A recent study found that 87% of patients who experienced an adverse symptom from a prescribed drug spoke to their doctor. However less than half of the doctors went through with filing the adverse event paperwork to notify the drug manufacturer. Why is this?

The research was published in the latest issue of Drug Safety. Doctors dismissed patients' complaints, and told them their symptoms were not connected to use of the drug. One doctor commented that the time it takes to complete the adverse event drug paperwork is time-consuming, and often not worth it unless it is life threatening. Would Hippocrates have accepted that answer? Please review your Hippocratic Oath, doc.

Your doctor is too busy to file the necessary paperwork to notify the FDA a drug is potentially harmful. What is a patient to do? Good question and here's an answer! If you experienced any adverse side effects from the use of a prescription drug, please let the FDA know. Click BEGIN and bring this monkey business to an end!

Hold on to your seats, folks. This story is pretty controversial but fascinating enough to make an appearance on Prime Time television 2x tonight on the evening news! A treatment involving the annihilation of the immune system, followed by a period of rebuilding the immune system is being tested in Brazil as a cure for type 1 diabetes.

The patients involved were newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and between the ages of 14 to 31 years old. The 15 diabetics were treated at a bone marrow center at the University of Sao Paulo. Timing is key in this method of therapy because if you wait too long - the window of opportunity where the body's ability to repair itself closes. The procedure involves stimulating the body to produce new stem cells and harvesting them from the patient's blood. Next comes several days of high-dose chemotherapy, which shuts down the patient's immune system. This also stops destruction of the few remaining insulin-producing cells in the body. This requires hospitalization and potent drugs to fend off infection. The harvested stem cells, when injected back into the body, build a new healthier immune system that does not attack the insulin-producing cells. Patients were hospitalized for about three weeks. Many had side effects including nausea, vomiting and hair loss.

For the record (and the Freedom of Information Act) the study was partly funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Genzyme Corp. and a maker of blood sugar monitoring products.