Thanks for the heads up on Zyprexa complications and the helpful link.
{Only 9 percent of adult Americans think the pharmaceutical industry can be trusted right around the same rating as big tobacco}

Zyprexa, which is used for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, accounted for 32% of Eli Lilly's $14.6 billion revenue last year.

Zyprexa is the product name for Olanzapine,it is Lilly's top selling drug.It was approved by the FDA in 1996 ,an 'atypical' antipsychotic a newer class of drugs without the motor side effects of the older Thorazine.Zyprexa has been linked to causing diabetes and pancreatitis.

Did you know that Lilly made nearly $3 billion last year on diabetic meds, Actos,Humulin and Byetta?

Yes! They sell a drug that causes diabetes and then turn a profit on the drugs that treat the condition that they caused in the first place!
I was prescribed Zyprexa from 1996 until 2000.
In early 2000 i was shocked to have an A1C test result of 13.9 (normal is 4-6) I have no history of diabetes in my family.
----
Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com

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We are, unfortunately, a very sick society. None of us is a shining example of ease. Instead, we are each in varying states of dis-ease. Instead of vigorous visions of wellness, we are dragging drudges of un-wellness, each with our own little package of ailments, uniquely mixed and "dosed" to varying degrees. So, it's both realistic and easy to sell us on the idea that we are sick because it's true, we are sick. We are physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually sick.

Individually, we have spent our whole lives becoming sick, and collectively, we have spent generations becoming sick. We have polluted our bodies, hearts, minds and spirits, along with our earth, our crops and our livestock in a multitude of ways. We have done this over generations, but most discouragingly, we have done most of our physical pollution along with much of the other types primarily during our current generation and, to some extent, the previous couple of generations.

The result is that there is no quick cure and hardly even any quick let alone lasting relief from the multitude of symptoms we experience every day of our lives. The quick relief or cure "promised" by the cornucopia of drugs currently available is mostly an illusion. It is an illusion because almost all of these pharmacological offerings bring their own set of problems to add to our packages of ailments, It is an illusion because relief and/or cure is usually expected and "promised" to come quickly even when that is not possible because the underlying conditions are not changed. It is an illusion because the real relief and the real cures are either not recognized or they are ignored.

The industrially produced food we consume is not as nutritious and nourishing as it should and could be, and as it once was. The earth we grow our food in has been abused and depleted, the air our food sources breathe - and that we breathe - has been polluted, the water that flows within and upon and that falls onto our earth has been fowled. Much of our food is contaminated with growth hormones, pesticides and preservatives, and it has been refined and otherwise processed to the point that much of its inherent goodness has been removed or destroyed under the guise of making it better. Eating this so called food, we expect to be nourished and sustained for a long, healthy life, but instead find that we suffer with multiple ailments. And then we expect our health will be improved with a few over the counter or prescription drugs.

We fill our lives with stress and crack under the strain. We attack our selves and each other with fear, distrust, anger, hate, and countless other negative thoughts, feelings and actions. We do this individually and we do this collectively, in our families, in our communities, through our businesses, through our entertainment, through our governments, through our churches. We don't know how to not be negative so we become ever more negative under the delusion that this is somehow an appropriate defense that will protect us and keep us healthy. We don't know how to process and integrate the things we experience in our lives so we become overwhelmed by them and suffer physical, emotional, mental and spiritual breakdowns. We don't know how to rest, how to relax, how to sleep, so we go through life worn out and exhausted. And then we expect our health will be quickly and easily improved by taking a few drugs.

(continued...)

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I'm not a fan of the pharmaceutical industry for many reasons. Primarily, I am appalled by the way they sit on drugs that could save the lives of so many people in the Southern Hemisphere.

And, while agreeing that there is a tendency to pathologize everything, not all of the pharmaceuticals mentioned in your article are necessarily a bad thing. For example, the drug Provigil makes it possible to get much less sleep on a long-term basis, while avoiding the disastrous side effects of amphetamines. The same is true of the ampakines (CX717) being investigated by DARPA.

Press coverage of these developments often dismisses these as "lifestyle drugs." But what is wrong with having access to a lifestyle drug? Perhaps I want to sustain my sexual performance. I might just want to stay up for a long time to take care of personal projects. Isn't that my decision to make?

There is clearly a growing cultural backlash against pharmacological agents. I'm glad that people are thinking critically about these things. However, it would be nice to see some acknowledgment of the potential off certain lifestyle drugs.

You mentioned substances that allow "hard work for four straight nights with only four hours of recovery sleep in between." You also say that "Tests have shown that monkeys awake on CX717 for 36 straight hours had better memory and alertness than undrugged monkeys after normal sleep."

This is awesome! I want to get in on that action. Not because I want to slave for the man around the clock, but just because I want to do more creative work and spend more of my life awake.

Great article overall.

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After 25 years of medical practice I realized that I no longer belonged to the profession of medicine. Managed Care, the Legal System, Politics and last the Pharmaceutical Industry had effectively taken control. Their intent, cumulatively, was not to care for people but to make money. And they have done that to the extent few can afford what they offer. I changed course in life and recevied my doctorate in Health Education for I believe, for me, that was how best to continue my Hypocratic Oath and commitment to help others. But there is no funding or interest in these same institutions to embrace taking care of the physical, emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual aspects of life to acheive health and avoid illness. Depression will be the second leading cause of disability in ten years but there is no mention in the profession for treatment except for antidepressants. There was only one antidepressant in 1980. This is only one example. Stress in the leading cause on any illness and disability of all kinds but there is no bona fide plan to help people understand and negotiate this chronic condition. As for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis and impotence they are mostly consequential to being overweight and lack of physical activity. But the profession and pharaceuticals provide drugs only with no mention of long term resolution. So it now stands that those who remain ignorant will continue to be victims and those who learn to care for their own lives, and it is work, and live healthy lives in spite of this society.

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How much of an impact does all this advertising have on the cost of these drugs? My husband was prescribed one, "the little purple pill," I believe, and it was so expensive my insurance company would not pay for it without preapproval (and would not preapprove it, saying there were cheaper drugs he could be treated with). I told the pharmacist I felt the reason some drugs were so costly was due to the advertising and she agreed with me.

And by the way, SAD is Seasonal Affective Disorder, not what was stated in this article.

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In a quasi-corporatist (neo-fascist?) society, the corporations that live symbiotically with government are destined to exploit us rather than help us.

