Customer Reviews

Complete Drug Reference: 1998 (Consumer Drug Reference)

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This was by far the worst of five prescription drug guides that I recently reviewed, despite the luminous names associated with it. It is poorly organized, requiring you to plough through many many words of turgid prose to find watered-down safety warnings. It omits many adverse effects that are on the product disclosure label. Possibly its only advantage is that it may cover a larger number of drugs than other guides although even this produces sometimes ridiculous results. Its entry for antihistamine drugs includes more than 120 different compounds and has 24 footnotes in two different styles. I use this page as an example of everything that can be wrong in effective risk communication. The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs probably has the most information on the most widely used drugs, although its coverage of adverse effects is weak. The PDR Pocket Guide faithfully reports almost all the adverse effects in the product labeling, but compacts them into unreadable paragraphs. It also has the best and most readable description of drug benefits. However, it consistently waters down safety warnings so as never to be frightening. The Pill Book is short, but study the Cautions and Warnings Section carefully, becuase very important safety information often appears in the 3d or 4th paragraph.