User talk:Colin/Archive 1

Stiripentol

Adding Stiripentol and Paraldehyde to the Anticonvulsant article can be done be simply giving them their own section(s?) within the article. As for the template, suffice to say that I just had to revert myself for adding piracetam to the list of "See also" links for piracetam, so you might ask someone else about that. I don't know what to call a lot of what I did (okay, the parts where I didn't copy-n-paste something). Did you check the edit history for that? Oh, and if you do, make sure to add "anticonvulsant to end of the <insert chemical class here> because often there are drugs within that class that either have no anticonvulsant properties whatsoever or that can actually cause seizures. I so wish I'd thought of that before getting to the succinimides...--Rmky87 23:45, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Epilepsy

What a ludicrous deletion. Regardless, thanks for creating the new article. If I have time, maybe I'll add something to it. I think it's interesting that someone else asked for this material on Talk:Epilepsy, but the request was ignored. The article's topic is "Epilepsy," and any sort of epilepsy should be fair game for inclusion. | Klaw ¡digame! 14:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• re Driving & the UK - Hi, I've added the link to the DVLA site as I already had a note of it. David Ruben ^Talk 18:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry to so disrupt your edit :-) Actually the DVLA website does clearly specify that it is the patients responsibility to inform them (see Drivers Information page) which in turn links to Medical Rules - Group 1 Licence Holders and in turn to the dowloadable self declaration form re epilepsy PDF form. This is all quite a maze, and so I have added further information in Epilepsy's reference section - does this help? David Ruben ^Talk 04:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

ATC code N03

I noticed you added Pregabalin and Stiripentol. Pregabalin is a new addition for 2006, but I can't find stiripentol [1]. I was wondering where you got the atc code from? Thanks for updating the atc codes. Matt 21:16, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Heroin disambiguation

You're right and I've changed it back. The problem I had with it was that dope is too general a name for drugs of any sort. Look through the List of street names of drugs for dope, it's there several times. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Margaux Hemingway

(List of people believed to have epilepsy)

I don't actually read that article the same way you seem to have done. It appears to me that she died of unknown causes with phenobarbital (which she was taking for epilepsy) on board. It seems pretty clear to me that she died of SUDEP, sudden death in epilepsy. She wasn't suicidal and there wasn't any evidence that she'd OD'd on phenobarb, which is, incidentally, extremely difficult to do. Would welcome your comment on this. Ikkyu2 00:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

In the Psychology Today article, "The coroner's report ascribed her death to "acute phenobarbital intoxication."". It also claims that "coroner's report put her body's level of the drug well beyond the therapeutic range". Whilst the article does say that friends and family are surprised at the "suicide" verdict, it does repeatedly say that "she took her life". I made a conscious decision not to say "suicide" or "deliberate" in what I wrote since that aspect seems to be the most speculative.

Mariel appears to hint at the SUDEP cause in her interview on CNN and possibly in her book which was reviewed here, but which I haven't read.

Another news report on CNN says that (of Klonopin) "Two vials were empty and one vial still contained five tablets" and "Having found three vials of Klonopin, that suggested a Klonopin overdose. After the testing, a small amount was found in her liver". Of course, nobody will know over what period those pills were consumed. I'm not happy with the reporter not clarifying what "a small amount" meant since it seems to be capable of including a normal therapeutic amount.

Like Mariel, I am unable to have any medically informed opinion on this matter. I respect your conclusion but that's original research unless you can find a good reference to back it up.--Colin 13:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Eh, I guess so. One of these days I need to write an article about this. Ikkyu2 20:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Other anticonvulsants

There's some evidence that furosemide and cannabis have anticonvulsant activity. No one's quite sure what the active principle in cannabis is, but it's probably not Δ-3,9-THC. It may be dihydrocannabinol. That article seems to be your baby, so I thought I'd solicit your opinion. Ikkyu2 00:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The criteria I've been using for inclusion on the anticonvulsant article is that it should be a drug that is used (or was once used) medically to treat epilepsy (or seizures) in humans. In other words, it is therapeutically useful as an anticonvulsant. There are simply far too many drugs that have some anticonvulsant effect for it to be helpful to list them all. Would you include aspirin (PMID 7705877, PMID 11883156, PMID 14671677)?

