I'm spurred to write this diary based on the experience of seeing someone throw chairs.
Now you might think, "What the hell does thrown chairs have anything to do with mad science?" So I'll tell you. It's like this: someone I know, who is taking a chronic low dose of an antidepressant, suffered a minor injury to his foot. It became infected, so his doctor drained the wound and then prescribed an antibiotic. And it was the morning after he had started to use the antibiotic that he started showing some odd behavior - most notably, aggression. Now, this is a person who has a personality trait of being somewhat aggressive, but it takes a lot to actually shove him over the edge into violence against inanimate objects; this time it was some stupid little thing, like spilling a few drops of coffee (I don't even remember what it was), and suddenly the air was turning blue with swearing and chairs were flying away from the guy. Everyone, himself included, quickly realized that something was very wrong.
And, well, he sat on his impulses until he could resist them, and then he went and looked up both drugs in the same Google search (that is, the antibiotic for the infection and the antidepressant for chronic major depression). He found that combining these two can cause "serotonin syndrome", an altered state of consciousness that can be displayed through unusual displays of violence or aggression, and can also be fatal (it can cause fever or seizures). Thus, using these two drugs together is contraindicated.
So for this MSPW, I would like to propose a drug contraindication database. Here is how it would be set up: all sorts of people - epidemiologists, physicians, patients or patient advocates, and so on - would work together on building an archive of adverse drug interactions, including the obscure ones like beta blockers and grapefruit juice. These would be ranked according to the probability of an adverse event, the severity of such an adverse event, and the permanence of it (e.g., a day or two of horrible gas vs. liver failure).
So if you're a doctor prescribing a drug, ask your patient: can you tell me what other drugs or dietary supplements you are taking, including illegal recreational ones? (My recollection is that admitting to a doctor that you have a habit of using illegal drugs is not, in itself, a crime, and that the doctor is not allowed to report you unless he believes you are a threat to the welfare of yourself or others.) Then feed the list of drugs, supplements, and any other recreational or medicinal compound into the computer along with the drug you want to prescribe. If it comes up with "expect adverse events" for an interaction of two or more compounds, you'll know to recommend that your patient not use those two or more compounds together.
I like this idea as opposed to one based around personal medical records because, after all, this is not using personal records of any kind; all the database knows is that some doctor is asking about the effects of combining, let's say, venlafaxine, nitroglycerine and sildenafil, not anything about who might be taking the drugs.
The tough part, though, more than in running the database queries, is keeping the database stocked with reasonably accurate and up-to-date information. Oh, also, the statistical models involved in determining which drugs are dangerous together and which merely create nuisances (e.g., flies in the eyes). So where do you get information on drug interactions from? That's a question that I honestly don't know the answer to.
But I think this is a good idea and if I knew anything about databasing, I for one would be working right on it.
(Other diaries in this series include novel prosthetics, virtual worlds, robot safety, ye short fiction, the sociology of fictional places, steam-powered giant robots, thermal depolymerization, nuclear airplanes, psychic powers, transgenic bacteria that make useful compounds, lightning in a jar, neural interfaces, powered armor, sonic weapons, rapid prototyping, putting Mentos and Diet Coke to good use, life on life support, combining farming and electrical generation, pigeon pilots, cuttlefish behind the wheel, the hafnium bomb, and building a better skunk.)