. Now I have a few cases of the stuff in the cupboard, 14$ for 50 pills vs being sent away with the wrong medicine is worth it.
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Article is missing “Grim Meathook Future” tag.
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The problem, besides the medical system being too damned expensive, is uneducated people self-medicate with antibiotics for things that cannot be effected by antibiotics.
Thus contributing to the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria and doing to themselves things they fear in the meat they buy (people seem to prefer meat raised without needless use of antibiotics then dose themselves every time they have a sniffle.)
Going to have serious consequences in the long run.
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I suspect this is just sour grapes side of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire, no? If I can’t be a plutocrat, the whole world should just burn down so no one can be a plutocrat.
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Or you could arrange to have a working single-payer system, with a state/province-wide drug buying plan. It’ll have 99 problems but fish pills ain’t one of them.
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After folks started selling stimulant drugs as “bath salts”, I suppose it was a matter of time before someone started euphemistically selling antibiotics as “totally for fish, bro.”
Still waiting for a cure-all tincture called “late state capitalism.”
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This is pretty much my concern. People self-medicating could cause serious side effects for themselves or their family members, especially if they have other conditions. And then there’s antibiotic resistances that can develop because of misuse of medications.
It’s possible that the risks might be worthwhile for those that can’t afford a hospital visit… until their action seriously sickens/kills them or someone in their family. My recommendation might not be that much better but should be safer is to find out exactly what medication they need to be taking and buy the generic version online, my family has done this and we have relatives that work in the pharmaceutical business and they’ve helped track down generics abroad and had them shipped to us here. This is likely not applicable in instances where time is essential.
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Wow looks like it’s really awesome to live in the country with the "best healthcare system in the world“.
Many Americans are under the delusion that we have “the best health care system in the world,” as President Bush sees it, or provide the “best medical care in the world,” as Rudolph Giuliani declared last week.
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A pharma company’s wet dream. They can sell the drugs, without needing to bother a doctor for a prescription, and are immune from any legal fallout because the human at the other end took something clearly marked “for fish.”
How long until our fish need help with depression, anxiety and chronic pain?
(I tease. I know there are laws against this they’d have to lobby hard to get rid of first.)
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I just wonder if this “fish” antibiotic is as pure and unadulterated as the stuff made for humans is supposed to be.*
yeah, I know, sometimes it isn’t.
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Been there. 'Way back in the early 90’s even. I was working at a small animal veterinary clinic in a large metro area in the SE US. No insurance, couldn’t find a doctor to see me without insurance, and couldn’t afford to take a day or two off to go wait at the free clinic when I came down with a UTI. After 2 days of copious amounts of cranberry juice (doesn’t work btw), I pulled the charts of the large dogs to get an idea of what the antibiotic dosage was by weight and sneaked a dosage of the veterinary equivalent of ampicillin for myself. I reimbursed the vet by slipping extra cash into the till for a couple days (retail, not wholesale). Iffy on a lot of levels, but it worked.
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Urgh. It pains me to hear this (as a vet). Not because of what you had to do (and that’s a pretty bad situation), but because people aren’t just really big dogs. Cats aren’t just small dogs etc… There are some pretty big physiological differences in how we handle drugs. Particularly in cases where a drug is hepatically metabolized (think why your NSAID choices are super limited in cats, why they’re less limited, but still a lot more restricted in dogs than humans, etc…).
Ever wonder why they don’t use enrofloxacin (Baytril) in humans? Turns out it’s hallucinogenic in primates. Learned that from a client with a really big dog who used some leftovers (DON’T HAVE LEFTOVERS PEOPLE!!! that’s also a great way to breed resistance).
That being said, nowadays you can look up human doses online.
I’ve known some techs who, after being bitten by something at work, elected to have one of their peers do the first aid, and amazingly, their large dog pretty immediately developed a UTI or some other acute clavamox (i.e. Augmentin) deficiency. Why not worker’s comp? Well, that comes with a mandatory drug test here in CA, and even though weed is technically legal now, you can still be fired for using.
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This. Antibiotic resistance is no joke.
What’s up with this anyway?
One of my cats had knee surgery for a luxating patella and we could only give her 3 days of Onsior afterwards (meanwhile, she needed weeks of bupreorphine for pain management).
Even my vet expressed how frustrating it is that there’s so many NSAIDs for dogs but so few options for cats.
If you like I can direct you to a right wing forum where people actually hold those sorts of opinions. You can gloat about your healthcare, and they can gloat about the world wars, and you can have a grand 'ol pissing match.
Here you’re just rubbing salt in people’s wounds.
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Believe me, it was a moment of desperation and not something I did lightly. Even at that tender (mostly clueless) age, I recognized that it was risky on many levels - medically, ethically, legally… Given the alternatives, it was also the least damaging option at that particular point in my life.
Happily, I did know enough about viruses vs bacteria to not try to self medicate the massive case of bronchitis I had previously. For that I coughed for 3 months, pulled a muscle or two around my ribcage from the coughing and eventually it went away. Good times all around…
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