What’s the difference between a medication’s intended effect and its side effects? Is there some physiologic difference between the beneficial effects of a medicine and the annoying or even toxic things that it does? Not really. All medications have lots of different effects on the body. The intended effect is simply the one that the patient (or doctor) hopes to achieve. The rest of the effects are by definition side effects. The difference lies purely in the intention of the patient and physici...
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