Thursday, July 13, 2006

SNAKE OIL AND PHARMACEUTICALS

Some 21% of all medicines are prescribed to treat conditions for which they're not approved, and some 73% of these uses lack strong evidence supporting their use.
Reader's Digest/August 2006/Health IQ by DR. ROIZEN & DR. OZ

I know I have an obsession with conspiracies.
I have one more.
I was watching TV this morning and saw a river of Atripla gushing down a chute in some factory.
Millions and millions of big tablets for AIDS patients.
My first thought: AIDS was created to make Pharmaceutical Companies even richer.
This proposition seems so unlikely that I might believe it.
Atripla combines into one pill what three do separately.
That doesn't sound bad.
But will the cost go up or down?
I am amazed (but not really that surprised) when reports come out years later saying how the drugs we took are now giving us cancer and heart attacks etc.
There are no traveling medicine shows today, only endless TV commericials about endless kinds of wonder drugs.
It makes me wonder.
I wonder how many drugs are really bad for us, and how many are good for us.
Sure, these drugs relieve symptons of one ailment, but they then produce their own negative effects.
Take one and call me in the morning.

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