For example, I've removed most of the barbiturates and benzodiazepines, even though I think they all probably have some anticonvulsant properties. I'm only about half-way through the list of anticonvulsants. So I expect some more additions and some deletions will follow.

I've had a look at your two drugs. Furosemide appears to be at the rat-testing stage and cannabis at the anecdotal and case-history stage. The Medical cannabis page briefly mentions anticonvulsant uses and I suppose some doctors have used it in the distant past. Do you think its usage was widespread enough to count? Their use of the drug almost certainly wasn't formally evidenced based. I'd probably prefer to wait for multi-centre double-blind trials showing their efficacy and safety in humans.

Alternatively, do you think it would be useful for the anticonvulsant article to have a section on drugs "Under Investigation"? This would naturally be somewhat fluid when drugs either end up getting licensed or forgotten (no research in the last 5 years, say). --Colin 13:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I think probably drugs under investigation would not be a great idea, because wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Since last writing, I've discovered that UCSF has an orphaned human clinical trial going on furosemide in epilepsy; I've added my name to the investigator list and will take it forward. I'll let you know what develops  :) -Ikkyu2 23:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Benzos

I don't disagree with any of the added text; the two paragraphs that were removed should probably be put back. As part of my job in the epilepsy monitoring unit I "rapid withdraw" people from their anticonvulsants all the time, and people really have a terrible, terrible time with benzo withdrawal.

I also doubt that 'euphoria' should link to 'happiness', but I'm hardly an expert on either :) Ikkyu2 20:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Anticonvulsants in general

I would like to award you one of those barnstars you see for your tireless work on the Anticonvulsant articles, but I don't know anything about barnstars. I only know about anticonvulsants, and you've provided a really nice synopsis of those. Great work!

You might be interested in the story of H. Houston Merritt and how he discovered the anticonvulsant effects of phenytoin, but I don't know if that story is really published anywhere outside the medical literature. It should be - it's an exciting story. Ikkyu2 18:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Diazepam edits

Yeah, sorry about that, I should have realized that the minor edit box was checked off. Basically, I went through the entire article, rearranged sections into a more logical order, fixed spelling and grammatical errors (as best I could), changed certain sections to sound more formal (i.e. encyclopedic), and changed incorrect information (based on what I found in a couple of my main reference books). I found the article really confusing before, but hopefully it should be easier to navigate and comprehend now. Let me know what you think, if you've got some time to read it. Fuzzform 19:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Again, I apologize. I often overlook that pesky little checkbox. A few of the edits I thought were "minor edits" would probably be better described as "medium edits", because they certainly weren't "major edits". Definitely shouldn't have checked off minor edit for the rewrite I did the other day. It says that using the minor edit feature is a matter of personal preference, but ahh well... I'll try to be more careful in the future.

Anyway. In a related issue, I've been trying to determine what the necessary sections of any good drug-related article are. I think the diazepam article is a pretty good prototype by now. The "History" section was a good idea for reducing clutter and increasing organization. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Fuzzform 20:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

IAHP

I've made some edits to the IAHP article. Now it reads the way a wikipedia article should; anyone who reads it will immediately realize that someone thinks they're full of bollocks. If they want to keep linking to that article from epilepsy, they can be my guest. Ikkyu2 03:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It’s true that there are a lot of qualified contributors to Eppilepsy page, including Neurologists and others. However, as a parent who has gone through the maze of mainstream medicine to find an effective treatment for my child with neurological challenges, I can say that in some ways I am uniquely qualified to be a contributor. In my experience, even the best child Neurologists are overly –dependent on using medications to treat neurology patients. Moreover, for our child, none of these powerful medications worked. After a year and a half of no improvement in our daughter, we became despondent. Thank God we found the Institutes! They worked out a diet (not Ketogenic) and health program that stopped our little daughter’s seizures and accelerated her physical and intellectual development so that now she is on track to joining her peers when she reaches school age. Our success is not unique: IAHP has published its results and we have seen with our own eyes children with ADHD, Epilepsy, Autism, and Down Syndrome progressing beautifully on the IAHP program.

