Drugs & Medicine

Saw the OTC is much less likely to be poisonous and usu costs many times less

I wouldn't know about 'All substances', but the dose indeed makes the poison. At some concentration, even oxygen becomes toxic.

Depends on how you wish to frame it.
Take water for example. To much of it will throw your electrolytes out of balance and can thus lead to death. At the same time if you go without it you die. Should you be foolish enough to try and breath it you suffocate.

As for how that quote relates to the medical community. I personally think it's rather pointless. But that's my view as someone that has been part of the medical community.

Why do you think it pointless for the medical community? That was my primary reason for posting the question. I've seen documentaries on people who are relieved from cluster headaches using psilocybin found in magic mushrooms. Additionally, low doses of Ketamine are now being investigated in treating major depression. Furthermore, THC concentrate has been used to treat seizure disorders.

So, my point was just that maybe these illicit drugs, in the right dosage, may have some medicinal purpose.

Now that sir is a different matter. Adding in that fine detail of " illicit drugs" changes things greatly. All those things you mention there are true. I believe lots can be taken from such things and applied in a way to help people. You have things like radiation therapy where we know for a fact it will kill you but at the same time cancer cells in your body are killing you. So it's just a matter of what dies faster you as a whole or the cells that are making you sick.

It's a matter of control and study. All of which I am always in favor of.

I guess I should have been more specific, but I was trying to remain vague. I wanted to talk about 'illicit' substances being used medicinally at the right dosage, but I didn't want to overtly say that.

But, I find it interesting how the government can tell us what is okay and what is not okay for us to ingest/intake, even when our life is already on the line.

If I have terminal cancer, I really believe you should be allowed to whatever to try and help you because you have already been handed a death sentence and if we, in America, have the constitutional right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," then we should be able to defend our right to life with whatever measures we feel may be beneficial.

I agree with that whole heartedly as long as the things you are taking are over seen by a doctor. Because when dealin with people as a whole they likely won't know how much of said thing is to much or even to little.

I am also of the minority in a great deal of the US of the idea that should you come to that cross roads of where nothing has helped and you wish to died you should be allowed and helped with it should that be your choices. The ability to say yes I have had enough and I wish to end in a way that I find provides me with dignity. The patient should be allowed to make that without anyone looking down on them or a law saying this is wrong to a doctor helping someone make that last step.

Yes, the idea of assisted suicide becomes quite complex. I do agree with you that from a legal standpoint the medical professional has taken an oath to preserve life.

However, the philosophical question becomes: is life about purely the numbers you live of the quality of life you live it in?

If someone is suffering and their is no cure or treatment to ease their suffering, it may not be the medical professional's role to act as the initiator of assisted suicide, but does the suffer not have the right to decide that they do no longer want to suffer?

Assisted suicide can pose a moral problem good enough to discuss only for those who cannot physically do it to themselves. Politics aside on what should be our stand common sense dictates if you going to debate about the right to kill yourself the least you can do is to take care of the matter yourself. Cowardly asking for help is not an option. It automatically dismisses you are being serious.

The quotes reads like a more fleshed out version of "everything in moderation." As for its relation to the medical community, I think the well established one, at least, probably is guilty of prescribing unnecessary substances to treat illnesses much too frequently, and often the things used to treat sicknesses can be very harmful, especially if not administered in the right dosages, as alluded to. I think doctors are taught to assign the accepted one for all treatments to the point that they can become poisonous. So, I guess even if all substances are poisons, some do not become detrimental to the health as easily, and I think a lot of doctors are expected to treat people with substances, even those that aren't illicit drugs, they don't need or in doses they shouldn't be handling.

In the US, doctors have always prescribed me antibiotics for things I would've normally treated with an orange peel or a garlic clove.