Posts Tagged ‘drug’

Chicken

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

CHICKEN
Many people in modern society switch to eating chicken and poultry because it is lower in saturated fat and cholesterol than beef and other red-meat products. Poultry, however, has substantial fat content, which along with its protein, have been associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, various cancers, and other illness. In addition, the poor quality of most modern day chickens is a major concern of public health authorities. Recent food poisoning epidemics, such as Salmonella, have been traced to contaminated chicken. Antibiotics given to chickens in factory farms are also believed to be a principal cause in the appearance of drug-resistant strains of bacterial related disease. See Antibiotics, Arthritis, Eggs, Global Warming, Heart Disease.

• Vast Majority of Chicken Infected with Campylobacter - Campylobacter, the leading bacterial cause of food-borne illness in the United States, infects 70 to 90 percent of chickens, according to scientists at the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Campylobacter causes between 2 and 8 million cases of sickness annually and results in 200 to 800 deaths, according to various estimates. Symptoms include cramps, abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea and fever and results from eating undercooked chicken or other food that has come into contact with raw chicken. Campylobacter may lead to a potentially fatal nerve disorder called Guillain-Barré syndrome. Campylobacter used to be treated by antibiotics, but new strains of drug-resistant bacteria are developing. A recent sampling of chickens in Minnesota supermarkets found 79 percent contaminated, including 20 percent with a strain resistant to antibiotics. In another sample, 58 percent of turkeys were infected with 84 percent drug-resistance.
Source: Marian Burros, “Health Concerns Mounting Over Bacteria in Chickens,” New York Times, October 20, 1997.

• Energetic Effects of Eating Chicken - Macrobiotic educator Michio Kushi, who has counseled thousands of people over the years, reports that chicken contributes to the tightening of bones, joints, muscles, and other parts of the body. Eating too much chicken, in his experience, is a leading cause of arthritis, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and other diseases in which the limbs or bones contract, wither, or waste away. Energetically, he compares this to assuming the appearance and qualities of a chicken.
Source: Michio and Aveline Kushi with Alex Jack, Macrobiotic Diet (Tokyo and New York: Japan Publications, 1993).

• Poultry and Mutant Rats - Two-foot long “mutant” rats are attacking farm animals in Chile. They are believed to have evolved after eating the droppings of hormone-fattened poultry. Burrowing in the banks of the Mapocho, a polluted river that crosses Santiago, they have attacked chickens and small goats.
Source: “Chilean Mutant Rats,” Boston Globe, December 1, 1997.

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Big Pharma, Bad Karma

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Big Pharma, Bad Karma

“One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.”
- William Osler, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892)

“We have a system that nobody but Big Pharma is happy with.”
- former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber, now with the Foundation for Medical Excellence

A progressive hospital administrator is currently touring the country, speaking out on the virtues of disease prevention. He begins his presentation with the observation that the modern medical system is not really focused on prevention or health promotion at all. As he puts it, “We don’t have a health care system in this country. What we have is a disease treatment system.”

This bold statement is highly effective in getting audiences on board with the idea that the priorities in modern medicine are seriously out of whack. But the situation is actually far worse than our administrator makes it out to be. The problem is not so much that we have a “disease treatment system.” Rather, the problem is that we have a “disease promotion system.”

Big Pharma wants your body

“How can this be?” you might ask. Surely the health care industry is inefficient, over-priced and frustrating to both patients and providers. But isn’t the whole point to help people get better?

Not anymore it’s not. If you’ve been paying attention to trends in media and marketing, you know that the pharmaceutical industry has seized control. Big Pharma has been let out of its cage and is now tyrannizing the medical marketplace. Not content to simply promote products for existing diseases, Big Pharma now promotes a wide range of human afflictions and expands the definitions of disease; their goal is to manufacture new, more profitable disorders.

Pharm facts

To get a sense of how warped the system has become, consider these facts:

Big Pharma now spends more than $5.5 billion to promote drugs to doctors–more than what all U.S. medical schools spend to educate medical students. (New England Journal of Medicine, June 23, 2005 “The Lessons of Vioxx”)

Major drug companies employ about 90,000 sales representatives – one for every 4.7 doctors in the United States. (American Medical Association)

The total pharmaceutical marketing budget is $25 billion. (Forbes magazine “Just Say NO!” by Robert Langreth Nov. 29, 2004)

Drug firms have spent $800 million since 1998 buying influence, including $675 million on direct lobbying of Congress. No other interest group has spent more money to sway public policy. (Center for Public Integrity)

Selling Sickness

Big Pharma has had a free ride for a long time, but finally, some people are starting to sit up and take notice. For example, consider Selling Sickness: How The World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels. The story on the front flap summarizes the whole sordid mess:

“Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsen, the head of Merck, one of the world’s largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. It had long been his dream, he said, to make drugs for healthy people–so that Merck could “sell drugs to everyone.” Three decades on , the late Henry Gadsen’s dream has come true.”

