4.13 - 4.16 : Human impact on resources

Question 1

Blurt everything you know about the William Withering’s digitalis soup.

Answer 1

• William Withering was a doctor, who in 1985 heard that one of his patients who had swollen tissues(dropsy) recovered after drinking a herbal remedy. He found out that** the remedy contained foxglove extract** the problem was that too little digitalis would be an ineffective treatment whereas too much would be fatal since foxgloves are poisonous. Not letting it worry him too much, he prepared a digitalis soup with a concentration he hoped would work and gave it to his patients
  He varied the concentration he gave to each patient and used a crude method of trial and error to work out which was the optimum concentration.

Question 2

Make two flowcharts compairing the stages that William Withering went through and the steps involved in developing a new drug today.

Answer 2

Question 3

Why is the he current system of drug testing safer and more reliable?

Answer 3

drug testing is much more rigorous and (usually) safer. Before a drug is available to the public, it must first be tested for toxicity on animals before undergoing three phases of testing.

Question 4

What do we gain nowadays from testing the drug on healthy volunteers first?

Answer 4

• To check that they are safe and whether there are any side effects.

Question 5

Why is it important to randomly assign patients to the treatments and have a double blind trial?

Answer 5

Avoids reporting bias, since no one knows who is treated and who is not and therefore all treatment groups should be treated the same.