The wonderful thing about mankind's natural tendencty toward capitalism, though, is that even when government-sponsored pharmaceutical giants try to keep us all sick and poor, a "black market" of truly helpful health products springs up. Just listen to the radio infomercials. I know you're probably predisposed not to trust infomercials, but you KNOW that the professional-looking Pfizer ads are BS. There are dozens of products out there helping people attain real health. Some are even combined with affiliate marketing systems to promote health AND wealth among the products' beneficiaries. I've listed below a couple I know about off the top of my head.

We can bitch and moan about the big bad pharmacorps, but the way around them already exists. Stop using their drugs! All the fascism in the world can't stop free markets of good products from emerging.

http://www.amazonherb.net/Corporate/
http://www.greenteaplus.com/
Herbalife - I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of this stuff. I used it as a detox as I changed to a better diet. My mom even used it to lower her blood pressure.

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Before it ran, I sent this article to my brother, a psychologist, for his reaction. His thoughts are worth reproducing as a comment.

Stan Cox

Here they are:

I am fully convinced that the body's ability to self heal is often either thwarted or eliminated by overuse of medications. I think what we know about antibiotic overuse today will be found true for many of these medicines. I only know psychiatric medication well but that knowledge leads me to understand that we don't really know much about the true effect of many medications.

I have always thought that this poorly organized method was related to physicians not being empirically trained. They are taught in a symptom - symptom - symptom - syndrome - syndrome - diagnosis - intervention method which suggests that you follow each symptom pattern to end of the line perform the intervention and the patient should get better. The problem is that there is no apparent awareness of interactive effects. Add to this profit motive of the drug companies. Add to that the typical patient who believes in her or his heart of hearts that the doctor must possess the solution to their illness (or the doctor is incompetent) and you have us treating ourselves to death.

If medicine were practiced by empirically trained folks I do not believe you would ever have one person on 4-7 different psychoactive medications, which I have seen many times. You would not have a new medication added without at least consideration of the question of how it would interact with current medications. And I believe you would have some level of resistance to drug companies efforts.

All that being said, I do not know if the empirical practice of medicine would be possible currently. The grace I readily give physicians is that we as a society are asking them to manage the most complex system we know anything about and expecting them to always have a solution and usually one that doesn't require the patient to change their behavior. So, if they need to cut a few corners it seems only fair. I genuinely believe that medical school, of necessity has become an exercise in oversimplifying an impossibly complex problem so that you can at least do something. And given that it is astonishing how successful they are.

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In addition to my earlier comment, in "alternative medicine" products, you'll frequently find they are not FDA approved.

Does that make you trust them less? It shouldn't. The article above should make it clear that the FDA is simply a Fear Distribution Agency to keep you afraid of products that aren't part of the neo-fascist symbiosis.

"Not FDA Approved" simply means that it isn't cooperating with the FDA's system of CONTROL.

That is all.

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I'm not a TV watcher, but when I do stop and pay attention, I notice ad after ad for pharmaceutical drugs. After a ten-year hiatus from cable, I agreed to get satellite for my spouse's hockey habit. That's when I noticed the prevalence of drug advertising, particularly during the news programs. It seems that the evening news hour is solely sponsored by the drug companies!

Sleep issues, sexual performance issues, allergies, restless legs, dry eyes - if you watch TV long enough, you'll probably develop some symptoms for one or more of these conditions.

Instead, turn OFF the tube, take a couple of tokes and go outside for a walk! You'll get fresh air, sunshine, exercise and will probably have a heightened awareness of the beauties of the world - in other words, you'll feel better. All without deadly side effects or long-term liver damage.

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For most people or at least for very many people the link between the spirit and the body is practically disfunctional. The link is belief and the effective link is positive belief. Belief eventually gives way to Knowing, to Wisdom.

To be healthy and whole, people need to be sending the clear positive message that the body is whole and well from the spirit to the body through the mind. The spirit pervades the body, but is not confined to it; the spirit is linked to All.

If people understood themselves spiritually, mentally and physically, most of their medical problems would evaporate.

Belief not thought is the link to the Eternal Now, the Infinite Source of all.

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Drug companies with their bought scientists, doctors and pharmacists greatest manufactured products are diseases and drugs. They manufacture diseases so they can manufacture drugs to "cure" the diseases. Then many of the drugs make people even sicker. This explains why health care is so expensive in the USA while at the same time our life span is much less than other industrialized nations. They are killing us with their "kindness". This is mass murder for fun and profit. They drug seniors up with multiple drugs and charge them huge prices for the drugs. I am a senior who takes no drugs at all and am healthier than if I were brainwashed to take multiple drugs.

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Interesting article. It comes at the time I am struggling to make sense of my sister's suicide 10 days ago. She was taking 6 different medications prescribed by a psychiatrist. 2 anti-depressants, anti-psychotic, anti-convulsant, sleep aid, wake up aid. She had also started drinking heavily "to stop the vibrating". For 9 months, she was a walking shipwreak, sinking into a deep black hole. Everytime a side effect of a drug became unmanageable, a new medication was introduced. I am convinced that it was the medications that caused her to kill herself.
How can a doctor refuse to SEE that with every new medication, she became sicker? How can a doctor refuse to hear family members who are screaming that the patient is getting worse, not better?
I have been against the drugging of the side effects of our sick culture for a long time but now I am declaring war on the pharmacutical industry.

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And learn not to get seducted by the misleading ads. That in itself would cure us Americans from all these poisons !

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About a year ago I came across a website 'International
Federation of Competitive Eating' and I was shocked to see
that it was sponsored by Alka-Seltzer. This 'sport', which they
claim is the fasting growing sport in the US, indulges in such
heroics as eating a gollon of ice cream in 6 minutes. I knew
that the maker of Alka-Seltzer, Miles labs., was a subsidiary
of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, who had just
announced a new investment in the treatment of diabetes
and with righteous fury fired off a letter to the chairman.
Nothing, de nada. Next I sent my complaint to the US Bayer
office, who regretted that I found their sponsorship indecent,
but they base their sponsorship on broad public perceptions,
sorry if it offends me, tough luck. I finaly found the 'coalition against Bayer dangers', wrote a lovely press release which they managed to get out in Europe. Lo and behold, Bayer was
aghast to find their US company was doing something so very
bad, without head office's knowledge, it was stopped immediately.

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It has long been my belief that Big Pharma should not be allowed to advertise. That they do advertise is a damn shame. Liquor and cigarette ads are not allowed on televison. When I see a pharma ad on TV I change the channel or hit the mute button and the first thing I do before I read a magazine is pull out all the "hard page" ads from pharma and toss them. I even cancelled my subscription for Guideposts magazine, which went from no ads a few years ago to now having 10 pharma ads in each issue. It really pist me off so I cancelled after reading it for 15 years. I'm not going to be inundated by their propoganda!!

