A reason _is_ why prescription medication needs a professional signature, and I would like to think that expert reviews of our documentation are available. As long as the rest of us take out the more obvious garbage, I think it can happen.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:23 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How's our coverage of medications?
2008/11/25 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/11/25 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
News just in: People that self-medicate based on what they've read in an encyclopaedia sometimes get it wrong.
That said, I frequently look up medications in Wikipedia, applying of course my "this is not reliable but it may be useful" filter. I do look for stuff like side-effect lists in the article and official patient information sheets in the external links.
Of course, Wikipedia is a very useful resource, you just need to know what you should and shouldn't use it for. Getting a general idea of what the drug is and finding links to more reliable resources is an excellent use for it, using it to decide whether or not to take a given drug is not a good use for it - that is a good use of a doctor or pharmacist.
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