The Prescription Drug Epidemic
You may not believe me, but I’m normally a pretty happy person. I joke with my dog, I sometimes talk like Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd and other Looney Tunes characters and some of my sexy short stories will make you laugh. Nevertheless, there are things that get my goat and make my blood boil. Yes, bankers, lawyers, mortgage brokers, televangelists and other such scoundrels drive me up a wall and I might talk about them on another day, but for now I want to talk about the guardians of our health, and the custodians of our lives, our doctors.
Did you know we have the greatest health care system in the world?
Balderdash!
Don’t make me laugh. If our health care system is so good, how come the lifespan in the U.S. is 38th in the world on life expectancy and 33rd worst in the world for infant mortality. How come every so often you read in the paper or hear on TV that some poor slob had the good leg amputated instead of the diseased one or some other mindless accident. I’ve been to doctors who’ve been dumber than dirt. Having an MD designation is no guarantee that your doctor is smart enough to keep from killing you. Yeah, that’s right killing you. Don’t get my wrong there are some good doctors out there, but some times they’re harder to find than snow in the Sahara.
Example, eleven years ago our son was seriously ill from Crohn’s disease. He was slowly dying while in the hospital, while a team of so-called specialists played doctor. My wife wouldn’t have it. She got on the phone with her sister in California and asked if she could get a recommendation. Within a day or so, my wife got the name of a Crohn’s specialist in L.A. To make a long story short, she talked to him, knew he was competent and to the chagrin of the pretend doctors, took our son, along with x-rays and records to L.A.
That was twelve years ago and no thanks to his original doctors, my son survived. Those doctors like so many didn’t have a clue and a doctor without a clue is dangerous, because they feel like they have to do something and when they don’t have clue, many times they do the wrong thing.
I can see I could easily write a couple thousand words on this subject so I’m going to jump to the subject of my blog, the pharmacological cartel’s seeming conspiracy to get everyone in the world taking their drugs. I do not for a minute believe they are a benign entity. The evidence supports the opposite. From lobbyists in D.C. to high powered ads on TV and elsewhere to paying doctors to peddle their wares: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/business/09anemia.html?_r=1 .
When was the last time you watched the national six o’clock news and didn’t see at least six ads for prescription drugs? Have you listened to the side effects they recite? Some of the worst are severe diarrhea, blindness and death. Yes, Death! That’s pretty severe side effect. And it happens. Have you or your family ever taken Ritalin? It can kill! And the affliction it supposedly treats, ADHD, is questionable. In the old sane days it used to be called hyperactivity.
I had a hyperactive sister. She didn’t take any drugs and she lived long enough to become what I would call a passive old maid. Not so for some of these kids: http://www.ritalindeath.com/adhd-drug-deaths.htm .
When it comes to special ed in our schools we have a case of the old Catch 22 here folks. The kids, usually hyperactive boys are diagnosed by our friendly physician or psychiatrist as having that made up disorder ADHD. They are then put on one or two various psychotropic drugs which through the years have killed thousands and guess what. They are so drugged that they can’t do their school work. When kids don’t live up to there potential, (ability tests) they are candidates for special ed. So almost all of the special ed kids are on drugs. And many that aren’t special ed are on drugs too. In fact it’s like an epidemic.
And folks this epidemic is everywhere, bought and paid for by the drug cartels and the medical community.
I’m going to leave it at that…for now. Looking forward to comments.
For those who may be interested, my latest book is a novel about another one of my pet peeves, Televangelists. If the subject interests you check out The Bastard Preacher.
The Bastard Preacher Blurb
If there are truly evil people in the world, Jamie Lee Vincent would be a prime suspect.
Smooth and handsome, sociopath, Jamie Lee Vincent decides there’s easy money in religion after attending a big tent revival in his home town of Tyler, Texas. Catching the interest of Reverend Sonny Riverton’s youngest daughter, the lovely and vivacious Missy, he charms his way into her bed and in short order the Riverton clan.
Utilizing his charm and natural-born talent for chicanery, Jamie Lee takes over the ministry, and when his popularity soars finds himself among the most revered of television preachers. However, the wealth, fame, sex and power he now enjoys isn’t enough—nothing is ever enough!