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Great article. There are so many corrupt aspects to the pharmaceutical system in the US, and this article covers a lot of them.

Take the FDA - it's own employees regularly express their disgust with the organization, where drug company employees sit on the regulatory panel and push their pet drug projects through.

What about the drug discovery process? There is one word that matters - patents. If the drug or treatment cannot be patented, no matter how effective it is, it will not be developed. Most drugs cost pennies to make compared to their final price. What keeps the cost high? Intellectual property rights - the primary international concern of big Pharma, who are always attacking third world countries for wanting to get cheap AIDS drugs.

The drug companies will tell you they need high prices to support their years of research and clinical trials. At the same time 2/3 of their budget goes to sales and marketing; more and more the actual research is done at public universities using federal tax dollars (outsourcing costs to the taxpayer) under proprietary nondisclosure contracts (which have a corrupting effect on academic research, if you can imagine).

What about the products? The ADD drugs are mostly speed knockoffs, all based on the amphetamine molecular structure. What long-term effects do these drugs have on kids, particularly with predisposition to other drug effects? See this article on Ritalin and Cocaine. Many other drugs have terrible side effects that the companies try to hush up to boost sales for as long as they can. They also encourage over-prescribing drugs, and invent new disorders for their drugs. Human growth hormone is a treatment for dwarfism, but company scientists were saying that 'parents who wanted taller children should also think about giving it to their children!'. That sounds like something out of a athletic drug doping program.

The drug company tries to influence the training of doctors as much as possible to indoctrinate them in the 'one disease, one drug' model. They follow this up with all-expenses paid golfing conferences, personal attention from drug marketers, etc. etc. The patients get their advertising through the mainstream media channels. The result of all this marketing? Many people are taking huge cocktails of drugs that their doctors recommend; noone has studied the multi-drug interaction effects.

There was a time when drug discoveries made huge strides in increasing human health; the best example is the discovery and application of the antibiotics (which is what the drug companies are always promoting in their PR). However, the whole business has grown incredibly rotten, yet with very high returns on investment. Unfortunately, if you want to take care of your health in the US, you can't trust the pharma sector or their pet doctors and regulatory agencies.

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Has anyone thought of that? After Manufacturing left this nation back in the first Bush attack against American, we were left with the big five service industries which need to increase each year to add to our GDP (Gross Domestic Product). One of those is the medical industry. How do you grow a medical industry?

You manufacture "diseases" either through brainwashing (TV ads) or through creation of new "emerging diseases" and then how do you distribute them? Who knows, maybe through the newly created "Atmospheric Science Program".

Here is a site that is tackling such a problem: studying of a newly emerging disease that has here to for never been seen in this country.

http://www.morgellons.org/

As for distribution of such organisms, here is a site that is new and was put up because of the hue and cry about chemtrails that the Feds stated didn't exist, but in Oct 2005 the President made this "nonexistant' spraying Legal and was placed under "Cheney's" dept of energy.

There are many more new diseases and some which are bioweapons such as those sold to Saddam back in the 80's by Rumsfeld, for example West nile virus and Blue Nile Virus. So all of these have a purpose and unless you think this is just another conspiracy theory, please read this link since it is promoted by the very people currently in the highest offices in the land. You can verify it by reading the Pax Americana document yourself.

www.sundayherald.com/print27735

See paragraph 14 in part states:

".......the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';"

We are under full blown attack. Just check around and notice how often you and your loved ones are ill during the course of one year. Frankly, I never used to get sick, or maybe a flu once a year at best. Now its something every two weeks, sinuses, coughs, rashes, and other nefarious symptoms.

I go herbal in my treatments so I never do the drugs with the exception of high blood pressure. That is it. All natural other than that. Soooooo what are we going to do about it? If history is any indication....... NOTHING!

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And what about the "food" that is supposed to keep us healthy? The same chemical companies have adulterated our food, from soil on up, so that we don't know if the "symptoms" are from what we eat, or the air we breathe, or the medications we take. God help us!

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What did you expect from a people with one single solitary value, profit, to which all other considerations must completely subordinate themselves?

Another ramification of this is the mirror side of the problem: diseases like sleeping sickness for which a known antedote exists, but which is not manufactured by any pharmaceutical house because the people with this problem and their governments haven't got enough money to make it worth their while, and people die. Makes you proud, don't it!

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Don't they know that all we need is proper diet, exercise, good attitude and organic food -- then noone would have to get sick or die young.

And if they do -- well, it's their own damn fault , anyway.

Natural cures are totally effective and have no side effects.

How do I know ?
Carlton Fredricks told me so!

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The pill pushing big pharma creates new drugs by tweaking most of what is already available and then charges high prices. Not only that, they often don't work. I am on a drug that has been around for quite some time (almost 20 years). Big pharma has to be in collusion with the insurance industry as this drug is not covered for my condition anymore. It used to be. Now, the drugs that are available that my doctor has put me on has had bad to very severe side affects. One of the most popular ones caused me to loose white blood cells, thinned my subcutaneous fat under the skin to the point where when I would scratch an itch, I would bleed.

This is pathetic, but nothing compared to the psycho-tropics that are coming out now. The pill pushing pimps must not test what they put out as a couple of family members have consistently gotten worse. Another major problem are the few people that are qualified to make a diagnosis. Psychiatry used to be a very advanced medical profession that included standard practice, psychology, neurology (for those that are good, passing the neurology boards is a must), psychology, psycho-pharmacology and endocrinology. Most psychiatrists don't maximize their knowledge in all areas leaving them deficient in the knowledge of how and where neurotransmitters, hormones, ... work and how they affect perception and cognition.

My girl friend's mother almost died from terrible practitioners. My sister is in the fight of her life because of the religious nutbags that carry their faith before any form of healing and are just pushing new pills that the pharmacist is telling them to use. So much for a qualified diagnosis.

There are great psychiatrists in the US, but they are hard to find as managed care has put most people in a waiting line for substance abuse facility beds, regardless of how much money one has.

One last note. My mother was a dietitian that got her degree at Iowa State and interned at Cornell for two years back in the 50s. Dietetics is no longer a profession compared to what was required for her to get her degree. Her knowledge of physiology and the bodies systems and how they the body breaks down foods into their component parts to be used by the body in all of the body's systems was exceptional. At University hospitals, she used to teach physicians. She was always correcting the BS that came across the news as as new findings. She even knew what is now being said about cholesterol. Half the courses she had to take are too tough for current dietitians and I know that a two year internship isn't required. To add insult to injury, physicians don't have to take nutrition and if they do, it is just a couple of weeks. The best advice would come from your dentist!

