Ironic Pointlessness

Unless you’ve been living in a cave the past couple of weeks you’ll have heard of the Alzheimers Drugs Aricept (donepezil), Reminyl (galantamine) and Exelon (rivastigmine) which may or may not help the condition will now be allowed by the champions of newspeak, The Ministry of Nasty, NICE. (Despite the Orwellian name, they’re not actually the baddies after all at all, they’re our one and only bastion of defence against extortionate pricing of meds, thats a very good thing.) I won’t be covering this as it’s already been covered very well elsewhere.

Another study has suggested that St. Johns Wort is as much use as a wart on the nose for curing depression, its still a grey area though. The same review paper found a surprising amount of evidence in favour of the herbal remedies passionflower or kava and L-lysine and L-arginine to treat anxiety disorders. Research is certainly still needed but if history is anything to go by that won’t happen for a very long time because they’ll all be banned by Christmas. Kava is already illegal in the UK, even though you can still buy it over the counter in pretty much every other country in the world. Risks are probable but we’ll never know how they compare with the already high risk anti-anxiety/anti-depressants currently on the market until the controlled methods research is done. An interesting fact that is generally unknown is that the “safest” and therefore most prescribed anti-depressant called an SSRI (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft) often leads to anorgasmia. I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it’s a pretty damn serious side effect. Some drugs companies however don’t seem to think it’s even serious enough to put it on the label. The rest will often put it at the bottom of an endless list. Well I guess this is the stuff that can also make you want to top yourself, so in comparison I guess it seems rather meager an effect. It’s, erm, unknown whether the two are linked. Thats because thats the sort of thing that it’s impossible to test, forbidden experiment and all that jazz.

In other news, enough waste leaked out of an aluminium works in Hungary this week to turn half of the country bright red for the next century, and it’s now reached the Danube. The million cubic metres that leaked was only a tiny fraction of whats still behind the crumbling damn. Theres been much talk of who was at fault but the fact that our demand for copper requires an estuary of acidic waste to be sat in Hungary in the first place was the white elephant in the room.

In the mean time we’re still as determined as ever to stick £17 Million worth of freshly twisted steel in the middle of London and call it the Arcelormittal Orbit for no apparent reason except “why not”. The big news this week was that we’re going to build a park around it named after the Queen. Well thats alright then, as long as it has the Queens blessing.

Almost as ironic in fact was the UAE’s self proclaimed “global warming themed”, ice/water theme park in the middle of the dessert (this  article will make you want to chew your own face off) that opened this week. The unfortunate thing however is none of these things were ever meant to be ironic, apart from perhaps the naming of “NICE”.

This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Be informed but always see a doctor before considering taking any medication.

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