Moreover ‘The Institutes’ is not just another non-profit. They have developed unique treatments and they offer accredited lectures for health professionals which have been attended by many neurologists and neurophysiologists. But the main reason we need to post a mention of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, is that it offers readers, many of them parents looking for answers, an alternative treatment that they can explore if they should find that traditional medicine and pharmacological treatments aren’t helping their child to their satisfaction. The overall grand purpose of Wipedia is to provide information that will help others. SO PLEASE LET READERS HAVE THE INFORMATION AND DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES muncher 22:29, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Colin--Ive made a wholesale edit my IAHP page and consider it to be neutral and striking a nice balance between pros and cons for IAHP. In particular I have acknowledged that the medical establishment disagrees with IAHP.

Thanks for your advice and I have followed through on making it neutral. I trust this will satisfy u> I will resist edit attempts by anyone unless they can present a case that proposed changes enhance the neutrality of the article. In particlular Ikkyu2 has disregarded his own advice--rather than being neutral he insists on making attacks--- muncher 01:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey, Colin.

Wonder if you wouldn't mind having a look at the content which I am trying to contribute to IAHP, and which above user keeps removing. A second point of view on the talk page will be handy when I take this to RfC. Ikkyu2 01:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Colin. No one ever went broke by overestimating my hot-headedness, that is certainly true. I'm glad I have had some other eyes to look at that article, that way I do not need to go off half-cocked.

I liked the duck picture. In general, quackery is something that bothers me, because of the terrible way that it can create false hopes and unreasonable expectations and then use these strong feelings to extort cash from vulnerable people. I don't particularly like the word 'quack', but the WP article at 'quackery' is a pretty good discussion of the overall phenomenon. Ikkyu2 23:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging

Greetings. From the description and use of Image:Sodium_valproate.png, it appears you intended this media to be freely available. I took the liberty of applying a {{No rights reserved}} tag. If that's not what you intended, my apologies, and please amend the tag. Regards, Dethomas 17:18, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I responded to your question here Regards, Dethomas 04:17, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Valproic acid.png

Thanks for uploading Image:Valproic acid.png. However, the image may soon be deleted unless we can determine the copyright holder and copyright status. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law (see Wikipedia's Copyright policy).

The copyright holder is usually the creator, the creator's employer, or the last person who was transferred ownership rights. Copyright information on images is signified using copyright templates. The three basic license types on Wikipedia are open content, public domain, and fair use. Find the appropriate template in Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and place it on the image page like this: {{TemplateName}}.

Please signify the copyright information on any other images you have uploaded or will upload. Remember that images without this important information can be deleted by an administrator. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Thank you. BRossow 17:05, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Done --Colin 17:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding benzo pages

I just ran into the comments about the benzodiazepine vs. anticonvulsant templates on the midazolam page. I hadn't realized it was used as an anticonvulsant. As far as I know, it isn't used as an anticonvulsant here in the US. But in any case, check out my comments on the midazolam talk page.

Also, several of the benzo pages are in need of images. What is the standard program used to create new images? I posted an image that needs replacement on the Wikiproject:Drugs structural image request page, but I don't think anyone looks at any of the subpages for that project.

Fuzzform 20:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

The subpages are a bit of a mess. You might want to look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Drugs#Structures, and Molecule editor. I use BKchem to draw the diagram. I then use the "Check Chemistry" menu option and then the "Info" option. The latter shows the formula and weight, which I check against published data. I then scale the image up 150% inside BKchem. Then I use IrfanView to grab the screen, crop to the diagram and then resample down 50%. Those steps help make the lines nice and smooth.

