I'm Just Sayin'

Yesterday, I wrote about germs, cleanliness and health...how our hyper cleanness has led to health problems that were not anticipated...at least  by most of us.  We were sold a solution to a problem that did not exist. We were convinced that we are being assaulted by too many bad germs and we need to do a better job of sterilizing our environment. The argument seemed valid. After all, germs make us sick...right? Kill the bastard germs! We are now experiencing an  extreme medical threat caused by the over zealous extermination of germs.  Our bodies have "forgotten" how to fight germs and they have "forgotten" which invaders should be attacked. Again, we were sold products to combat an imaginary or trumped up threat.

Now.... onward to another scam by  large corporations and their sleazy ad agencies. This time it's the drug companies. No sane person can possibly counter the argument that the drug companies are inventing illnesses so they can sell us drugs. They are offering solutions to medical problems that either don't really exist or that have  exadurated  seriousness.  Advertising agencies actually use think tanks....they pay people to invent names for new medical problems.  We joke about this ...we joke about the pill that has serious side effects for the imagined medical problem. The drug companies minimize the the possibility that you will have an adverse reaction to their new wonder drug....it's worth the risk they imply. We laugh about buying into all this snake oil stuff...and yet we do it. We buy the snake oil. At best, we have wasted our money.  On the other end of reality, in some cases we have caused ourselves harm. In some cases, we have killed ourselves.  Long odds for an adverse reaction to one of these drugs doesn't comfort those who draw the short straw. Doctors  have participated in this fraud. 

The big pharmaceutical companies spend about $23 billion each year  romancing doctors. Finally, some of our doctors are realizing that they share  responsibility for this fraud and the damage it is causing. Some of the doctors are beginning to realize that they have been used and manipulated by the pharmcos. They've been played like cheap banjos.  Some of them have started to refuse audience to the pharmco reps.  Some of them are turning down the perks and freebees. Some of them have begun to understand the dangers they are handing their patients...in the prescription form. They have seen Vioxx recalled and are watching the Avandia, a diabetes drug, controversy. Some doctors....a few for now, but their numbers are growing.

We are such easy marks. Hell, we'll buy anything. And so, there are those posed and prepared to deliver. Everybody knows the story about the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge...how stupid we think..how could anybody fall for that. Yes...how indeed.