NP: The Secret Machines, Now Here is Nowhere

I was enjoying a good laugh at the FDA's expense until questions came around to something I actually use.

I've been defaulting to Aleve since I had Naproxen prescribed in prescription-strength for tendonitis in my hands about ten years ago. It's remarkably effective. As is customary with things that make life better, it can also apparently kill you. Great.

Of course, a cursory read of the story makes me wonder if taking more than the recommended dosage for twenty consecutive days or more -- which I seem to recall as the basic parameters of the study, but I'm not certain -- is going to cause problems regardless of what you're taking. And there's also the freedom of knowing that if simply fighting your headache might give you a heart attack, I can have that gyro and fries for lunch with total impunity.

My overall outlook remains "fuck it, everything'll kill you eventually," so I'm not too shaken by this latest news, but it does bring to light some of my long-standing issues with big pharma and the unknown side effects and interactions of a lot of drugs that get rushed out to the market.

Unlike recent newsworthy missteps by the FCC, this doesn't have me thinking the FDA is an outdated relic that should be abolished, but if I take that extra step, I think that might officialy make me a small-government libertarian.