There are obviously better tools and more qualified folk to do this. But I think a simple diagram is better than no diagram, provided it is correct. You can see a list of the ones I've done on my user page. BTW: I add the diagram to Wikimedia Commons, which magically gets picked up by Wikipedia. If you don't want to draw them yourself, let me know which ones you want images for --Colin 21:58, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

British usage

Hi Colin,

That rant on British usage on my user page is pretty wrong-headed, I think. It's something that always goes across my mind when I see an article and I never quite know what to do about it; I see a large number of articles that have mixed usage and it looks "funny" to me, but I am quite aware that there is no reasonable grounds for preferring one over the other. In fact, if my rant is to be directed towards anyone, it is probably most applicable to myself; I made that silly edit with the comma and had myself in mind when I was writing, because I felt like it was a dumb edit to have made.

Please don't feel that you have to change your editing practice on my account. -ikkyu2 (talk) 15:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Babylonian treatise

I hadn't known about this! Everyone reads about the description of epilepsy in the Edwin Smith papyrus - I believe they used trephining to treat it in some cases - but I hadn't known that the Babylonians had written of it too. Thanks! -ikkyu2 (talk) 15:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Drugs

You ought to list your name on the WikiProject Drugs page. I've been trying to get people to be more active with this project. Hopefully it could serve as some kind of mechanism to enlist help with editing (much like Bluemoose's pages). I would also like to get more input on the various aspects of this project, such as the standard set of sections and overall strategy. With any luck, it could turn into a sort of large peer-editing community. Fuzzform 04:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright

The Wikimedia Foundation has received permission for using this list from the author of the book, see talk page for the OTRS ticket number. (Note: I've emailed the author back for a final confirmation of GFDL use. Basically, the author contacted us because some people had written to his publisher and argued against him asserting a copyvio...) David.Monniaux 11:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't think that normal editors can check references to OTRS ticket numbers, even those in the "permissions" queue. You'd need to ask some Wikimedia Foundation officer or at least somebody who (like me) has access to the OTRS queues. David.Monniaux 13:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: LGS + KD

Okay, you can move it, but make sure to move the references. Please.--Rmky87 04:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

William G. Lennox

Thanks for your article on William Lennox. That 1960 tome, which I've perused cover to cover several times, is centuries ahead of its time. I could spend 10 productive human lifetimes researching the questions he framed so eloquently.

Your even-handed treatment of his support of eugenics theories, however, made me cringe. Astounding, isn't it, that a man of such intellectual range could espouse such views. I don't know whether he was a product of his times, or whether his great intelligence gave him hubris, or how to reconcile these facts with my personal admiration for his work on epilepsy.

Have you ever looked into the life of Wilder Penfield? His autobiography, "No Man Alone," is one of my favorite works. He is someone whom one finds it easy to admire in all aspects - a true Renaissance man. -ikkyu2 (talk) 02:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

epilepsy and seizure

Colin, it's #3 - I just don't have the time to sit down and do it. I'm delighted to keep an eye on contributions and offer advice, but I have negative free hours in the day lately. The stuff I have been doing lately, AfD drive-bys and what not, require 15 seconds of concentration; rewriting epilepsy would take many hours.

-ikkyu2 (talk) 20:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Colin, the ILAE published the 1981 seizure type guideline, a 1989 guide to the classification of epilepsies and epileptic syndromes, a 2003 guideline for the best way to use terms to conduct epidemiology, and a 2005 guideline that was a total revision of the 1981 and 1989 guidelines (Pete Engel's synthesis of what he'd gotten from folks since that call for submissions you linked above).

You should look at all of them, but also know that nothing in the 2005 guideline was adopted/ratified, and that people (me, I confess) hate it. -ikkyu2 (talk) 20:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

re: References

Regarding your comments, I couldn't agree more that it's a problem that most pages lack references. Thanks for pointing that out; it would be pretty difficult to peer review without references.

