Screamingly funny rag by Onion on those regular CNN fillers on the latest medical so-called breakthrough. A friend and I had a good old chinwag recently about the revolting way in which pharmaceutical companies invent diseases to sell their latest pills and then build advertising campaigns around them. You know the ones: “Don’t let embarrassing foot odour come between you and that dream job. Talk to your doctor about Toejam-B-Gone, the exciting NEW remedy for excessively sweaty feet!”
Looking back, I reckon it all started with Lifeboy Soap. According to Wikipedia, the makers of the soap actually coined the phrase “body odor” in order to sell their crappy product—which, if memory serves, smelled like carbolic soap and, if anything, made its users, usually young men, smell even ranker than usual—which was saying plenty, in 1970s Ireland!
The biggest of Big Pharm’s scams, to my mind, is the annual ‘flu scare, which, here in Canada where we have universal free health care, means that provincial governments are spending billions every year to buy doses of anti-flu concoctions that are made up by guess and by golly to cope with a possible epidemic. Most people get the ‘flu maybe once or twice in their lifetime; half the time, what we call the “stomach ‘flu” is just a bellyache caused by some random bug or food-borne pathogen, while a bad cold is usually responsible for the rest of it. If you have ever had the ‘flu, you will know there is no mistaking it—you feel like death, every bone, muscle, and sinew in your body hurts like hell, and there is no crap about nobly making it into work or to the kitchen to feed your family. All you want is to curl up in a ball somewhere and quietly die. Which most of us don’t; we eventually get over it and get on with life. A very small, really miniscule, percentage do actually die—mostly the very elderly or those whose immune systems are compromised for some other reason. It’s sad when that happens—but is that a good reason for all of us to be lining up like sheep to be shot full of some wacky antidote made up of past ‘flu viruses for some epidemic that might never happen?
But every year it’s the same—the government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on print and television advertising, trying to scare us into trekking down to the nearest community centre or clinic in order to get our ‘flu shots—for which we, the taxpayer, have paid big bucks to Big Pharm.
I have never had a ‘flu shot and never will—but then I’m descended from an oul’ virago who survived not one but two episodes of the dreaded Spanish Flu. That would be my maternal grandmother, who was such a fearsome old bitch that even an epidemic that wiped out an estimated 100 million people worldwide couldn’t faze her.
I’ve let all the pharmaceuticals go, Tessa and have never felt better. I was on a cocktail of drugs for BP, diabetes, and a valve disorder. When I told my physician how ill I was feeling on these she prescribed an anti-depressant. It was my wake-up call, I threw everything away and have never looked back. I feel amazingly healthy now.
My daughter, who has MS, is treating her disease holistically and does far better than the pharm-dependents. The drug industry scares me to bits. It has deteriorated the lives of many of my friends.
XO
WWW
I’m not really anti-pharmaceuticals per se. I know there are medicines out there that help people with real diseases or disorders. But I hate the never-ending stream of ads pushing pills for every disorder from bunions to ingrown toenails, followed by a litany of side-effects that are glossed over. And I do think doctors are too quick to prescribe pills that lead to more and more pills, especially when it comes to older folks. My mother-in-law, at 88 years of age, is basically as healthy as a horse, but she goes through a shelfload of prescribed drugs every day, paid for by the government because she’s a pensioner. I strongly suspect most of them are sugar pills, because she really doesn’t have a darn thing wrong with her.
It takes an act of congress to get me to take any sort of drug, too, and the pharmaceutical companies and their “designer illnesses” are the main reasons why. Honestly, listen to some of the disclaimers the next time a commercial comes on television for the newest Wonder Drug: “May cause vomiting, diarrhea, a sudden drop in blood pressure, erosion of your digestive system, bleeding from the eyes and ears, massive liver failure and ingrown toenails.” Oh, yeah – I want my husband to have an erection that badly. Uh-huh.
You’re too funny, Jan. Maybe he wants an erection that badly? Especially if you clean up after him. LOL.
I’m with you Tessa – having resisted all drugs for years my doc prescribed sleeping pills last month. Got me through a couple of nights but OMG the nightmares (having looked the drug up it turns out to be v popular on the street as a hallucinogen …). Would rather deal with insomnia the old fashioned way – red wine with dinner and read until you fall asleep
Many years ago, when I was living in London, I got hepatitis (non-infective, back in the days before they started alphabetizing it!) and I was prescribed a sleeping drug just to keep me in bed, because I refused to go into hospital. I was sick for nine/ten weeks and took the pill faithfully every day until I got better, when I stopped. I was very surprised, some years later, to find I had been innocently taking Halcion, which has since been withdrawn, I believe, because it was highly addictive and caused all kinds of side effects, including short-term memory loss. I didn’t get addicted … but I do sometimes wonder about my memory lapses.
