The Uselessness of Phenylephrine
I&#x27;ve recently had to deal with the medical profession a lot more than in the past and I&#x27;m finding this sort of thing everywhere. OTC medicines that by current standards would not be made OTC, <i>surgeries</i> that are extremely common but have never had quality  randomized trials, official sounding diagnoses that on inspection are actually defined as &quot;we have no idea&quot;, lack of consensus about how to treat some of the most common conditions in the human population (e.g. back pain), medical device approvals abusing the shortcut of being &quot;substantially similar&quot; to an existing device to evade regulatory scrutiny, the complete lack of enforcement of what goes in supplements... I feel like my entire understanding of the medical system in the US was a lie. We&#x27;re constantly touting that we have the most advanced technology but if you have a complex condition you are likely to fall prey to multiple kinds of grift.