As for the external links section: if we move references from it to the references section, then we won't have any more external links. It's pointless (and messy looking) to list them twice. Perhaps we can find external links that are not used as references? The problem there is that most external links that cannot be used as sources are pretty much worthless anyway (e.g. blogs, etc.).

Anyway, I'll take a shot at referencing sources for diazepam. Check back tommorrow or the next day and let me know what you think.

Fuzzform 19:01, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that's true. I would rather not do away with them though. The RxList link is good, because all of the references from there are on seperate pages (the basic info about diazepam comes from PubChem and DrugBank). Fuzzform 20:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but it says in the Wikipedia article that "using in-line citations is not necessarily recommended." In other words, sticking the code after each referenced entry makes things somwhat sloppy and confusing looking. This is a better way to cite, I agree, because it keeps the numbers in order. I'd completely overlooked that. Thanks for pointing it out before I went any further. I'm going to try to develop something between the two, with actual citation code being under the references section. Fuzzform 18:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to avoid placing the citation code in the main body of the article. It clutters the code, and makes it hard to edit. Is there a way to place it in the references section and simply have each numbered citation direct down to the appropriate reference? Fuzzform 19:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I understand the syntax, I was just trying to use it for something it wasn't designed for. That explains a lot, not having to enter citations more than once. I was under the impression that you had to repeat the code (that would make the article look awefully messy). Keeping this in mind, I'll give it another try. Fuzzform 19:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. I've been looking at the list of people with epilepsy, and it doesn't seem to define a reference name. This is what I'm trying to work out at the moment. Fuzzform 19:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I've FINALLY figured it out. Shouldn't be any more problems now. I was forgetting the "end reference" statement. Fuzzform 20:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Felbamate

Of course. Rich Farmbrough 11:44 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Rohypnol

Bugger. I typed this then accidentally deleted it. You're quite right, there seem to be special restrictions in WA, which is unusual since most drug and pharma policy is set federally. Don't let 'authority script' fool you for NSW/VIC though, they're very easy to get. The doctor just has to give an assurance by phone that the patient meets the guidelines. Ender 10:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar!

Moved Barnstar from Eternal Equinox to User Page.

I have Finlay McWalter's user and talk page on my watchlist, and when I went to check up on it, you were the last to make an edit to his talk. —Eternal Equinox | talk 20:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

List of Presidents of Portugal

The image tags were changed after the issues raised in the FLC. The fair use reasons were changed and I asked the user who raised the objections to see the changes and say something about it. He did nothing. Therefore, I assumed that all the issues were solved. That's it. Perhaps they are not, what problems do you spot? Is wikipedia a boot camp for law students or is it a wiki? In a wiki we change things, we edit articles and correct the problems. Afonso Silva 10:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

All right, at least you helped, thanks. I think the images are ok, I've edited them one by one, and only one or two don't have the source. If the objector thinks they are not ok he should have told me that, he is an admin. He did nothing, I addressed him twice, politely. What can I do now? Afonso Silva 12:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

idiopathic

Some would say the mistake was the ILAE's, not yours, for incorporating this historical accident of usage into their modern guideline.  :)

Cheers,

-ikkyu2 (talk) 07:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Diazepam & Readability

Not sure if you've seen the latest comments on the diazepam talk page. Basically, the article is - unsuprisingly - incomprehensible to the layman. I don't want to do away with the medical terminology, but keeping it in place leaves very few options, in terms of ways to increase readability.

I think the introduction needs more work, first of all. It should be immediately obvious what the drug is used for (as this piece of information is the most meaningful in the article, to the average reader). When medical terms are used, I've tried to provide the lay-equivalent (e.g. somnolence = drowsiness). I really don't think any aspects of the drug's pharmacology would mean very much to the average reader, so that section can more or less be left alone. I've a feeling that the indications, side effects, and overdose sections could use some clarification.

