Preface

Preface for the first issue

　This book is published to give infor mation that is really useful for medical consumers in distinguishing good drugs and bad drugs among many drugs, and in rational use of rational drugs.
　We would like to make this book to be useful, of high quality and joyful not only for patients and their families but also for medical professionals and active persons to prevent drug desasters.
　We would like to state that we are careful with:

(1) To make this book to be really useful for patients:

　We think that patients want not only to be free from pain and other symptoms but also to be recovered completely as soon as possible.
　So, in this book, we are assessing the quality of drugs by evidences of long-term effects as well as short-term effects. We will provide information how to distinguish good drugs from bad drugs as well, with information for related deseases.

(2) Evidence-based information:

　We are searching scientific evidences systematically, which meet those medical consumer's needs. And based on these evidences, we analyze the real quality of drugs and provide such information to you.
　Too much unreliable information that is apparently scientific is flooded.
　You should remember that many withdrawn drugs were first evaluated as effective and safe by many authorities and approved by regulatory authority. You should also remember that these were proven harmful later and that the danger had been known earlier than the approval.

(3) We intend to make this book a really useful one, which meet the needs of medical consumers.

　So it will also meet the needs of health care workers who do want to select good drugs, to use drug rationally and to make medical practices conscientiously: good information for patients is good for medical professionals.
　We are going to provide information on what patients and health care workers want to ask, and what they are perplexed or hesitated. We would like to provide some of the experiences in which some positive trials could be done.

(4) We provide information from abroad:

　We have to watch Japanese drugs by the global standards. So we need information from abroad to compare Japanese medicines and medical practices with global standards.

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