The Legal Drug Kingpins
In the nineteenth century entrepreneurs, generically known as Traveling Medicine Shows, used to crisscross our country in their horse drawn wagons, making a living by providing a minimal show for bored citizens and ultimately selling medicinal tonics, commonly known as Snake Oil. Whether they bought their product from a manufacturer or made the product themselves, buyers could usually count on a pleasantly flavored innocuous product that would probably give the recipient a little buzz due mostly to a small (10-15%) content of alcohol.. Though these merchants seemed harmless enough and provided a much needed break in monotony, the public never warmed to these men, sometimes calling them charlatans and flimflam artists.
Whether any of these medicine men had names like Pfizer or Merck or Lily or even Bayer I don’t know. What I do know and what America needs to realize, is that the Pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest businesses in the county and making billions of dollars a year selling legalized drugs, which in some cases are just as addictive, mind numbing and dangerous as their illegal counterparts. In effect they are today’s charlatans and flimflam artists. They are twenty-first century Snake Oil salesmen! Folks, this is one huge lobby.
Billions and billions of dollars are at stake here and right in the drug companies corner, is their pushers, the psychiatric industry and to a lesser degree the medical industry. Can’t sleep? Here’s a pill. Can’t wake up? Here’s a pill. In a bad mood? Here’s a pill. Can’t have sex? Here’s a pill. There is not a malady, medical or mental that the medical community doesn’t have a so called legal drug for and every drug out there has side effects (many serious) and or can be addictive. If I get a tooth filled, the dentist gives me a prescription for pain pills. For what? For four or five hours of diminishing marginal pain, I’m going to go to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for the dangerous addictive painkiller, codeine, or worse, which is an actual narcotic, derived from morphine, a derivative of opium. Have you or anyone you know, ever been to a Psychiatrist for treatment and not walked out with a prescription. It’s endemic. Psychiatrists no longer try to cure their patients neurosis’, they now, merely, try to exert control over them with drugs. They are the pimps of the legal drug cartel.
It is not only becoming apparent, to reasonable people, that legal drugs are dangerous to the people to whom they are prescribed, but more and more to the people around these people. The term ‘Postal’ was born from numerous instances of school and workplace slaughter, being tied to the perpetrator’s ingestion of psychotropic drugs, such as Prozac and Ritalin.
So why are legal drugs so expensive. I don’t know. You have to ask the drug companies. I do know this, many drugs that cost over a dollar a pill to buy, cost less than one cent to make. Yes I’ve heard the drug company arguments that new drug prices are high because they need to recover the enormous research costs that go in to new successful and unsuccessful products and yet the prices come down only when lower priced alternatives come on the market or the patent runs out, allowing other manufacturers to make the same drug. I also know that the same drugs sell in other countries for as low as ten percent of the price in the U.S. Why, you ask, if the drug cartel can make money at ten percent of the price there, they can’t here?
Selling medicine is no longer a way to make a living. It’s now a way to make a fortune, a world class fortune at that. Wake up America, we have become a culture of drugs. Drugs pervade our society. Last year drug sales in the U.S. topped $14 billion for antidepressants alone, $1.3 billion of which were for children. Many of these drugs are categorized in the same class as morphine, opium and cocaine. Bad enough we take these drugs ourselves but we give these drugs to our children, who trust us and have no say in the matter. More than 8 million American children are prescribed powerful stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs for questionable if not dubious reasons.
We have become a nation of hypochondriacs. America is in the midst of a legal and illegal drug frenzy. Feel down? Here’s a pill. Nervous? Here’s a pill. Can’t swim ten laps? Here’s some pills. Want to experience something different? Try this. When will it end? I don’t mean to be an alarmist but your very life and those of your loved ones may be at stake here.
Author’s Note
Hi, I have already written one controversial essay, which may surprise you, advocating legalizing, illegal drugs. How can I promote legalizing illegal drugs on one hand and support moderation for legal drugs on the other hand? I’ll admit the two ideas appear incompatible at first glance but in reality they make a lot of sense. Legalizing illegal drugs would ultimately make them so inexpensive that a whole sub culture of criminals would be put out of work and if the country used legal drugs less, it would force those costs down as well, just like if we used less gas, it would go down.
‘If I want you in my arms. All I have to do is Dream’
I’m sure that many if not most of you are not familiar with the lyrics I used from am old 1950’s Everly Brothers song for my title, but it sure came to my mind when I read this article on wet dreams. I find the article interesting so I’m going to share it with my readers.
