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international | consumer issues | opinion/analysis Saturday September 01, 2007 09:34 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

A Spoonful of Sugar Makes The Medicine Go Down

Increasingly the patient is no longer seen as a passive recipient of medical treatment. Attempts are being made, at least at an ideological level, to involve patients more in the design of medication and to lend some weight to what patients really think of medication and how it is affecting them. Naturally there are life saving chemicals like penicillin, insulin and cytamen (for vitamin B12) but there is a plethora of more optional drugs on the market not least a whole cabinet of neuroleptic drugs. From my own observations as a patient for over 30 years attending clinics and hospitals throughout that period it is unclear whether many of these drugs have an authentic role in (a) preserving life or (b) in improving the quality of life of the patient.

It could be said that our benefactors have been richly endowed for degrading with medication the minds of mental patients and deforming our bodies over, at least, two generations. It is impossible to conceive a way in which restitution can be made to the lost people for their devastation.

Castor oil was disgusting with a sort of tasteless, nauseating effect. Our mother offered to hold our nose while she spooned it into our mouths or to mix a little bit of sugar through it to make it easier to swallow it. It underlined the paradox, often repeated in different circumstances later in life, that what was good for you was also horrible.

Unsurprisingly recent research is showing that what patients want from medicine is to feel well physically as a result of taking it. What patients usually find, of course, is that the opposite is the more usual effect. So obviously we need better medicine - or perhaps we would be better off with no medicine at all?