Posts
Pharmaceutical companies are systematically creating diseases in order to sell more of their products, turning healthy people into patients and placing many at risk of harm, a special edition of a leading medical journal claims today. The practice of "diseasemongering" by the drug industry is promoting non-existent illnesses or exaggerating minor ones for the sake of profits, according to a set of essays published by the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.
Donald Rumsfeld has nothing to do with any of it.
Update: The Antagonist has been rather busy of late, hence the lack of blog updates, so this is now an open thread for discussion of whatever topic(s) defy YOUR sense of reason....
10 comments:
They call it "medicalising" a problem. I have a relative who has been involved with trying to find the female equivalent for sexual dysfunction in males which is treatable by Viagra, Cialis etc.,
They can find no evidence of any such condition. It is simply the hormones once ovulation stops finito benito , unlike the male.
Natch these results do not please the marketing folks.
They medicalized "anxiety" a long time ago - it has nothing to do with depression and serotonin but widens the "spectrum" of treatment.
Another method is to widen the age range for use. V difficult to get licenses for use on children , ethics of testing etc., but once drug established and then the age of use drops... some quite frightening eg Ritalin.. a drug widely abused for ut's hallucinogenic propwerties.
etc
Medicalising 'problems', as in conditions observed by GPs and either described to/proscribed by pharmas is a problem, I'd agree.
Not sure how it works re the flow of information between GPs/hospitals and pharmas, the BMA etc.
Who gets to decide from the stats (as 'interpreted') when a particular set of conditions is to be labelled a medical problem requiring/benefitting 'treatment'?
OS
As opposed to 'A sense of reason', who died and made you God, like!
Antagonist really you could get your skates on and put something new on.
My pharmacist is under recognized as a medic, they have to go through the same training as any doctor, in fact they are often more specialist but dont get paid the same or the same status.
Pharmacysts deserve equal status as doctors and equal pay.They are underpraised for the responsibilities they have.
Annette.
ps what is the disab;led symbol for?
In the outgoing credits of the film Constant Gardener, it states something along the lines of...
"This is but a holiday Postcard from the world of Global Pharmaceutical companies"
John Le Carre was slated by the MSM for his novel Constant Gardener, probably because it was too close to the truth...
Yep Ant, I'm waiting for an update on the homepage too.
Best Wishes,
Sinclair
Forget the Constant Gardener for a moment, what about the plot of Mission Impossible 2 which is based entirely on the idea of a drugs company starting a viral epidemic to boost profits, plus some fight scenes
Don't you just love it when Hollywood taunts us all by taking an issue that should concern everybody and sandwiches it in between a couple of car chases
Apologies to those of you who have been waiting for updates here. The Antagonist has been rather busy of late but trusts that you have all been amusing yourselves with the incredibly well documented demise of the new labour project. Read the usual blogroll suspects for the low-down.
In other news, it was national leave your box inside a box that you give up your life working to pay for and walk down the road into a larger box containing a much smaller box to put an 'x' in a box on a bit of paper before placing that bit of paper in another box so we know where you live' day, fondly known among the plebs as 'Vote for Tony Day', and everyone got very excited about that, so they did. Especially the thugs in suits who still look very much like thugs, only wearing suits.
Tessa Jowell was doing a late night stint during the x-box-thing-day, got very upset with Mr Dimbleby and observed that everything was not going according to plan, not because the government had in any way done anything wrong, or because public servants cannot keep their devious and conniving little conspiracies, collusions and peripatetic copulations from being broadcast everywhere but, instead, because 'our media' (as 'she' referred to it) wasn't conveying the issues well enough! As if!
Of course, Jowell knew that it wasn't the media that had failed, for the British media is far from non-compliant, but instead the PROPAGANDA is failing. By now, and with the whole of human history as a guide, pretty much everyone has figured out that it's always been a 'them' (as Jowell called it) and 'us' situation and no amount of propaganda can put that particular genie back in its bottle.
Last orders on Pirate Ship Britain as it began sinking again were to ensure all visible furniture items were arranged in a manner pleasing to the dictatorial ship's captain as he assumed his Emperor Canute-like position, wearing little more than the customary cheeky-chappie grin that had for so long underpinned his pallid, dead eyes and coprophilic utterances.
It is perhaps worth remembering in among all this mirth and merriment that, no matter how quick the demise, Bliar the murdering liar's legacy will still be one of legislation that gives the state powers execute members of the public at will and without fear of any comebacks, scrutiny, or inquiry. Foreign polic[e]y finally came home to roost. You're either with 'them' and 'their media', or the terrorists. For real, a'ight?
On the plus side, it seems the July Seventh Truth Campaign has sorted its act out and put a rather wonderful, information-packed web site together which contains more original research than Milan Rai's new book (which contains no original research at all and claims the alleged bombers caught the 7.48 train because it said so in a newspaper).
There's also a brand new July 7th blog which opened with a rebuttal of yesterday's Sunday Observer article 'The real story of 7/7' which, ten months to the day of July 7th, still places the alleged bombers on a train that was cancelled.
Owing to the lack of recent blog articles, this is now an OPEN THREAD for discussions of your choice. And, for for those of you that have commented so far....
Gentleman-Hobbs: I hope you're stocked up on Tamiflu.
Postman: Perhaps they should 'medicalise' the problem of, 'Fucking fed up with government bullshit-itis' and we everyone in the Shittish Isles can go on the sick....
OS: Who decides? If there's money to be made, I'd guess at those that stand to make some.
liberals make me sick: What is this 'God' thing to which you refer?
Annette: Which disabled symbol? Have you tried asking your pharmacist about it?
Sinclair: Postcards indeed. Pharmacratic inquisition.
Stef: Do you reckon if they make enough films that bear an uncanny resemblance to things that appear to be going on around us, that anyone might actually notice and start making the connections or, perish the thought, actually do something about it?
myrealnameispete: Thanks for the link.
Back to the drug thing for a minute - Leninology has a summary of the case against Pfizer's 'an illegal trial of an unregistered drug' and a 'clear case of exploitation of the ignorant' in Nigeria.
Have some 'human diploid cells from aborted fetal tissue' in your MMR and don't forget a bit of 'chick embryonic fluid' in your flu jab.
In a compulsory inoculation program, it is the responsibility of the developers, promoters and enforcers to prove safety and efficacy.
Are chicks avian? Is there some mysterious hidden connection between 'chick embryonic fluid' and avian flu?
Full text of Iranian President Ahmadinajad’s letter to Bush, from Le Monde.
Could you see Bush expressing his position in such a way?
Appreciate your blog,mental health consumers are the least capable of self advocacy,my doctors made me take zyprexa for 4 years which was ineffective for my symptoms.I now have a victims support page against Eli Lilly for it's Zyprexa product causing my diabetes.--Daniel Haszard www.zyprexa-victims.com
Post a Comment