Apr
16
You know that when a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine writes that “instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, {drug companies} have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs,” conventional medicine in the US has reached a watershed. For a compelling insight into how an alliance of pharmaceutical companies and faculty of leading medical schools put profits before public health, read this essay, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption,” in the New York Review of Books. Most shocking is news of the drug industry’s creativity in coming up with new, serious-sounding names for familiar – and often minor – conditions, so that people will be persuaded to take powerful, expensive drugs for relief. Did you know, for example, that heartburn is now routinely diagnosed as “gastro-esophageal reflux disease,” or that impotence has morphed into “erectile dysfunction” and shyness is now a “social anxiety disorder?”
As a former health care provider I am infuriated by this pathologizing of normal aches and pains of life to its most natural processes and trials – from shyness to birth to menopause. Don’t be intimidated by fancy names – get informed. Read up on what the name actually means, what’s the underlying physiology – and preferably from a source outside of the medical-pharmaceutical-industrial loop. I like to start with Health World Online
, or integrative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil’s site. Or I reach for a naturopathic staple like any one of Dr. Michael Murray’s numerous books, starting with The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine. Another classic is What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You
, which is now available online.ferngully 2 the magical rescue divx movie online
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