Herman by Jim Unger for August 29, 2023

This really needs the piano of impending doom accompaniment

He should offer the standard tiny Pharmaceutical bottle, with the usual 0.0000001 pica print of instructions.

Agree with that. Company self-promotion gets majority of space. Essential consumer info becomes an ink blot, which means whatever you guess it means.

Possible disclaimer: “Do not consume without the presence of an attorney.”

One micro gram helps, 2 kills.

Sometimes the side effects are worse than the illness.

Unfortunately, government mandates the useful and potentially life-saving instructions be hidden behind ten pages of completely useless warnings.

He’ll never take it if he reads the possible side effects section.

“Pretty much anything is possible as a side effect.”

My wife is a nurse, so whenever one of her patients is prescribed a drug, she looks it up.

For one of my medications there are 8 pages of side effects. Fortunately, none of them are death.

Are the side affects worse than what it is supposed to cure?

And a magnifying glass.

I notice that the instructions are in incredibly small script.

It probably says something about anal leakage in the small print.

“Do not take this medication under any circumstances.”

I unfurled the instructions on one of my pill bottles and thought I had discovered the Dead Sea scrolls

It takes longer to read the instructions, than the prescription is for

Nitroglycerin pills?

…And don’t, whatever you do, chew it!!!!

One of the side effects of life is death.

My wife read the warning label on some medication she had been prescribed. She decided the risk of death or even the lesser side effects wasn’t worth whatever relief it might have given her. Later on when they had some class action suit on that very same medication, she thought, “Well they didn’t read the the warnings.”

My Dad was a pharmacist. He would frequently give people special verbal instructions with meds. “Make sure you’re sitting down when you take this.”

Oh great, now he has to buy a magnifying glass.

The pharmacist must also advise very, very, very, very carefully also…..

Leave the bottle on the counter and step away slowly.

especially the part about the side effects!

The pharmacist should explain whatever it is that he wants the patient to glean by reading. What if the patient can’t read, or he’s not fluent in English?