Fuzzform 22:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Autism (Incidence) References etc

May I solicit your assistance on that page which still contins the Kennedy/China quote as a reference? I could copy your work form the autism epidemic talk page but it is your work and I don't want to write everything in the other article. One simple use of the (Incidence) article would be to drop it straight into the space left after removing the whole text of the (Epidemic) article, renaming and so on to bring the edit histories together. Anotehr would be to nuke the old article from orbit, of course. It matters rather less than leaving a useful article to WP standard behind. Midgley 21:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Anticonvulsant thoughts

I was looking through anticonvulsant tonight, and a few things occurred to me.

• Excitotoxicity is still not known for certain to be a factor in human epilepsy. I don't say it is or it isn't; just that it's debated.

That is interesting. So is most of the protective effects of these drugs just studied with animal models? What about status - surely that is more likely to have excitotoxic effects (apart from other problems such as not breathing properly).

• Is there data that suggests that oxcarbazepine is really better tolerated than carbamazepine? I'm not certain I believe it; I'm quite certain that the drug companies would *like* me to believe it.

I found quite a few papers that suggest it is: PMID 11738014, PMID 12737829, PMID 16450324, PMID 10030431, this old review document. This paper PMID 1379159 is less sure, mainly due to the small amount of data available. Each time I read about oxcarbazepine, I find myself thinking that although the drug is very similar structurally (one oxygen atom different), it metabolises in quite a different way and should be thought of as a completely different drug. I've found an paper that agrees: PMID 15380112, which also confirms the improved tolerability.

Well, it can't be completely different, as oxcarbazepine is the major hepatic metabolite of carbamazepine; therefore, anyone taking carbamazepine has a large amount of oxcarbazepine floating around in their system at any given time. Still, those papers are interesting; I will give them a closer look soon. --ikkyu2 (talk) 00:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Colin, I wasn't accurate; although oxcarb is structurally related to the major metabolite of carbamazepine, it's not identical with it. I am finding, however, that in patients, its side effect profile and, more importantly, spectrum of efficacy is roughly the same as carbamazepine. Its major benefit to me appears to be that it lacks the vigorous induction of the hepatic cytochrome P450 enzyme responsible for its metabolism that carbamazepine has; this "autoinduction" makes it difficult to regulate a person's carbamazepine level, and causes tricky interactions with other anticonvulsants as well. -ikkyu2 (talk) 03:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• Fosphenytoin is part of several consensus guidelines for the treatment of acute status epilepticus; it can work extremely quickly. The article asserts otherwise, which I found somewhat puzzling.

I didn't write this and must admit that I haven't reviewed the whole article - I was working largely from top-to-bottom. I think this statement should go.

• Zonisamide was orphaned by the (iirc, Japanese) company that developed it in 1972. It was picked up by Elan Pharmaceuticals and introduced to the market in, as you say, 2000. Lot of wasted time for the patients who benefit from it.

See this article. It does seem to take a long time for some drugs to get approved. Vigabatrin is still not approved in the US despite being the treatment of choice in the UK for tuberous sclerosis and infantile spasms (despite its side effects). This article suggests that it has been used since 1990 for epilepsy. So I should probably change the date on anticonvulsant.

Ovation Pharmaceuticals just picked up vigabatrin and submitted it to the FDA. This will be very good for all my patients with TS-associated spasms, as they can quit buying the vigabatrin I prescribe from Canadian mail-order pharmacies.  :) --ikkyu2 (talk) 00:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Work is taking all my time and being somewhat frustrating lately. Hope you're well.

-ikkyu2 (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Your comments

Hi. Thanks for your comments on my talk page. I'm sorry, I didn't know about the mirrors (what sort of name is 'absoluteastronomy' anyway?!) and I've put back the info I took out.

I would be happy to start some new articles but I'm not sure about the layout and stuff as I haven't written any before. As long as I knew people were happy to sort that out for me I'll give it a go. That's why I'm editing articles to start off with, also v short on time as I have exams coming up :( and it's easier just to do small chunks like that and add little bits rather than taking on a big project just now.

