Over-medicated America

I am sitting here watching all the news on Michael Jackson's life and death, saddened by the news as is much of the rest of the country, but like millions of other deaths in this country, it was preventable.

Admittedly I am not a huge Michael Jackson fan, at least not since 1984, but where would music be without him. Like "Frampton Comes Alive" in the 1970's, EVERYBODY owned the Thriller album. I remember being in 7th grade, and if you had missed the world premier of the "Beat It," or "Thriller" videos, you were an outcast the next day in the school halls. It is all anyone could talk about. Michael Jackson revolutionized music, dancing, and MTV (who at the time actually played music ALL THE TIME.) Would there be a Britney Spears without him? I think not.

I am sure that when we get back cause of death reports, we will learn that cocktails of prescription meds are to blame for Jackson's death, and many people are already reporting to that effect. And that brings me to my entire rant here - my utter disgust with the healthcare industry as a whole, and in particular, the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies.

Do you remember the days when every class had an obnoxious kid? That's just the way it was. Now we find out the kid had ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder.) And of course for years we couldn't sleep because we were restless. Now we find out we just have RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome.) They are creating new diseases every day, and it's rediculous. PMDD, PAD...folks, it's all S.H.I.T!

THESE ARE NOT DISEASES PEOPLE...but there is a reason they are classified as diseases, and I will get to that shortly.

Cancer is a disease. AIDS is a disease. There are millions of people living with real diseases, but the over-classification of diseases has muddled the disease pool. Now EVERYONE has a disease. I have ISS, (I Suck Syndrome, better known as deppression.)

I actually find it funny that every time I watch TV, I am inundated with ads for prescription medications treating everything under the sun; Restasis to make more tears, Avodart to shrink the prostate, meds to urinate more, meds to urinate less, and lets not even get into ED; and they are followed by law office ads about deaths and injuries resulting from the use of THESE SAME MEDICATIONS. I found a list of all the harmful medications on a law office website, and it is staggering. Some of these medications CONTINUE to advertise. I saw an ad for Celebrex, which has caused a number of deaths, in which they actually say in the ad that the benefits may outweigh the risks. Are you kidding me?

The real irony, is that people die from the treatment of diseases THAT ARE NOT FATAL to begin with. And the pharmaceutical companies are making billions and billions of dollars from these people.

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like over the past 10 years we are seeing more and more cases of cancer, diabetes and other deadly diseases, as well as sudden cardiac arrests, strokes, and brain aneurysms in remarkably young people. It seems every week, I hear of a 39 year old dropping dead from one of these. Makes my self-diagnosed heart attack at the age of 4 seem not only plausible, but probable. I guess my dad would have to take me seriously now. And here I thought the medical community was receiving billions of dollars for research and making significant progress in fighting these ailments. I have no doubt that the influx of all of these new quasi-diseases and the overabundance of prescription medications are to blame.

Here is the real kicker, what I alluded to before, and why these companies rake in the money that they do. The FDA was able to get a law passed many years ago, that states "ONLY PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION APPROVED BY THE FDA CAN TREAT AND CURE A DISEASE." That is the reason if you look at the label for an herbal remedy it MUST say "this product has not been evaluated by the FDA, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."What that basically means, is that for every condition that is legally given the label "disease", ONLY an FDA approved medicine created by a pharmaceutical company can claim to prevent or cure that disease. The more diseases there are, the more medications are prescribed (unnecessarily in my opinion), and the more money the healthcare industry rakes in.

And as far as I am concerned, these prescriptions are killing people, all in the name of the almighty profit.

People like Bernie Madoff and Alan Stanford are dispicable, but they are not killing people. The healthcare industry is killing people to make more money than you or I can imagine, and they are doing it legally and with the government's blessing. Utterly disgusting.

"Land of the free and home of the brave"? More like "Land of the drug-addicted and home of the dead."

Be well.