Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Drugs companies 'inventing diseases to boost their profits' - World - Times Online

Ok, admittedly, Big Pharma is not a very popular group, right now. Many of the pharmaceutical houses have behaved in questionable to out-right criminal. As a matter of fact, I can attest to Cannabis sellers in Amsterdam being more ethical than our own pharmaceutical companies.

But, I beg to differ regarding certain dis-eases (meaning just that; without ease or difficulty with ease. A lack of nomalcy.

You had better not tell someone with restless-leg syndrome that it doesn't exist. Saying that to a person who suffers from it, might well get you beat you about the head and shoulders and they would get away with it, as they would be far too sleep deprived to be responsible for their actions.

ADD and ADHD do exist. It can be seen on a filtered EEG and other tests. Of course it is over-diagnosed for a number of reasons from financial to political to cultural. Nevertheless, it is true that some kids and adults just seem to have brains that are wired quite differently from others. Is that bad or good?

The answer to that should be, the answer to this question: Does it make the person dysfunctional in a way that causes him or her great against.

Instead of that question, we tend to ask the question: Will this (attentional problem) hinder the kid from being what society expects him to be.

The simple fact is that there are a couple of things going on with the whole ADD/ADHD controversy: 1) Actual disordered attentionional functioning 2) not a disordered attentional function, but one that is not valued by the culture, or understood generally. Unfortunately, when this latter one is labeled as "disordered," it is our loss, as a culture.

The more a society or culture demands conformity and uniformity, the more people will be identified as "disordered."

Remember when we all had nightmares about the awful Soviet Psychiatric Hospitals where political prisoners were sent to be re-programmed with drugs or worse?

Psychiatry and psychology, not to mention medicine in general, must not allow themselves to be used by the corporate state.

Usually, female sexual dysfunction, whatever that is, is usually caused by a selfish and bumbling lover, but that is another whole post, with which I will probably never bother.

I think we can all do without that dissertation.


Drugs companies 'inventing diseases to boost their profits' - World - Times Online:

"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 'disease-mongering' 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.

The special issue, edited by David Henry, of Newcastle University in Australia, and Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist, reports that conditions such as female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 'restless legs syndrome' have been promoted by companies hoping to sell more of their drugs. "

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I applaud 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