Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Isabella Eclevia
Ms. Jorgensen
29 April 2019
Candy is like a child’s drug, and drugs are like an adult’s candy. It brings joy. It brings
highs, It brings addiction. With discoveries in newfound diseases, many physicians have become
improvident within their works. From treating back pain to recent surgeries, they begin to
carelessly prescribe medication which ensues into a different kind of candy—a candy packed
with risks. Oblivious to the consequences, these profligate prescriptions lead into future health
problems and an increase in crime. To waive the influx in these fields, doctors should be limited
Fun-sized or king-sized, the flavor of the candy would remain the same. Regardless of the
intensity of the issue, the consequences will not change. With the increase in overprescribing,
small cases have been prescribed excessive amounts of treatments, resulting in health concerns
such as resistance. At the time, resistance may not be as threatening, but in dire-need situations,
the problem would be critical. Using antibiotics as an example in Dr. Jason Fung’s article,
“Antibiotics — Less is More,” he explains the process of antibiotic resistance by having “the
antibiotics kill off most of the bacteria, [leaving] a few that are resistant” (Fung). Once a few
bacteria in an infection become resistant, it can multiply, becoming fully resistant to the drug.
When a person becomes resistant to a drug, the drug becomes ineffective, so if someone is given
antibiotics for a cough and the body builds a resistance towards the medication, it would create
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concern for treating future infections, because there will be fewer available treatments, if not
any.
Physicians study medicine for twelve years, yet inappropriately prescribe medicines to be
“better safe than sorry.” In Alice Park’s article, “25% of Antibiotic Prescriptions Are
Unnecessary,” she interviews Dr. Chua where she explains how some drugs such as antibiotics
were prescribed to treat “conditions for which the drugs wouldn’t be helpful” (Park). Conditions
like bronchitis and respiratory infections were commonly given antibiotics but contain no
correlation “since they are caused by viruses rather than bacteria,” meaning the antibiotics would
have no effect (Park). Despite the efforts to ensure better health, doctors still have the ability to
prescribe inappropriate medicine with the full knowledge that the prescription is needless.
Without any regulations on this matter, overprescribing has increased over the years by 25%
cases in adults and 17% for children (Park). Expressing concern over this issue too,
microbiologist, Hans Kolmos, author of the article, “Should General Practitioners Perform
Diagnostic Tests on Patients Before Prescribing Antibiotics,” argues that testing should be ruled
before prescribing anything, because it would reveal that the infection is acute (Kolmos). Neither
necessary nor helpful, these prescriptions would not benefit the consumer; rather, it would
worsen him/her.
Due to overprescribing, physicians are giving easy access to drugs, exposing the public to
outcomes such as the “provision of addictive drugs at the request of drug-seeking or abusing
patients without proper medical evaluation and physicians’ provision of medications without
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properly monitoring patients for adverse outcomes” (Sacarny 472). In this excerpt, Sacarny
explains that someone is given a prescription, he/she can take that medication and exploit it to
the public. As described in the text, inappropriate prescribing can also lead to drug abuse. The
user can potentially become dependent off of it. Drugs like opioids and morphine, are commonly
abused by patients, increasing the overdose death rate, quadrupling in size between the time
frame of 15 years.
testings and limitations, a new process should be employed to give prescriptions to qualified
Works Cited
https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/antibiotics-less-is-more-63638cd66198/. Accessed 08
April 2019.
Tests on Patients Before Prescribing Antibiotics?” BMJ, vol. 318, March 1999, pp.
799-802.
Detectable Effect on Providers.” EBSCOhost, vol. 35, iss. 3, March 2016, pp. 471-479