I’ve had mixed experiences with pharms. Other than aspirin or antihistamines in the winter, I never used to take anything at all. Now there’s a mild anti-depressant and a thyroid medication, but both of those are related (I think) to problems I had no clue about until I turned 50. As a rule, I’ll at least consider taking something if (a) the drug’s been around long enough to be cloned via multiple generics and (b) my doctor manages to convince my skeptical self that I really need it and (c) I myself FEEL that I need it.
With both the AD and the thyroid thing, there was an appreciable improvement in Life After Prescription.
I don’t know much about medicine (or drugs, for that matter). But it seems obvious that women — just because of the complex natural cocktail coursing through their veins — would be a very difficult “fit” for drug designers. Yet most of the crazy drugs hawked on TV now, for most of the ever crazier disorders, seem pitched to women. Something wrong with this picture.
(Btw, off-topic: hard not to admire a writer who effortlessly drops a word like “virago” into a post on a subject like Big Pharma.)
I’m with you, John. Fortunately, I trust my doctor, who is no pill pusher. If she decided I really needed something, I would at least try it, but I would need to be persuaded. And “virago” is being kind to my ghastly maternal grandmother!
Amen, Tessa. These sanctimonious pill-pushers give me the creeps.
Me too!
Can someone tell me why it’s really bad for your body to on occasion breath from all ends? Do we have to suppress our bodies and our minds? This clip was so funny. Only problem is, how many of us would really need a downer pill? We could just watch the news. My favorite new disease is acid reflux. Does it really exist?
Ah, you mean good old heartburn! Used to be you drank a glass of milk and slept upright. Now you have to take a pill and, if it gets really bad, you get a prescription strength one. I got rid of heartburn by losing weight, but there’s probably a pill for that too.
I have a sister in law that desperately needs that Despondex. She’s so damn perky I want to punch her. Thanks for my Monday morning laugh. I’ve stopped taking anything but my little bitty thyroid pill and I think I feel much better.
Funny, I have a SIL like that too – and I wouldn’t mind taking a poke at her either!
Can’t agree with you there, Tessa, and neither does some good science. In a flu pandemic the number who die is not miniscule, nor is it necessarily the infirm and the old. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed at least twice as many people who died in that great carnage the First World War. The death rate was highest amongst teenagers and young adults (I think I am right in remembering that bird flu has a similar pattern). The cost benefits of max vaccination can be carefully worked out. In the UK, where we also have universal health care the vaccine is available free to the elderly and people in certain high risk groups. I think it is a good policy.
Don’t get me wrong, Duchess. I’m not saying that the death toll of a pandemic would be minuscule, I know that the Spanish Flu wiped out as many as 100 million people. And that it was unusual in that, unlike any other influenza outbreaks, it seemed to target mostly younger people. There have been three flu pandemics in the past three centuries, of which the 1918 pandemic was by far the worst. But I also know that every year, localised epidemics of the flu kill a few hundred people worldwide, mostly the elderly and those with compromised immune systems – which is not a lot in the scheme of things.
From what I’ve read, there are two epidemiologists who are predicting that the next pandemic is imminent and bird flu looks like the most likely culprit, because a high percentage of those who contract it die. But so far, there has been no human to human transmission and the yearly flu dose concoctions are not related to bird flu at all. From what I’ve read, there is no way to synthesize a vaccination against human to human bird flu until it actually happens.
sorry, dodgy grammar. But I hope it is clear that I meant to say that at least twice as many people died of the flu in 1918 than were killed in the Great War.
I got your drift, Duchess!
yeah, one boss I had seemed to think ‘FREE’ yearly flu jabs were the equivalent of a pay rise, the favour he thought he was doing us, Then the Head of Security promptly came down with the full blown version and was off work for a month shortly afterwards! I always refrained from claiming mine as I’m kind of fond of my immune system.
The Onion is indeed hysterically funny – there is just nothing to add to that clip – it encapsulates its subject so nail-on-head.
Being blessed with a strong immune system, I don’t like tampering with it either! Seems like you’ve worked for a few jerks over the years, Laura!
I know it’s a tough call but I think Big Pharma’s biggest sin will turn out to be psychotropic drugs. There’s a guy named Bruce E. Levine who writes on this topic, sometimes at Huffington, and what he writes, makes me, want a Despondex.