So, often, physicians that prescribe pills now don't even really know what they do. America is drowning in pills that are usually tweaked drugs from some other formulation which are all to often prescribed by physicians that don't really understand how they work. With the advent of managed care, this even gets worse as they work together just to push new formulations. The doctors that do know how the pills work are now specialists and that is the option of last resort for managed care.

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This is why I think a universal healthcare system would be a disaster in this country. The government would end up subsidizing our insane addiction to self-prescribed sickness. So many people taking so many pills... So much money, and 9 times out of 10 it's a total waste.

Only one person is going to be able to make you better. A doctor cannot describe your symptoms for you. If you don't describe things accurately then you could end up being pigeonholed into one of the major "drug categories". The more you study your own symptoms, the less likely you are to become a money sponge for big pharma.

Anyone who takes any medication should spend many hours researching that medication. Sadly, it will not take long to become more informed than your own doctor.

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Just something interesting I thought I might throw in, since I've already rolled with all the dope dealers that have the nerve to call themselves practitioners of medicine that I'd ever care to deal with...

At a very early age, I was diagnosed with, among other things, obsessive compulsive disorder. This was about ten or eleven years ago, I'd say. From that moment forward, there was never a time when I wasn't on some kind of pill. There was never a time when I wasn't taking some kind of dope at least once daily, and when one kind of dope didn't make me feel 'good' and 'right', what did the doctor do? They upped the dose until they couldn't anymore, and then they switched me off of it. Bear in mind, I was a little kid then - I didn't know jack about how drugs work, and I genuinely felt poor and extremely anxious. I did - and still do - have issues, but my family and I were told that the dope was the only way to fix it.

Years passed, and I was given more and more drugs. There was a time when I was taking at least three if not four kinds of medicine daily, all to treat a slew of fad diseases I may or may not have actually had. Finally, when I was about fourteen years old, I told my mom, "I'm done with this. It's not doing anything for me, I don't want to take this anymore." I meant it - the drugs were making me feel strange, they were messing with my appetite, and I couldn't sleep properly anymore. So I dropped off of them, and for about a year, I was fine. Eventually, however, my condition worsened due to a great deal of emotional distress attributed to personal matters, and after I conveyed that I'd been contemplating self-injurious behavior, I was institutionalized for a brief period of time.

During my stay at the funny farm, I was run through a gauntlet of childish self-help excercises, while I used the time in solitude to get to the root of my own problems. It didn't stop the doctors there from giving me yet more dope, though. Wellbutrin, it was called, and I wound up taking it for about five years straight. Initially, I noticed some beneficial effects - my naturally elevated level of anxiety seemed to subside, as did my lingering depression, though this may or may not have been my own doing - but it didn't last long. Soon I was taking it just because, and the dosage was raised as old problems returned. I'd only realize later that the only reason I felt bad in the first place was because a lot was missing from my life, including any inkling of self confidence.

Just a few months ago, I stopped taking the dope, cold-turkey. I actually felt better, and it was great. In spite of that, to this day I still have withdrawal symptoms, and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe all these drugs over all this time - all the rapid switching and pill cocktails I've gone through - haven't damaged me somehow, permanently. I've learned to deal with my shit, whatever the hell it is. I think the latest fad disease I was diagnosed with was Asperger's syndrome, but frankly, I don't care how many risk factors and warning signs I have. I don't think it exists, and while I genuinely feel sorry for people that actually have autism - which is definitely real - this Asperger's stuff is bullshit.

The moral of the story is that no pill will ever fill all the holes we have in our hearts. We feel miserable because our lives are unfulfilling. We're lonely, we're bored, and we don't know how to relax. Learning how to take care of yourself is a better cure than any drug dealt to you, and it's a fuck of a lot cheaper, too. It took me more than a decade - presently more than half my life - to figure that out... I've got to admit, seeing myself type that makes me feel kind of stupid, but hey, better late than never.

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Locally grown foods without the chemicals can be found by local growers. It would be nice to see more of them if there was a demand. We would be eating healthier as well as saving fuel from the long distances carrying products that have to withstand the long trek. When is the last time anyone has eaten a real egg, tomato or brussel sprout?

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I've been beaten to the punch by a lot of the great commenters here, so I just wanted to add my bit about the role of competition.

Anyone think it's kind of funny that we all have to consume a drug (caffeine) to go through daily life? I.E., our lives require more than the unmodified human body can perform, so we have to drug ourselves to perform at the accepted level.

As Provigil and these other sleep-replacement drugs spread, first manic investment bankers will take them. Then not-so-manic investment bankers. Then, lawyers. Then, regular maangers. Then it will be required to maintain the level of activity necessary to move up the corporate ladder. Then it will be required just to do your job...because everyone else is taking it, and you can't be less productive than everyone else or you will get fired.

The labor movement should make this an issue. Though I suppose they've got their hands full just trying to stay alive. Whoever brings it up, this is a labor issue.

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I bet you right now they are working on a drug to counter skepticism. I think Mother Jones did an artilce on the treating Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a way to make dissent something to be treated. Marketing works better on compliant people!

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The pharmaceutical companies are some of the worst abusers of the system out there. The following is an extremely funny spoof on a typical drug quiz (Could Zoloft be right for you?). It sums it all up, in my opinion:

www.theonion.com/content/node/28348

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There was a study done about psyhiatrists. They make more money by prescribing drugs than talking to the patient.
There is a mind set in psychiatry: take a pill you'll feel better and if you don't well, at least you'll be quiet about it.
Laws benefit these docs. If a patient is non compliant, he or she can be involuntarily commited. It is a silentt hreat held over the heads of patients.
Patients who are vulnerable are railroaded into taking multiple drugs.
The side effects are dangerous.
I think that we need to get the power out of the doctors fat little hands. THey have agendas and they do harm first.
Too many peole have been damaged or have died because of the belief that drugs are the answer.
One trick that psychiatrists use is to prescribe a drug, outside of the prescribing guidelines and then label the patient with a "disorder" that takes away the patient's credibility.
A patient who would complain about the psychiatrist's unethical and dishonest behaviour would be at a loss to rectify matters.
This has to be changed.
The word Disorder is dehumanizing and opens the door to putting people into little defined boxes and making sure that they have no voice.
The drug companies can't make profits if the docs aren't pushing the drugs.
Anyone have any ideas on how to put a stop to this viscious circle?
I am sure that there are plenty of people who would join together to create a strong force to begin taking away the power and control of the docs, the drug industry and the insurance companies.
It has gone too far. It has gone on for too long.
Psychiatry is a belief system, not a science.
The research is all wrong. Messing with brain chemistry is not a solution.
It is the whole body system that needs to be looked at.
Jules

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as I have family members and friends on more medications than I can count. Many of them, too, are put on an additional pill or pills when side effects become troublesome or whatnot. I think this a shame, but on the other hand, I suffered from depression for about 15 years. I went through four rounds of therapy and tried everything I could possibly think of before finally going on Lexapro about three months ago. I've had doctors try to push meds on me in the past and resisted because I thought it was ridiculous to need medication. Finally agreeing to go on meds was one of the best decisions I've ever made; I have never felt so normal! So while I agree doctors are far too eager to push pills on you, in some cases it really is the right thing to do.