Hope I can be of some use, I know the basics of pharmacology esp. CNS drugs, and I also have a lot of pharm textbooks etc. that provide detailed info on other aspects.

Are you yourself from the best part of the UK or are you just a fan? :)

PS. If I had replied to your comments on my talk page, would you know it was there? Can I do that? Sorry, newbie question!! Berry 13:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

mg/lb

I've no idea about the status of usage of this, as you point out, odd unit combination. The inclusion in the article text is based on the appearance in the source material (web page). It will be a talking point when next I take my dogs to the vet, though. Regards, User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. My 12 year old golden retriever has suffered from a couple of major seizures, the last of which I stopped with a couple of dizepam suppositories - which is why I was interested in the content of the article. Regards, User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Newton Stewart

Can't honestly recall, to be honest. But I think it looked far too touristy anyway so I've wiped most of it. Usually if I need a lot of refs, dates etc, I'll cut and paste it from somewhere so I can build my own narrative around it. Possibly I forgot, but as I say, I'm not sure. --Stevouk 15:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Prince Erik of Sweden's epilepsy

Here are a couple reputable web sites regarding Prince Erik having epilepsy:

• http://www.btinternet.com/~allan_raymond/Swedish_Royal_Family.htm#3.313
• http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/YaBB.cgi?num=1140318179
• http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_van_Zweden This is the Dutch version of Erik's page and it mentions him being an epileptic. Morhange 17:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Why did you take that link off the Risperdal page?

Hey, Risperdal *IS* correlated with thyroid cancer now. That's a scientific article that's going to be published in the next few days, and that's an article announcing the publication. You can replace it with a link the the official study once it's out, but you should leave a link to the announcement in the meantime. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fsk (talk • contribs) 00:59, 2 June 2006.

Let's move further discussion of this to the talk page for Risperdal. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fsk (talk • contribs) 03:09, 4 June 2006.

Seizure response dog

I will take your suggestion to phase out the "See also" section in the Assistance dog articles to mind. I was following the lead of the early edits, but that makes much more sense.

Thanks for kicking me into action again. -- Sarranduin^(Talk) 16:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello again, and thanks for your continued help with the seizure dog article. I have attempted to re-organize it, have removed the unneeded headings, and changed the beginning of the previous "alert" section. I had originally included the quotations to begin the article describing the term "alert"- not to call into question the ability to alert. In fact, I have now met two trained dogs that can successfully predict seizures, and my only negative point of view is skepticism towards those who claim to train dogs to alert without even meeting the person the dog will go to, for reasons I feel are obvious....

I feel I might be in over my head regarding the proper formatting. For example, I reduced the size of the headings because "it looked better" with the shorter article, but obviously this is a deviation from the standard.... Please feel free to change whatever is necessary. Thanks again, Sarranduin^(Talk) 14:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I made several late night edits that I have come to regret. Sorry for taking your time with having to “deal” with me. I plan on working on the high-profile assistance dog organizations- putting more info on Canine Companions for Independence for example, and creating articles for the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners, Paws With A Cause, The Seeing Eye, and other organizations people might want more information on. Also, Assistance Dogs International has a large directory of member organizations here, so I think working that link into what already exists would be a better solution (I seem to be having more and more "duh" moments the more I communicate with you). -- Sarranduin^(Talk) 18:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response in West Syndrome

I don't know how to got wind of this little "problem" I was having over there but thanks for coming in and fixing it. You even did a much better job than I would have.--Aristiana 20:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Seizures, family trees and epilepsy

It's alright. It hasn't been such a good week.

Any how, if you're curious about family trees-- I created a bunch here notes on how to create 'em are here. I created one for seizures-- though I'm not quite happy with the size (it is pretty darn big). It would be nice if one could reduce the text size-- whereas <small> </small> doesn't seem to work. Nephron  T|C 19:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)