Stop the Insanity of a Pill for Every Ill

The Thinking Viking is not making this up.  2010 – 32,708 dead by car accidents. 2010 – 82,724 dead from FDA approved drugs. Read those numbers again.

Stop the insanity. It is killing us.

Your kids kind of high-strung? Feed them pills.  Worried about life?  Here’s some happy pills.  Leg twitchy when you go to bed?  Got something for that too.  Don’t fall asleep immediately? Here’s another one. Scared of speaking in public?  Here’s a  prescription, you’ll be fine. Have an unusual, highly active imagination and a dark sense of humor? That aint right, better take this, and this, and this.   Hmm, feel strange? Stranger than usual even?  This pill counteracts side effects, there, all better.

Fact: Many of these “drugs” are barely better than a placebo.  Drug companies have no restrictions on how often they can submit a drug to the FDA, and the FDA only cares if it can be shown to have “some” effect.  So what happens?  They run trial after trial until normal chance produces results that are better than a sugar pill, they take that one study, march up to the FDA, and bingo, new pill to keep you from having to pee so often.  Remember, these are often only marginally better than taking a Tic Tac, and even then often only work for a small percentage of people.  That’s why there are so many drugs for the same “disorders”. Odds are, whatever you try first won’t work, so they have another, and another to try, with little regard to other medicines in your system, your gender, your genetic background, or anything.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Western medicine can save lives and minds. You have pneumonia?  By all means, get some medicine.  If you have a true psychiatric illness, your life may be hell without certain medications.  Trust me, I have a brother from another mother who is impossible to be around unless he takes those particular pills.  He wisely has figured out which ones he needs, and throws away half of what the doctors give him.  When he takes them all, he is a zombie.  Personality flatlined.  Yeah, he smokes pot.   It helps him function.  Better that than a stone-faced automaton who sleeps 18 hours a day. Deaths from smoking pot? Zero. Please note, I am not suggesting it is something we should all be using, just pointing out it works for some and it cannot kill you.  A lethal dose has never been found for marijuana.

What we seem to have forgotten is that Western medicines were once derived from traditional medicines.  In modern times we used science and figured out which ones worked, mass-produced them.  Antibiotics, painkillers, sleep aids, all of it.  And the medicines we derived from them are pretty effective and cheap.  Look at the last words there. Cheap.  Not costing a lot of money (not making much money either).  Effective, so long-term use or large dosages ares not needed.  I know from personal experience that certain herbal remedies really work.  And they are cheap.  I only take medicines when I get sick.  I certainly could get prescriptions for anxiety, sleep disorder, depression, yada yada yada.  As you can guess, I don’t do so.   (BTW, I feel homeopathy is bunk.  It’s pseudo science.  Don’t waste your time).  I’m going to follow the money next.

Now, get your head around this one.  There’s been a lot of talk about corporate involvement in politics because the Supreme Court has decided corporations are people and that spending money is free speech.  Lot of people are rightfully worried that our elections and politics have been taken over by corporate influences.  I agree.  But these companies  aren’t just oil companies, not only car companies, or military suppliers or banks.  Pharmaceutical companies don’t have to limit their money throwing towards getting a sympathetic politician elected.  Years ago, it was not legal to market prescriptions directly to the masses.  No TV ads, no magazine pages, no websites, nothing. Only doctors knew about the new drugs. But now…Big Pharma can buy advertising and  these ads can say almost anything, so long as some fast talker reads off side effects at the end, right after “see your doctor about”.

And it works.  Americans take prescriptions at a much higher rate than any other country, and the money pours in.

“In the United States, spending for prescription drugs was $234.1 billion in 2008, which was more than double what was spent in 1999″. (Center for Disease Control)

Think about that.  Do you feel twice as bad as you did in 1999? I didn’t think so.

MJ

“Our Daily Meds” – 2008 Molly Peterson, Sarah Crichton Books.

http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Drugs/drug-deaths-exceed-traffic-deaths/story?id=14554903#.T01p0PGPUTY

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db42.htm

 

PS and finally, it is time we talked about wed