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In his song "Pills"

There are pills that make you happy.
There are pills that make you blue.
There are pills to kill your streptococci.
There are pills to cure your cockeye too.
There are folks whose pills have made them healthy.
There are folks whose pills have cured their chills.
But the folks whose pills have made them wealthy
Are the folks who make all those pills.

(There are) Dexedrine and Miltown, to pick you up and let you down.
(happy) Or if you're sufferin', swallow a Bufferin.
(pills) Vitamin C's a pill for folks who shiver.
(sad) And there's a pill for Carter's little liver.
(pills) And if you're sleeping in the hospital, because you're ill,
(pills) Betcha the nurse will wake you up to take a sleeping pill.

There are pills for young folks and for old folks,
Each disease has got its remedy.
But no pill can cure the common cold, folks,
So if you sneeze, please don't sneeze on me.
Achoo!
Gesundheit

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I know it's politically incorrect to blame people for their health conditions and it's a lot easier to blame big industries for lying to us, but the truth is that people are just stupid. They're quick to believe everything the so-called experts tell them. If people just ate healthy, exercised, stopped smoking, drank in moderation, didn't do drugs, learned to relax more, and got enough rest, I'd bet most of today's health problems would go away. But until people learn to take better care of themselves, we will always be a nation full of sick people that big business will prey on. People need to look at everything with a critical eye. I've been living a healthy lifestyle for the last 5 years and haven't had more than the occasional cold. And unlike everyone else around me, I'm not taking a single prescription drug. We need to quit blaming drug companies and the health care system and start taking responsibility. We make ourselves sick and we let others convince us to take pills that we don't need.

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The higher "Beep" by The Pussycat Dolls featuring Will.I.Am climbs up the charts, the more my RLS acts up...The same thing happened with "In Da Club". What the hell?!

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Psychiatry is the worst offender in my opinion. And....
the situation is even worse now as psychiatry has been nearly abandoned by native-born Americans. As a result, foreign trained doctors; many of whom barely speak English, now fill the staffs of many of our Community Mental Health Centers...I kid you not. Compounding the evils of the mental health movement,
Psychiatry has always grossly over-relied upon drugs resulting in many addiction complications among the (unintended?) victims of these drugs. Can everybody spell Valium,Ritalin,Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil?

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I've been living with ADD for 46 years, and studying it for more than 20. Oh, my God, what a threat my two ADD children and I are to the pharmaceutical industry as "unmedicated" and "untreated" "patients". How on earth did I ever manage to be in the top 5% of my high school class, get my BA at UC Berkeley (at age 35 while working and with a 5 week old child), my MBA while working in a major national healthcare initiative as the national sponsor liaison, and now, a blissfully happy 46 year old woman, business owner, Bay Area homeowner, lay subject matter expert in the field of ADD.
Through my degree and studies in Psychology I know enough about this subject to say that I personally will not put these drugs in my body on a daily basis , nor in the bodies of my kids. My kids took the meds for about a year each, and we went off of them because none of us liked they way they acted on the drugs, and the more I got educated about the drugs and the pharm industry, the more I knew we didn't need them. All I'll say is that we are damaging livers of the future at a rate to truly frighten. We are administering DAILY almost 24 hour non-stop dosages of psycho-tropic drugs to children and adults of child-bearing years with no long term studies to investigate the long range effects. Shame on us all.
SMSlayton
ADD Solutions

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gosh, the PseudoLeft seems to be QUITE silent on the matter of communicating to the general public just how Europe does national healthcare.

If you really want to change american minds about leftism and the welfare state, you have to sell them on national healthcare financed by progressive income and wealth taxation. And that means communicating with the general public. But all you all seem to be interested in doing is generating book sales for the pseudoLeft elite by working the Left grassroots into a hate frenzy by Emmanuel Goldsteinization of Bush, Rove and Joe Redneck.

Gosh, I simply cannot figure out why the general public finds the Left useless...

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When my grandmother was alive and came to stay with us for the winter, my parents would take her to our family doctor who would go through all her medications and toss about half of them. Grandma would remark on how she always felt better when she stayed with us. Her doctor at home was real quick to prescribe something. I think he really did not understand how to treat geriatric patients.

Our doctor was never one to hand out a pill if time was just as effective a treatment.

I agree that pharmaceutical advertising should be banned again. They do take something that is for a few people a real problem and blow it into this huge syndrome for everyone. This is unfair.

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Have you ever heard the word "CURE" from the mouth of any pharmaceutical or insurance representive, doctor, or congress person? How long would these individuals make a living?
It all starts with our water (H2O). First we let them add chlorine(BLEACH-chemical companies) to our water supply. There is a way healthier to purify our water, but it would affect their profit margin, so F**K the people. So we buy bottled water for >$1.00 a pint (gasoline $3.15 gal) thinking it is better for us. If we only knew the chemicials (arsenic) used and within some brands. QUESTION: If water is necessary to maintain life, should it not be free, do we not all own it? Where does it say that certain individuals are allowed to make profit from our lives?
Then we let secret organizations (THINK TANKS- Illuminati, Federal Reserve) government, AND corporations with their profit and power control our food sources. These individuals are in the money business, the more they sell *$$$$*. I never could understand why we would let a dept. of government oversee both food and drugs *FDA*? I would think we would seperate them, maybe move the `D' from F-D-A to the DEA. We always believe these tyrants when they say: unit per billion are ok "FDA". If you think about all the water, food, and air we consume in our lives, no wonder we are dying off. But to help us die in confusion and no pain "take this it will help with our treatment".
Do you know that we live less time now then 50 years ago. Do not believe that sh*t they tell us about living longer. There are more diseases now then anytime in history and it is not because of the population growth and industialization. The New York Times had an excellent series about a year ago, (I am not a fan) on health. It said: CLASS MAKES A DIFFERENCE. If you have the money you can afford to eat healthy, install water purifier in your home, have regular check-ups, work out at the gym, have less stress, and educate yourself about the real terrorist of the world.
I get so upset when I read, watch TV, listen to the radio, how this media lies to us about what really is going on. Where is my aspirin? My Mom is 82 years old, raised on the farm in Canada, moved to U.S. and lived most of her life growing her own fruits and vegtables and drinking well water in the country. She shocks the doctor every time as they sit there looking at her prescription list___________. But they always want to give her something.
President Woodrow Wilson "...there is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
Mark Twain, 1885...."It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class.... except Congress.

