2008/11/25 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
We have a megaphone at our disposal, the question is how to use it effectively. Warnings are pointless - we put all sorts of warnings on the medications we dispense, but I attend probably two to three lectures a year on how ineffective these warnings are. People don't read them - we're lucky if they read and understand the directions. Some states require spoken counseling on instructions and side effects because so few people read warnings and other information when they receive medication. Warnings on Wikipedia drug articles are unlikely to be all that effective, and if you start putting specific disclaimers on these you will need to start doing it on hundreds of other categories of articles as well.
I think the very best thing we can do in terms of serving the public is to have as clear, accurate and referenced information as we can, in a well-written article, i.e. what we do anyway.
- d.