Valium / Diazepam News Blog

There are tests to screen for a plethora of sexually transmitted infections, for stomach ulcers, prostate cancer, infertility, diabetes and many more, while DIY cervical screening, and tests to identify abdominal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease are in the pipeline. And you can pay anything from £25 for an online consultation that could lead to a prescription for drugs such as Viagra, the morning-after pill or anti-obesity medication. But in the unregulated Internet universe, how can you separate the worthwhile, safe services from the useless rip-offs and the downright dangerous?

Doctor Julian Eden of E-med, a London-based firm, was recently suspended from practising for nine months after the UK General Medical Council (GMC) upheld a string of charges against him for prescribing drugs such as a year's supply of the highly addictive painkiller dihydrocodeine and the sedative diazepam, or Valium, and 51 repeat prescriptions for two highly addictive sleeping tablets, Zolpidem and Zopiclone, to a patient with only a five-minute consultation in nearly two years of treatment. In one case he ordered 60 sedatives for a suicidal 16-year-old boy with a history of self-harming and psychiatric care. The boy attempted to kill himself by overdosing on the drug two months later.

A GMC spokeswoman says the body had dealt with a handful of similar cases involving doctors working on the Internet who had breached good-practice guidelines and the United Nations has this month issued a warning to women of the dangers of buying appetite-suppressant pills over the Internet, particularly prescription drugs offered without a prescription. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is monitoring the growth of online medical services. Officials undertake covert surveillance of websites using sophisticated search tools to identify rogue traders. They can only, however, police sites based in the UK. If anything suspicious is found relating to websites based in other countries they pass information to their counterparts in those countries.

A (UK) Healthcare Commission spokeswoman says that only "one or two" services have been registered and while all UK Internet health services should be registered it doesn't have a specific remit to work with these organisations and is reviewing its procedures. Dr Thomas van Every - whose online health service, Dr Thom, is registered with, and regulated by, the Healthcare Commission - believes that the Internet will play a vital and growing role in healthcare. He hopes "the regulatory spotlight will fall more and more on online medicine. "The Internet is increasingly becoming part of a package of healthcare," says van Every, also an obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. "For some conditions, patients don't need to be sitting in front of a specialist. The unit costs of providing certain health checks over the internet are much cheaper than face-to-face consultations. "With our [Dr Thom] service we are trying to replicate a visit to the doctor".

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