Talk:Telithromycin

Questions of telithromycin safety under public and congressional scrutiny
I propose moving this section to come after the "side effects" section.--Gak 15:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Why? That's not as logical a proposal as it appears on the surface. It's a controversy not only about side effects, but refers to reports that reveal questions of the telithromycin's indications and impact on marketing status (product inserts have already been changed), not to mention it reveals FDA in-fighting and disparate current medical opinion about the drug. It's a current event or series of events. If anything, bring the side effects section up to complement that section. The "Questions" section needs to be prominently displayed where it is at a top level of hierarchy in the article because of its immediate import to public health, and not relegated to dissappear in "side effects" section at the bottom of the page. That would mitigate its impact as a current event. Regardless, we need to rename "Side effects" to "Adverse effects" since that is what's used across the industry and on other wiki pages. For example, see the variations of article structure on controversial drugs here: Vioxx, Celebrex, Nexium, proton pump inhibitor, Crestor, statins, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Piewalker 17:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

In general I agree with the first commenter above. The logical order for an article about any product, drug or otherwise, is what it is for, then problems associated with its use, followed by history and controversies. Most Wikipedia articles on pharmaceutical products read like something written by an anti-pharmaceutical industry activist group. One gets a cursory 2 sentences about what the drug is for, commonly followed by an extraordinarily comprehensive listing of every adverse event case report that has ever appeared in the literature, extensive quotes from activists critical of the price of the drug, and then extensive documentation of historical controversies written solely from the point of view of the company's critics.

You will not find this sort of thing in a real encyclopedia. The domination of Wikipedia by volunteers who are mainly here because it provides an outlet for their political and social views is its central Achilles heal.