Not that Mr Haraguchi was likely to prescribe harsh medicine for the banks, either.

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In the most restrictive cases, only certain registered doctors are allowed to prescribe a medicine, or a drug is only distributed by a limited number of pharmacies.

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When a drug is likely to cause a severe side effect--say, an increased risk of heart attack, an allergic reaction that causes the skin to burn or liver failure--the standard practice is to warn patients and doctors about the product's labeling, and to send out warning letters to physicians who might prescribe the medicine.

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The Cleveland Clinic's LeGrand recommends using case studies instead of mere lectures, and getting other doctors to watch closely how pain specialists prescribe medicine.

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The medicine for these ills is simple to prescribe, but painfully hard to administer: structural reforms to deregulate labour and product markets.

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But it cannot quite steel itself to concede that, in the face of the evidence that it presents, American doctors ought now to be given the right to prescribe the stuff as freely as they would any other medicine.

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According to a survey published this fall in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), doctors are about half as willing to prescribe a drug described in an industry-funded trial.

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