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I don’t care if you report him, what I do want you to understand that prescribing antivirals to people willy nilly is bad medical practice. Do you not understand that by doing what he did — especially if he also gives it to people as a prophylactic — that in exponentially increases the potential of creating a virus that is RESISTANT to antivirals?

Willy nilly? There's a window of effectiveness for prescribing them, that if missed, renders the whole thing moot.

Teenyelliott did not say that he was giving it to patients prophylactically, she said her daughter had flu symptoms. You're getting all bent out of shape about something that you think the doctor MIGHT be doing.

All he did was ignore the advice of the GOVERNMENT and use his best judgment, which is what I would hope MY doctor would do, because some government official who makes policy somewhere is not going to have to live with the consequences of waiting too long, until the window of opportunity is missed and the Tamiflu is a waste of money..

If you wait to see how sick someone is going to get before prescribing them, it's too late, you miss that window. By your reasoning, nobody would be getting it. Why even have it in the first place if it isn't going to be used?

There is the concern that young people are more at risk for a bad case of swine flu and her 13 year old is pretty close to that age range.

The use of any medicine to combat any disease results in the risk of whatever-resistant disease, but concern about that is no reason to not use the medicine while we have it and while it works. All it takes is on right situation for something to become drug resistant and that could theoretically happen on the first dose.

Taking it for just any common cold, as antibiotics were used indiscriminately for colds, is what the danger is. Not using it for a virus that has the potential for serious consequences that the swine flu does for someone close to or in the high risk age range.