Medicine: Friendly Fever?

When children get sick, the commonest symptom is fever, and the first thing that most physicians do is try to get the temperature down. Despite the prevalence of this practice, it may be all wrong, says Stanford University's Dr. Alan K. Done in Pediatrics. When they rush to prescribe one of the hundreds of anti-fever drugs now marketed, physicians are attacking the symptom, not the underlying disease, and may be interfering with one of nature's defense mechanisms, says Pediatrician Done. And although some youngsters' miseries seem to be the result of, fever, other children with a high temperature are as happy...

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