HOW MANY PILLS?—COLLECTING MEDICAL DATA.

HOW MANY PILLS?—COLLECTING MEDICAL DATA. Daniel Gilbert (who wrote STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS) had a recent blog post on the way that people tend to think in terms of certain “magic” numbers. He gave the example that he had just been given 7 pills for an antibiotic treatment. Why 7 he asks? He suggests that 7 is used rather than, say, 3 or 6 because the Emperor Constantine in 321 A.D. reduced the week from 8 days to 7, and that this arbitrary choice has given significance to the number 7. Gilbert quotes a recent medical journal article that says: “the usual treatment recommendation of 7 to 10 days for uncomplicated pneumonia is not based on scientific evidence.” The journal article then argued that 3 days was as good as eight. What strikes me is that with all the many prescriptions of antibiotics that have been given, we ought to have a very good idea of how many days of antibiotics are appropriate. I have argued, for example here, that we should be collecting a lot more medical data than we do. Mary Jane and I have each had sinus infections for the last month. Her first prescription was for 5 days. It didn’t work. She is now on a 10 day prescription, and I am completing a 7 day prescription for a different antibiotic. Perhaps some kind of wiki data collection site could be used for something as simple as this. We’d be glad to send in the information.