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In a totally unrelated conversation yesterday, my friend and I were discussing how we should all be investing our money in the future of liver drugs, as this "boomer" generation is the first to have been medicated almost from birth til death. It will be interesting to see if there is a sudden increase in liver research on the tables of the R&D depts at these companies - they are expert at planned product lifecycles, and surely they know what damage they are doing.

Sharon
ADD Solutions

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I got into this a year ago and it is AWESOME! I used to catch colds all the time, no more. I drink a quart of fresh juice a day, first thing in the morning. I go to the Korean market, spend about 20 bucks for all the produce I can fit in the fridge, and that lasts a week. Carrots, beets, apples, tomatoes, ginger, spinach, oranges, grapefruits, whatever. Anything tastes good with a couple apples in it. With beets all the vitamins and antioxidants are in the red dye, well 4 hours after you drink one you're peeing and pooping red, your body has absorbed it that fast. For the super bowl I made bloody marys strictly from whole ingredients and they kicked ass. It's definitely the best habit I ever acquired. If I'm travelling or skip a few days I can feel the lack....

Fuck drugs! (the pharma kind anyway)

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I am a physician, and I am no friend of any of the corporate sectors of this country including the pharmaceutical industry. Still, there a few truths that I want to delineate that mitigate that sin somewhat.

First, I am grateful (and so too should you be) that the pharmaceutical companies do develop important drugs even if they also develop trivial ones as well for pseudo-illnesses. This is in contrast to the insurance industry which also gouges the public just like the pharmaceutical industry, but offers nothing of value in exchange.

Second, if the pharmaceutical companies priced their drugs so that they broke even and made no profit, they would still be expensive, albeit less so. Only the fraction of the price that represents unfair profit is inappropriate.

The actual costs of synthesizing the chemicals and compounding the tablets are usually trivial compared to the other costs, but those other costs are substantial.

The cost of making a drug available must cover the cost (in the hundreds of millions) of the studies mandated by the FDA to get the drug approved. It must also cover the costs of all of the other chemicals, potential drugs, that were or will be investigated but never come to market because they are too unsafe or are insufficiently effective (by FDA standards).

The cost must also include whatever are the legitimate marketing and sales expenses.

And there needs to be a legal fund for the many law suits that will inevitable follow in the wake of the launch of any drug.

And there are the legitimate charges added by the pharmacy to purchase, stock and dispense the medications as well asto cover its overhead and produce a fair profit there as well.

Suppose that all of these costs amounted to fifty dollars for the average prescription, and that we agree that $5 is a fair profit. This makes $55 a fair price.

Now add the gouging factor: a profit of $25 per prescription instead of $5. Now the total is $75.

My point is merely that even if the pharmaceutical industry was a charity, your medicines would still be pricey and that many people would not be able to afford them without some sort of insurance or other subsidation.

This does not mean that the pharmaceutical houses are not monsters. It means that even if they were replaced by saints, you would still find health care expensive.

The total costs of health care can be broken down into categories: (a) costs due to legitimate expenses and fair profits for necessary goods; (b) costs added by fraud for products or services known to be unnecessary or not actually provided; (c) costs due to defensive practices not thought to help the patient but to protect the doctor; and (e) incompetence (excessive testing or procedures not done fraudulently.

If you eliminated (b) through (e), health care would be more affordable, but it would still be expensive. And this could only happen once assuming it was complete and we didn't relapse back into former ways.

Plus it would continue to become more expensive every year as new technologies are added to the armamantarium. There would still need to be rationing of health care of some sort, and not everybody would be able to have the latest advances available to them.

So, yes, thing should be better. But there is a limit to how much better they can be because even at its best, medicine is still an expensive enterprise.

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We live in a farmer-dominated society and the attention-differents (hunter genes) are suffering for it. We are forced to take drugs so the happy farmer sheep can get along with us. we're the crazies, the artistics, the brilliant dreamers but now, we're just "ill" or "disordered." Brilliant. I can't wait for the re-education camps...of course, some of us are already being rounded up and shoved back in the old institutions. Some parents are going to jail for not drugging their kids... gee what a solution that is.

On the other hand, for people like my son, a little pharma helps a lot... the real solution would be a school designed to work the way he does and not the other way 'round. But try to get the fascists in American public "eddicashun" to do that... yeah, we get "No Child Left Behind"... morons, all of 'em. For the child with Child-Onset BiPolar, drugs can help tremendously, unless they have a body like mine that persistently falls into the 0.01% group of subjects who when treated with x, z, y drug experience all the side effects and minimal benefit. Then we have to deal with the all-too common reality that no insurance company covers these drugs and when the patents allow generics, they simply stop making the drugs and then our fellow Lefties start screaming that no drugs should be used by anyone for any reason because there's no such thing as bipolar and ADD or Tourette's Syndrome or Autism, etc., and then we have to fight doctors and medical "scientists" to get them to do "science" for a change instead of the nonsense like "well this is the drug of choice..." never mind the patient telling them they're getting worse on that drug-o'-choice, and then we're bankrupt because our insurance decides it doesn't have to cover "mental illness" beyond AA (WTF?!), and then they force us to declare ourselves "metnally ill" even when it's the damned culture that's ill and intolerant of how we're wired, but hey, we're just crazy and ill so why listen to us? Afterall Dr. Phil and the Oprah cult just keep the mainstream narrative safe and happy, and the AlterNet keeps psinning the contrarian narrative so the Lefties have another cause the protest about... for all the good little farmers. And the hunters, we're left on the outside of the village facing angry farmers from both the Left and the Right armed with torches and pitchforks... there is truly nothing new under the sun.

Can't wait for post-oil and the die-offs.... We won't have to take your damned drugs (and yes, many of us will kill ourselves from the bouts of bone-crushing depression that only attention differents can possible comprehend, but at least we'll be in charge of the choice for a change) and we'll rule the earth. ... guess who'll be alive to survive the mess the farmers made?

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For those who are interested in learning more, I wanted to recommend a great new documentary that I just saw. A colleague of mine lent me a review copy as it's not quite out yet, but here's the link:

www.bigbucksbigpharma.org

It's called "Big Bucks, Big Pharma" and it's all about the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry. The place that produced the film - the Media Education Foundation - does really wonderful work. If this article enraged/inspired/enticed you, I highly recommend checking the film out.

