Welcome to Pharmageddon, Where Pills Make Us Sicker Posted
by Daniela at 04/02/08 06:24 PM
Across the Atlantic, the folks over at Social Audit cooked up a neat idea: they invited people to submit a 350-word (or less) argument on “Pharmageddon” and heard from both patients and professionals. Pharmageddon is “the prospect of a world in which medicines and medicine produce more ill-health that health, and when medical progress does more harm than good.” Read the winning entries here.
Everyday it seems like we may be getting closer to a Pharmageddon reality. On any given day you can read about some entity that’s challenging a drug company on their product’s safety. Pharmageddon reminds me of lines from singer Ani DiFranco’s “Decree”: Cancer, the great teacher / has been opening schools / downstream from every factory / still, everywhere fools / are squinting into microscopes / researching cells / trying to figure out a way / we can all live in hell.
Now here’s a thoughtful paragraph from Alan Cassels:
A key problem, which should be of keen interest to students of pharmageddon, is that the radiologist, unlike the truffle pig, can find any fungi with incredible precision but he has no way of knowing in advance if the discovery is a prized truffle or nothing worth salivating over. Also unlike the truffle pig’s hunting expedition which ends in a prize, the radiologist’s discovery is the beginning of the real hunt, stimulating biopsies, surgeries and other invasive examinations that often leave patients worse off, destroying much surrounding tissue and sometimes causing new cancers by the diagnostic tests themselves…
Somewhere between all the microscopes, chemicals, and flying butterflies, I hope we can think of some alternatives to Pharmageddon.
comments
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Posted by Debra Lynn Dadd at 04/08/08 10:54 AM
Daniela:
I was happy to find this discussion of the ill effects of drugs, but was sorry that, while your posting addresses the direct link between disease and environmental toxins, not one of the 15 winners of the Pharmageddon contest mentions it. It worries me that so many experts seem to miss this connection entirely.
Of course, the real question should be: Do we really need all these drugs in order to create good health?
We live in a culture where we are taught, through almost constant advertising, that the solution to all our symptoms is to take a drug – and sometimes, several drugs.
However, drugs are designed to relieve symptoms, and do not at all get to the root cause of the problem. In actuality, many of our symptoms may well be environmentally caused.
For example, millions of people take sleeping pills for insomnia. Yet few know that one of the causes of sleeplessness is the formaldehyde-based permanent-press finish that is on all polyester-cotton and no-iron cotton sheets. Once they start using untreated cotton or linen sheets (such as flannel or knit cotton sheets), people with this problem often find that their insomnia has been cured -- without drugs.
Similarly, headaches are often caused by perfume or scented products. Again, just stop wearing perfume and using scented products in your home, and the headaches are likely to vanish – again, without drugs.
Many excellent books have been written on this topic. To name just a few: “Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic,” by Armstrong, Dauncey and Wordsworth; Dr. Devra Davis’ “The Secret History of the War on Cancer”; and my own book, “Home Safe Home.”
The most recent estimates state that 80-95 percent of all cancers are due to environmental exposures. This would suggest that there is much we can do to prevent symptoms and illnesses in the first place, *before* we need drugs. Of course, prevention doesn't result in hefty profits for drug companies. But it does create good health.
Debra Lynn Dadd
http://www.dld123.com
Author "Home Safe Home" and "Really Green"
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Posted by Donna at 02/03/09 01:20 PM
I never thought about the finishes on fabric causing insomnia. Thanks!
