Honjii's Harangues

America doesn’t run on oil, it runs on pills

From what I understand it takes a huge amount of money to develop and bring to market a new drug.  Lately the market seems flooded with more and more drugs for everything.  Imagine what a healthier nation we might be, if instead, all that research money went to finding the causes of the conditions for which big pharma develops pills to treat the symptoms.  What a business model.  Sell a drug to treat an unpleasant symptom of a condition from which one may suffer, the drug has some nasty side effects…but not to worry…there are more drugs to treat the side effects.  This becomes a vicious circle until eventually you die.  The cause of death should read chemical overdose, but instead it will be whatever ailment the original drugs were prescribed for.

It’s sad that most of the conditions or diseases are caused because people eat crap that passes for food (wouldn’t take a lot of money to figure that out) , but let’s save that for some other time.

I don’t watch a lot of television, but I do watch some.  In the few hours a week I spend in front of the TV, I see a disproportionate amount of drug commercials.  They are required to list possible side effects and they are absolutely horrifying.  I’ve heard side effects listed for medicines that may cause cancer or death. Personally if it were me I’d stick with the itchy feet.  One drug is apparently so volatile that you need to tell your doctor if anyone who lives in the same house has been or will be vaccinated for anything.  Now that’s pretty damned scary.  They don’t mention what will happen in that case, but I imagine your house may explode.  I saw one ad for an asthma medicine where one of the side effects was that…I swear I am not making this up… it may increase your risk of dying from asthma.  I understand that asthma can be dangerous, but why would you take an asthma medicine that could make it more so?

It seems to me pharmaceuticals have reached a whole new level in the last five or ten years.  They just keep churning out more and more drugs that have the potential to do way more harm than good, and the FDA keeps approving them.  The stuff they are selling the American public is so scary I’m not sure I’d even want to chance being in the same room with the stuff let alone putting it into my body.  Yet too many people don’t give it a thought.  The doctor prescribed it, because the pharmaceutical rep gave him/her a nice present, and without question, maybe a little research, you just swallow it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that legal drugs are now more dangerous than the ones being sold on the streets.  But who cares?  Some people are getting very rich by legally killing the uninformed.

On the other hand, this planet is getting a bit crowded, could this be population control?

I’m just saying…

Related Articles

• Op-Ed Contributor: Better Drug Ads, Fewer Side Effects (nytimes.com)
• Side Effects: The secret dance of your meds (newscientist.com)
• The strange powers of the Placebo Effect (guardian.co.uk)