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or at least takes the edge off "U.S. megatrends that legitimately create anxiety and depression -- trends like global warming, wars, economic collapse, political corruption, etc."

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Very interesting article but it tells me nothing new.

Big Pharma does NOT stay in business by helping people overcome illness. Big Pharma DOES stay in
business by making YOU into a symptom of an illness. Being human means we all have problems of one sort or another and good old Big Pharma is there to soothe and calm that problem with a drug. Of course, that drug has all sorts of side-effects so you have to take a second drug to deal with these side effects and then a third drug to deal with the side effects of the second drug, etc. etc.

As one who was almost killed by doctors and their miserable rotten drugs I can tell you what I did to conquer the problem WITHOUT drugs.

The secret lies in having NOTHING to do with doctors or drugs. When I was in my 30s someone sent me a subscription to what, at the time, was a well-known alternative health publication (unfortunately, it now fronts for the drug industry). That magazine opened my mind to a whole different way of thinking about my body and my health. I immediately ELIMINATED sugar, white flour, white rice, chemicals, caffeine, etc.

I started to eat ONLY natural foods and when organic food came on the market I switched to that as much as possible. I eliminated ALL chemicals from my environment, wore ONLY cotton and wool, used organic body-care products, etc.

In essence, I took total responsibility for my body. I visited nutritionists and began taking vitamins.

As time went on, my body began to heal itself. It has taken decades but I am healthier now than I have ever been. I have NO DRUGS in my house - not even aspirin - and every time I read something like this article on drugs and Big Pharma I smile! If I can screw them out of all the money they are NOT making off of me, I am happy.

When I sign up for social security, I have NO INTENTION of paying for a drug program because I will NEVER use it.

Folks, you are NOT sick because you have a drug deficiency. You are sick because you eat garbage and treat your body like garbage. When you finally understand this and take responsibility for your own health, then you will begin to get well and heal your body.

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I heard Michael Moore's next movie is about US HealthCare? Anyone have details? Title?- Release date?
Thanks-
Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

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Take a pledge like some do with Tobacco. "Take no ads from Big Pharma" (whoops I forgot?- it is a a huge ad revenue stream-err-What to do?)

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

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F**K 'EM!!!

I, for one, am going to be an american who drifts (slides? falls? dives?)into middle/old age without a medicine cabinet full of overpriced, overhyped drugs with side effects worse than the "disease" they're supposed to cure. And it's easy. . .

Eat a balanced diet, EAT YOUR VEGGIES, don't drink too much, don't smoke, have a small amount of booze once-and-awhile, laugh a lot and stop worrying – and you know what? You'll be just fine!!!

Deny Big Pharma what they lust after – your money! – and just live. It's sooooo easy. . .

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Here is beginning of Steve Martin's riff-It goes on for a while longer to completion. Go to http://www.compleatsteve.com/essays/side_effects.htm for co
"Side Effects"
By Steve Martin New Yorker Magazine- April 13, 1998

DOSAGE: take two tablets every six hours for joint pain.

SIDE EFFECTS: This drug may cause joint pain, nausea, head-ache, or shortness of breath. You may also experience muscle aches, rapid heartbeat, and ringing in the cars. If you feel faint, call your doctor. Do not consume alcohol while taking this pill; likewise, avoid red meat, shellfish, and vegetables. O.K. foods: flounder. Under no circumstances eat yak. Men can expect painful urination while sitting, especially if the penis is caught between the toilet seat and the bowl. Projectile vomiting is common in thirty per cent of users-sorry, fifty per cent. If you undergo disorienting nausea accompanied by migraine and raspy breathing, double the dosage. Leg cramps are to be expected; one knee-buckler per day is normal. Bowel movements may become frequent-in fact, every ten minutes. If bowel movements become greater than twelve per hour, consult your doctor, or any doctor, or just anyone who will speak to you. You may find yourself becoming lost or vague; this would be a good time to write a screenplay. Do not pilot a plane, unless you are among the ten per cent of users who experience "spontaneous test-pilot knowledge." If your hair begins to smell like burning tires, move away from any buildings or populated areas, and apply tincture of iodine to the head until you no longer hear what could be taken for a "countdown." May cause stigmata in Mexicans. If a fungus starts to grow between your eyebrows, call the Guinness Book of World Records. May induce a tendency to compulsively repeat the phrase "no can do." This drug may cause visions of the Virgin Mary to appear in treetops. If this happens, open a souvenir shop. There may be an overwhelming impulse to shout out during a Catholic Mass, "I'm gonna wop you wid da ugly stick!" You may feel a powerful sense of impending doom; this is because you are about to die. Men may experience impotence, but only during intercourse. Otherwise, a powerful erection will accompany your daily "walking-around time." Do not take this product if you are uneasy with lockjaw. Do not be near a ringing telephone that works at 900 MHz or you will be very dead, very fast. We are assuming you have had chicken pox. You also may experience a growing dissatisfaction with life along with a deep sense of melancholy-join the club! Do not be concerned if you arouse a few ticks from a Geiger counter. You might want to get a one-month trial subscription to Extreme Fighting. The hook shape of the pill will often cause it to become caught in the larynx. To remove, jam a finger down your throat while a friend holds your nose to prevent the pill from lodging in a nasal passage. Then throw yourself stomach first on the back portion of a chair. The expulsion of air should eject the pill out of the mouth, unless it goes into a sinus cavity, or the brain. WARNING: This drug may shorten your intestines by twenty-one feet. Has been known to cause birth defects in the user retroactively. Passing in front of TV may cause the screen to moiré. Women often feel a loss of libido, including a woo-octave lowering of the voice, an increase in ankle hair, and perhaps the lowering of a testicle. If this happens, women should write a detailed description of their last three sexual encounters and mail it to me, Bob, Trailer Six, Fancyland Trailer Park, Encino, CA. Or E-mail me at hot-guy.com. Discontinue use immediately if you feel that your teeth are receiving radio broadcasts. etc.......

