"Risks start from the first drop"

If this is true, the medical community is actively causing harm. Many compounded or suspended children's medicines contain alcohol. Many do not have alcohol free alternatives.

All medicine have risks, the added alcohol is a tiny extra risk that the medical community thinks it is worth taking because it has benefits that are greater than the risks. For example, other chemicals that could be used as a substitute may be worse or poorly tested.

Medicine containing alcohol often comes with a few more counter-indications because of it, plus it limits the sales to people who wish to maintain strict abstinence, like Muslims. If they keep the alcohol, it is probably for a good reason.

It is completely different from recommending alcohol itself.

"If they keep the alcohol, it is probably for a good reason."

Can you name medications that require alcohol vs an alternative? Most of the alternatives are innocent like glycerin, or similar to food preservatives.

My main point is that there is hypocrisy. Saying that one drop is dangerous yet having it be heavily prevalent children's meds... one of these isn't right.

> If this is true, the medical community is actively causing harm.

That’s kind of a bizarre way of phrasing it. Yes, the medical community actively causes lesser harms, with the goals of preventing greater harms. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy, for example, are extremely harmful! Yet we use them as cancer treatments because the cancer we are treating with them is probably more harmful than the treatment.

Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are extreme examples, but this analysis is done across medicine with lesser treatments as well—and yes, we change the way we treat people as our understanding of the risks and benefits of various treatments changes.

With alcohol, its often times added to medicines as an inactive ingredient with little to no therapeutic value. It also has alternatives.

My main point is that's it's hypocritical to say one drop is dangerous and then have a myriad of children's meds containing it when alternative ingredients exist.

> My main point is that's it's hypocritical to say one drop is dangerous and then have a myriad of children's meds containing it when alternative ingredients exist.

You're miles away from making that point in a way that I can understand.

Even if there are risks you have to compare the risks. Would I have a child drink a small amount of alcohol for some life saving drug? Just like how you drive to work despite there being a risk in driving.

So what is the risk of damaging your life from 4 drinks a week compared to risks of getting killed by someone else walking to work every day (in the US with its drivers and SUVs)? Less alcohol is better, perhaps, but we live past our savings while drinking all the same.

What your example misses, is that alternatives exist to alcohol for most medicines. There's no reason for most of these medications to include alcohol.

Acetaminophen is cytotoxic and causes liver damage. No amount of it is safe. Yet we have children's tylenol.

Why? Because the body heals whatever miniscule damage occurs with small amounts. The trade off is one which we decide to leave to people to make with their judgment.

Then why do they fear monger with alcohol and not Tylenol? That's my question.