Question: have you ever experienced an orgasm from a dream?
My answer: No. Unfortunately not in years, but I have in the past. Now days some kind of sub-conscious censor has implanted himself in my psyche. I can start a sexy dream but just before I get to the really good part a curtain falls as if someone said you’re not allowed to go there. At this point I wake up frustrated and disappointed.
The following is a an article from the AOL Love and Dating pages.
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The Latest in Love & Dating News:
Fun Facts About Sex Dreams
Posted: 2007-08-23 14:02:57
Chances are, you had a sex dream this week. Fully eight percent of
our dreams involve sexual situations, according to a new study from
psychologists at the University of Montreal in Canada.
Interestingly, women have just as many sex dreams as men, with one
important difference: Men are far more likely to have fantasies about
sex with imaginary people, while women dream about current or past
sexual partners, as well as celebrities, reports HealthDay News.
“Men used to report many more sex dreams, twice as many as women, and
we don’t find that difference anymore,” study author Antonio Zadra,
an associate professor of psychology at the University of Montreal,
explained to HealthDay News. “Either women are having them more, or
they’re more likely to report them. Either way, it’s interesting. ”
Even though sex dreams are very common, psychologists haven’t paid
much attention to them. For this study, the team asked 109 women and
64 men ages 20 to 89, all of whom responded to an ad about the
research project, to keep a diary of their dreams for as long as one
month. The total number of dreams exceeded 3,500.
What do we dream about?
— The most common sex dream involved sexual intercourse, followed by
flirting, kissing, fantasies and masturbation.
— Four percent of sex dreams among men and women resulted in an
orgasm.
— 18 percent of women’s sex dreams involved unwanted sex, compared
with just five percent of men.
— Nine percent of sex dreams among women and five percent among men
involved fantasies about celebrities.
— Men were far more likely to dream about having sex with more than
one person.
— Four percent of women’s dreams featured a partner having an
orgasm. None of the men reported this dream.
Zadra explained that if you dream about something, it probably
occupies your waking thoughts as well. “If the sex dreams tend to
involve unknown or fantasy characters, it is probably a reflection of
your waking state, that your desires and fantasies are with
strangers,” he told HealthDay News.
The study findings were reported at the annual meeting of the
Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis, Minn.
Eighty percent of us have a wet dream once a week. Do you? If you’re one of the lucky ones, is it always the same or is it different each time? Would you like to tell us about it?
The Iraq War – A forty Day Party
As a former Reagan Republican, I cannot help but be severely disappointed by the level of incompetence of the present administration. However, it appears there is still a good deal of support among so-called Bush loyalists, a fact that amazes me. Either they are ignoring the mountain of evidence of malfeasance that has been accruing or they pay no attention to the country’s current military and financial situation. Therefore, I will occasionally post a review of one of the many books that chronicle the run-up to and the prosecution of the Iraq War. These are not Left-wing books of anti-Bush propaganda but books written by thoughtful writers, whose only purpose is to present the facts. And to any that bother to read the facts, they are disturbing.
Here is the first review,
COBRA II by Michael Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor
The Bottom Line:
Cobra II provides a good account of the thinking and non-thinking that propelled us into this never-ending war.
While reading Cobra II – when I wasn’t simmering – I got the impression that the strongest military in the world was being controlled and misused by a modern day version of the Keystone Kops. Not that I’m surprised. I and two thirds of the country (God help the other third) knew something was amiss, but many of the things I suspected were laid out in glaring fashion in this interesting text.
It’s like President “What me worry?” was having his arm twisted by Vice President “Darth Vader” undersecretary Darth Maul (Wolfowitz) to throw a forty day party in Baghdad. That’s right the war that has outlasted both World War I and the Korean War and is fast approaching World War II (It has now surpassed it) was expected to be a thirty to fifty day party and then we all go home with smiles on our faces. Perhaps it would have, except for two things.
First, our Defense Secretary, decided he knew more than all his generals combined. He threw out ten years of military planning for the invasion of Iraq, and proceeded to badger his generals to keep reducing planned invasion troop levels to a number he liked. I guess the secretary is into numerology. The number the generals started with was 380,000. The number the S.O.D. accepted was 140,000 – just enough to get us into Baghdad but not enough to get home.