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Wait a minute - The government and its pharmaceutical partners do not make you FEEL sick they make you sick. The horror of the chemtrails proves it. The pharmaceutical companies sell the toxic sprays to the government. The government sprays the sky all over the country from government planes. The people get sick. The pharmaceuticals make money selling drugs to help you recover from their chemicals.
Please no government hacks reply to this. You look really stupid with the coverup of the chemtrails. A good web site to visit on the subject is www.carnicom.com.
Oh, Vitamin E works wonders for restless legs. My own anecdotal remedy.
Thanks for listening. Jean

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I am fortunate to work for a Naturopathic Doctor. In spite of the fact that he makes about 5 times less than an MD, he pays me a living wage, provides benefit coverage, is "parent friendly" (lets me bring my kids to work on pro-D days!) & provides his services to my kids and I at barely above cost ...my friend, on the other hand, works for a rich, successful MD --he pays her $6.50 an hour less than I make, provides no benefit package & if she is late or calls in sick because of her children --he threatens to fire her!!! ( hmmm, which sounds more empathic & caring to you??)
I also get the added joy of watching him get kids off of ritalin ( 6 already this year) & successfully!! ( meaning, their behavior & attention ability improve under his care!) There are alternatives & if more of us took them ( Science-based naturopathic care, wholistically raised foodstuffs, exercise, stress control ) we could drive these parasites out of business!! Vote with your dollars, it's our/your/humanities only hope!! peace.

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as an expat living in japan, Im stunned everytime i return home to see the myriad of drugs marketed to the public. I teach english in japan and many of my students are in the pharmaceutical marketing business, but they are only allowed to market to doctors. direct marketing of drugs to consumers is illegal here, who's idea was it, that this sort of drug pushing would be ok? Cialis Open Golf Tournament? it would be funny if it wasnt so sad.

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After reading all of this, I see that there it is not just the born agains who indulge in faith based thinking (by that I mean to assume that something is true without sufficient evidence because you have decided to make it true for you. The numbers of you that despise physicians (I am one) and distrust chemicals that are manufactured as pills (but not if they are called organic or a powder in a bottle pulled out of some health food retailer's ass). You wonder why we don't want to talk with you more and why we don't lust coming to work every day to try to please you.

I have a very strong moral sense and I am relatively fearless, so I pretty much do what in my heart of hearts I believe is right for the patient limited only by the available resources and my ability to employ them to someone's benefit. Unless they fight with me.

If you've got a chip on your shoulder (like most of this group) or some pseudo-information from aunt Millie or some delusions of the sanctity of some chemicals and procedures (alfalfa and colonics) but not others because they bear the mark of the corporate beast (antibiotics, pacemakers), then I will not fight with you. Go take a dose of your front lawn. It's OK with me. How is that not a religion?

In fact, do the medical profession and society a favor and duck out of the health care system all together to free up the resources for those who don't think they are haunted or whatever. You won't be missed.

Many of you people can only see what is wrong which is admittedly a lot, but you don't know who you should blame, and you don't know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and benefit from the efficacious part of medical science.

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^

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Personally, I'm very happy to opt out of a very very very sick, mis-named "health care" system.

We don't have a "health care" system in the US. We have a "reward the doctors who front for Big Pharma" system in the US. And don't you DARE deny that you and rest of the sick medical system in this country front for the companies that make the drugs.

Look in any magazine that carries drug ads and read the small print. You have to be absolutely CRAZY to take this stuff. And you have the GALL to call those of us who don't want kill ourselves by taking this crap "faith-based thinkers"?

The fact that nutrition WORKS means nothing to you, because there are no drugs involved. The fact that you are UTTERLY IGNORANT is showing, Doctor.

YOU people who dispense this shit are the crazy ones, not those of us who want to make ourselves well by using nutrition and supplements and trusting our bodies. We are the sane ones. You are the insane ones.

So, by all means go back to your world and leave us in peace. Because you just don't belong.

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I'm an amateur bike racer and I get a lot of overuse injuries - low back, knee, achilles tendon. I usually see my GP first so I can get a prescription for physical therapy. Each visit is the same - start taking ibuprofen or naprosyn, ice, blah blah blah. She won't even let me finish providing history before she blurts out the generic treatment, always involving drugs.

A few yrs ago I was feeling major anxiety (most from work) and started noticing some trembling in my hands. I went and saw my GP and she gave me a prescription for Paxil. Spent very little time covering side effects. I took it for about a week and then woke up and threw the shit in the toilet. I instead focused on the cause (work) and my response to it.

The other thing that pisses me off about 90% of the doctors I've seen is they give you 10 minutes of their time and then boom they're out the door. It's like drive thru medicine. I find myself having to ask questions out in the hallway as they're running to see their next customer, I mean patient.

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Capital's rules of acquisition 1. If a market isn't there, create it. 2. At all costs, survive 3. Always use words like 'science' and 'research'

Pharmaceuticals; 1. Morbidize normality.

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I'm going to quote someone to make this quick: "In The Truth About the Drug Companies, Angell explains how a huge portion of the revenue generated by "Big Pharma" goes not into research and development but into aggressive marketing campaigns to sell their product. She describes how, even though the drug companies claim that it costs them an average of 802 million dollars per drug to develop new medicines, that figure is obscenely inflated since it factors in marketing as well as expected interest the company would have received had they invested the money in the open market. Meanwhile, Angell says, most of the R & D work is done by colleges and universities funded by the government. There are also problems with the drugs themselves, Angell indicates, since a majority are "me-too drugs", slightly modified versions of existing products which meant to address concerns of consumers most likely to spend money on pharmaceuticals."

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Let's see...big pharma is selling us drugs that do us harm and are making record profits and are using our tax dollars for marketing claiming that it's R&D and is sucking our medicare system dry convincing people they need to buy their drugs...and we should be grateful??!!! Sounds like a "Bush-ism" to me. Remember, you are talking to THINKING people here. People who are awake. People that are not falling for the brainwashing. Oh yes, big pharma... we are soooo grateful...pleas screw us again!!!

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Admit you made a mistake. Sure you are making big money, but you know in your heart you're doing the wrong thing. Stand up for what's right, and I think you'll feel better for it.

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As we become more civilized we have turned more to our meat and potatos in more and more unhealthy forms. Raw untained food seems almost gone from our children's diet. How do we respond to the epidemic of all kinds? We look at our genes and we look to drugs. This is so sad. It's not that raw fruits, nuts and veggies are not wonderful tasting either. It's that we have become adicted to them as much as to our doctors. Our health is in our hands but we turn it over to nutricianist and doctors who only study drugs or have profit agends.

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Congratulations to the writer of this article. This is one of the very best articles I've read in some time. I'm going to be forwarding it on to friends and associates. It is indepth and thorough. The article is well worth republishing just in case somebody missed it. As you can see, I am far behind in my reading as this was still in my mailbox!

My email box(es) -- all five of them -- get an over-abundance of junk mail and most of it is related to Viagra and I'm not a man! What I would like to know is how do these people get our e-mail addresses?

It's true that the drug companies have gone overboard with the advertising. But, why is that? Are we really that open to suggestion that all we have to do is watch a tv commercial and think that we have whatever it is that is being promoted/advertised? I've been trying not to agree with Eric Hoffer but just maybe the points made in his book "True Believer" are right!

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