How NOT to practice medicine - no matter how bad the health care situation gets:
Benson has no medical degree. His expertise comes from his youth, which was spent on a farm in Indiana. "When one of us needed medical attention," he told me, "we dipped into our veterinary supplies." According to Benson, many pharmaceuticals for animals are the same as those formulated for humans, and can be purchased without a prescription at veterinary supply stores, of which most rural communities have several. In figuring out how to translate livestock dosages to human ones, Benson offers this jaunty rule of thumb: "The dose for a medium hog is usually correct for an adult person." (More: Mary Roach, "The Survivalist's Guide to Do-It-Yourself Medicine," at Salon)
Is a survivalist considering herself a medium hog roughly analogous to a physicist approximating himself as a sphere?
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Mary Roach is great at writing about completely crazy people-- for anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend her book Spook for an exploration of the "science" of the afterlife.
"Manipulate the bones back into some semblance of order," he tells the do-it-yourselfer attempting to cope with a comminuted fracture... "I have personally," writes Benson, "killed a number of four-legged critters attempting to administer general anesthetics."
And the Republicans think "Obamacare" will be deadly.
Now I've been known to dip into the veterinary supplies we have on occasion when someone is injured but never for medications! If someone has cut themselves badly gauze is gauze whether you bought it at the farm supply store or a drug store. Good first aid knowledge is pretty essential on a farm, but it's not being a doctor.
I live on a farm, I can't think of a worse idea than using animal meds on humans. A hog of any size is not a person and not a good model for dosage.
I have a friend who grew up in a mobile home on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin, getting cow amoxicillin whenever the doctor said he needed antibiotics. Why? There was a farm supply store 10 miles down the road. The nearest pharmacy was 50 miles away. And, of course, they were cheaper.
Maybe with being able to fill prescriptions online at Walgreens, etc. this practice will diminish? I certainly hope so.
I can't think of a worse idea than using animal meds on humans. A hog of any size is not a person and not a good model for dosage.
Ummm, you may want to do a little PubMedding on "pharmacokinetics" and "swine"...
Actually, we usually model the cows (or medium hogs in this case) as spheres.