The second thing, which some knowledgeable people foresaw, but not the myopic administration, was that the party might get crashed by some unwanted guests. Who you ask? Why, a bunch of young hot heads driving Toyotas, some wearing towels over the faces, some carrying funny objects on their shoulders or weapons in their arms and all looking for trouble. The first fatality of the war was caused, not by an Iraqi soldier but, a group of these hot heads in a Toyota Pick-up.
Commanders on the ground noticed this effective, unforeseen adversary, utilizing hit and run guerilla tactics and wanted to confront them, but the bigwigs in Cent Com ordered them to bypass these future insurgents and head straight to Baghdad, do not pass Go. Apparently they felt that once Baghdad fell everything. would fall into place. What they got when they took Baghdad was widespread looting. The authors Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor go on to speculate that the fediyeen, which the army was ordered to ignore and bypass on the way to Baghdad, became the backbone for the strong insurgency we now face.
Conclusion
Liberal, Conservative, independent – Right wing, Left wing, it doesn’t matter, reading this book will upset you. The book is not a liberal rag. It does not have a political bias, unless you consider a bias toward incompetence political. It just lays out the facts, often in minute detail. That, in fact is one of the books weaknesses. Cobra II reads like a play by play description of the war to date from the rationale though the planning to the prosecution of the war, with it’s attendant mis-steps. The prosecution portion of the war takes up at least two thirds of the book and unless you are a war junkie and despite some interesting parts begins, after awhile, to all sound the same.
The parts of the book I found most interesting were the initial planning stages and those portions dealing with the dissension that developed between Rumsfeld and Franks and later the turmoil between Franks and the generals in the field. The authors also point out how many of the problems that developed in the initial occupation of Baghdad and the aftermath were anticipated by various sources with suggestions, but were discounted or ignored by the administration. In short, the administration didn’t want to hear anything that might disrupt their vision of a forty day party.
Unfortunately the book only takes us through the war itself and the stirrings of the nascent insurgency. Three years later we are seeing what almost everyone agrees is a low grade civil war, verging on civil war.
Author’s Note; This review was written over a year ago. I would say things are pretty much the same, wouldn’t you?
Whopper
George Whopper Bush,
The forty-third President of the United States is George W. Bush. Many citizens think the middle initial stands for Walker after his maternal Grandfather, as in George Walker Bush. However, I postulate that another middle name fits reality better. In my opinion W. really stands for Whopper as in George Whopper Bush. Whopper as I shall call him from here out has spun some dandies. Perhaps you are not aware of this, preferring to believe Whopper instead of your lying ears and eyes. If so, I have some gold mine stock I’d like to unl…er discuss with you.
I have taken the time to edify you to some of the Whopprisms we all have been subjected to, yet you may not be aware of.
Since the buck stops in the Oval office, I have included some of the blatant Whoppers that have been foisted upon us by his so-called advisors.
George Whopper Bush top forty-three Whoppers. (In no particular order)
1. We’ll get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.
2. Iraq is the center in the War on Terror.
3. Brownie. You’re doing a hell of a job.
4. We’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.
5. Oil revenues will pay for the Iraqi war
6. Mission accomplished.
7. I’m not into nation building.
8. We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
9. Saddam Hussein tried to obtain uranium from Niger.
10. Aluminum tubes the Iraqis have obtained can only be used for nuclear centrifuges.
11. You go to war with the army you have, not the one you’d like to have.
12. Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague
13. Iraq is known to have weapons of mass destruction.
14. We will be greeted in Iraq as liberators.
15. The damage that Katrina inflicted on New Orleans was unexpected.
16. We went into Iraq to build a democracy in the Middle East
17. Islam is a peaceful religion.
18. Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11
19. Iraq was a sponsor of Terror.
20. Abu Musab Zarqawri was an agent of Al Qaeda (not at first)
21. Iraq is a terrorist haven (now it is.)
22. We’re not facing an insurgency.
23. A few dead enders.
24. We give our military all the troops they ask for.
25. Things are not as bad in Iraq as they appear (one of those lying eyes things)
26. Today marks the end of hostilities. (over three years ago)
27. We have a plan.
28. Osama bin Laden is now insignificant.
29. We will stand down when they stand up.
30. The insurgency is in its last throes.
31. The insurgency should slow down now that Iraq has a freely elected government.
32. The insurgency should slow down now that they have a constitution.
33. The insurgency should slow down now that they have an interim government.
34. The insurgency should slow down now that Zarqawri is dead.
35. The insurgency should slow down now that Hussein is in custody.
36. Over 200,000 Iraqi troops are now trained.
37. There is no civil war in Iraq.
38. We should be out of Iraq in six months.
39. We went with the best intelligence we had. (should’ve said we could pick)
40. Congress had the same information we had.
41. We gave the UN all the time we could.
42. The war in Iraq did not distract us from the war on Terror.
43. We didn ‘t start planning the invasion of Iraq until after 9/11.
Bonus Lie: I finished my tour with the Air National Guard.
