Paroxetine (better known as Paxil in the U.S.) is a
n antidepressant. It is licensed only for adults, but doctors are allowed to prescribe any medicine if they think it will help their patient(see picture to the right) ; a practice called “off-label” prescribing; around 7,000 children a year were on the drug in the UK; and many more in the U.S. Many teens that take these antidepressants end up committing suicide because the drug ends up increasing aggression in the young adult. The new cholesterol lowering guidelines are proving to be a windfall for statin drug manufacturers like Pfizer and Merck: most news articles and medical advice concerning the new guidelines recommend drugs—and drugs only—to reduce cholesterol level. As a result, the guidelines are perhaps better described as profit generators for pharmaceutical companies. 6 out of the 9 panelists that issued the new decision about cholesterol levels have received grants or consulting payments from statin drug manufacturers; the panelists get paid “consulting fees” and grant money, the guidelines are arbitrarily lowered to a level that suddenly puts millions more Americans into the “high cholesterol” categrory simply by changing the definition, the popular press runs headlines screaming that millions of people should now suddenly be taking statin drugs for life, and the drug companies receive a windfall in sales and profits. The doctors are getting “consulting fees” for doing nothing more than signing a blank piece of paper, the researchers are getting “grant money” to carry out research that almost always supports the drug companies, and the mainstream media is receiving billions of dollars in ad revenue as long as they keep pushing drugs to customers, both in advertising and news content.
The problem is that none of this has anything to do with real health. Prescription drugs simply don’t 
make people healthy; they mask symptoms, and these statin drugs have a bewildering array of dangerous side effects such as sudden death, loss of sex drive, osteoporosis and hormonal imbalances. Prescription drugs are not needed to be healthy; the whole system of promoting these drugs is an unprecedented con being perpetrated on the American people. In fact, the system is downright criminal; the FBI should be investigating and prosecuting the players of this industry, using the RICO laws designed to bring down organized crime (see picture to the right). The economic logic of the medical-industrial complex is straightforward, prescription drugs and high-technology medical devices account for a growing share of medical spending; both products are expensive to develop but relatively cheap to make so the profit from each additional unit sold is large, giving their makers a strong incentive to do whatever it takes to persuade doctors and hospitals to chose their products. Hospitals and doctors need to remember the reasons why they became doctors; if they wanted large payoffs, they should of become politicians; doctors should only prescribe medicine that they really think is going to be helpful, not the most profitable.
1 comment:
I thoroughly enjoyed your post, and I think that the topic is very interesting and provocative. The way you presented your argument is clear and very convincing. You do not sway from your opinion, and that helps in making your argument seem more valid. I could not agree with you more on your opinion that “prescription drugs are not needed to be healthy.” I believe that prescription drugs are far over-prescribed, and most of the time, they not even needed. Your assertion that all they do is “mask the symptoms” is one hundred percent true, in my opinion. In fact, I have heard of more people developing more problems and symptoms as a result of taking prescription drugs than people who are helped by these same drugs. I do think, however, that saying that “the whole system of promoting these drugs is an unprecedented con being perpetrated on the American people” is a bit strong; mostly true, but still, a bit strong. There are some very effective prescription drugs that do help a great deal, such as birth control, hormone replacements, etc. These are not necessarily needed, but I do believe that drugs such as these do generally help people more than hurt them. Therefore, I think that it is a bit of a generalization to say that promoting all prescription drugs is a con, and in effect, hurts your argument slightly. However, I do still believe that your argument is strong enough that, even with this generalization, it is still convincing.
I have only two comments about the post as a whole that I think you should watch out for in the future. The first is your use of semicolons. In some places they are used effectively, but in others there are too many used in a row and it ends up making a sort of run on sentence that makes it hard for the reader to read. Also, I think that the color of your visited links should not be the same color as the font of the blog. This makes it difficult for the reader to go back and find the link should they want to revisit it. Other than that, however, I think your blog looks very good and, as I said before, your arguments are very sound and very valid.
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