Extra Big Lie: I would still go into Iraq, knowing what I know now.
Wow, all them Whoppers, sure made me hungry. I think I’ll go to Burger King.
Viewpoints I – A look at Psychiatry
From time to time I will post viewpoints from academicians which tend to mirrorm mine. Here is the first of such postings:
MORE BRITISH ACADEMICS SPEAK OUT!
Tom Cruise is most certainly right. Psychiatry is, and will remain a
pseudoscience and the only caveat to that statement is that it may give it
more credibility than it deserves.
I speak as a medical ethicist and I congratulate Tom Cruise first for his
courage to speak out on such issues and second on his obvious dedicated
interest in the subject demonstrated by his knowledge of the issues. The
detractors especially those who support psychiatry because it has ‘helped
them’ miss the point. Tom Cruise is speaking about the subject, they are
speaking about themselves. The subject is this. Psychiatry demands
recognition within the healing arts and claims to be both a science and a
branch of medicine. It is neither for these reasons.
For years psychiatry has propagated a myth that mental illnesses are
biological and has even gone so far in many cases to deny that we are
creatures of free will at all. For years those who refuse to accept this
dogma have asked them for evidence, not conjecture, to support this
position. It has not been forthcoming and the best they have ever been able
to come up with are “maybes”, “possiblies” and “we believe”. Not one piece
of real evidence has ever been adduced and it places this branch of
‘science’ in the same category as that that searches for the Yeti and the
Sasquatch, except of course that those who believe in Yetis and Sasquatches
have never had access to the vast research funds that the biopsychiatric
fraternity have.
Medicine is bound by an ancient and laudable tradition of ethics in which
primum non nocere (first do no harm) is the foundation stone that the
doctrines of beneficence and non-malfeasance are built on. Those ethics are
abrogated and control has primacy over care, first do no harm but second do
what you like. Lying to patients in any branch of medicine is a breach of
that ethic. Forcing medication is a breach of that ethic, denying the right
of consent is a breach of those ethics and if those ethical conditions
cannot be met then psychiatry does not belong in their world.
Respect for autonomy is a pillar of medical ethics. Autonomy is a myth in
psychiatry and cannot be found in any psychiatric hospital or in any society
where medication with dangerous drugs is a condition of liberty. Justice is
the fourth pillar of medical ethics and as with the others it is totally
absent in psychiatry. Where is the justice in telling patients that ‘mental
illness is for life’ when that excludes them from many areas that those of
us who are not ‘mad’ take for granted. Where is the justice in lying to
patients that mental illness means they must take drugs forever when real
science has shown that is not the case. Where is the justice in detaining
people against their will, without due process, on the spurious grounds that
they are a risk to themselves. Where is the justice in billions of dollars
being spent on mood adapting drugs while those drugs that save lives ‘cannot
be afforded.’
Even if psychiatry were a ‘science’ it would belong in the field of what is
now described as the most dishonest science of all, Biological Science.
This once noblest of sciences was originally a search for knowledge and
truth. It is now a search for dollars and when truth gets in the way of
that, it is buried. Case after case is now coming to light where the
bioscientists have lied to get research dollars, kudos and personal wealth.
Some of these scientists gone bad are now facing well deserved jail
sentences. Manufactured mental illnesses have provided the biggest growth
industry to these characters, puffing up egos and fattening wallets. Real
science and real people have suffered the cost of this with real illness
neglected and real science ignored.
Biopsychiatry is the biggest pseudoscientific lie since eugenics, to which
it is of course closely related. A big hand to Tom Cruise and all who keep
reminding us of this.
Barry Turner
Lecturer in Medical Ethics and Law
University of Lincoln
London, England
Silly Things 