Moynihan and Cassels lay out their case in methodical detail, telling us about Big Pharma’s efforts to expand the patient pool and create new diseases. Their conclusion: “there’s a lot of money to be made telling healthy people they’re sick.”

Disease by definition

To understand Big Pharma’s power over our health, it’s important to understand how disease is managed in large populations. Most medical conditions are defined by a set of numbers. If we broaden the range of those numbers, even slightly, and apply it to a population of millions of people, the consequences can be profound.

For example, think about the numbers that are attached to your blood pressure. If it’s above X, you’re officially “diseased” and a candidate for medication. If it’s below X, you’re “healthy.” But X is determined, not by some perfect medical formula, but by consensus within the medical community. Exact cut-off points are debatable and relative.

This is where Big Pharma steps in. If they can expand the statistical definition of a disease, even by a small margin, they can cash in. One or two percentage points, spread across America or better yet, the world, adds up to millions of newly created patients. Thus it comes as no surprise to hear that Big Pharma has become an active participant in the process of defining disease. By pouring money and influence into experts, conferences and journals, Big Pharma stretches the definitions and expands the patient pool.

The power of suggestion

It would be one thing if human disease was a matter of absolutes, but it’s not. Social and cultural forces play an immensely powerful role in determining how we interpret our physical experience. Is obesity a disease? Workaholism? Weak sexual desire? Social anxiety? It’s easy to imagine situations in which any physical sensation or experience of the human body might be labeled as health or disease, depending on the context.

Our health is the product, not simply of genetics and biochemistry, but also of human influence. As intensely social animals, we pay close attention to the physical well-being of our families and friends. If people in the tribe speak of getting one disease or another, we naturally begin to wonder if such afflictions are part of our experience as well. If everyone around us is complaining about headaches or low back pain, we may very well decide to join the gang.

Have you ever noticed how trendy diseases can be? One month it’s eating disorders, the next month it’s carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome. None of these conditions even existed 100 years ago, but now they’re “epidemic.” Similarly, medical students frequently observe how closely their physical sensations parallel the conditions that they’re studying. “Med student’s disease” is legendary.

Big Pharma is well aware that disease is creatable; they know full well that their customers are vulnerable to suggestion. By manipulating images, ideas and narratives, they shape the way people think about their bodies and in turn, their health.

The greatest therapy is the least advertised

It’s important to be aware of Big Pharma’s relentless disease promotion, but we should also take note of what’s gone missing along the way. That is, whatever happened to exercise?

Technically, Big Pharma’s direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns are “commercial speech” but they also become a form of education. People learn about their bodies from all kinds of sources and in this sense, Big Pharma’s pitch has become part of a larger health-education curriculum.

In the process, exercise is being squeezed out of the picture. Health professionals know that exercise is an immensely powerful therapy with effects that are both broad and deep. And yet, its powers are completely obscured by mega-profit therapies. Tragically, the most powerful therapeutic tool in our collection is also the one that is the least often promoted.

In fact, when we do hear about exercise in commercial media, it’s usually presented in the negative. When Big Pharma promotes drugs for conditions in which exercise is highly effective, they make sure to emphasize the failure of fitness. “If you’ve tried exercise and diet and your cholesterol is still high, ask your doctor about our miracle pill.” The sub-text to such promotions is that exercise is likely to fail and that you’ll probably have to “ask your doctor” anyway, so there’s no point in even trying. Over time, consumers are conditioned to bypass movement entirely and go directly for the pills.

A particularly egregious example of this approach is brought to us on behalf of Avandia, a blood sugar drug by GlaxoSmithKline. The advertisement pictures a frustrated middle-aged male, slumped on a bench in a stark, depressing fitness facility. The defeated expression on his face tells us that he’s had his fill of exercise. “If diet and exercise won’t get your blood sugar number down, adding Avandia can help” the ad tells us. The meta-message is obvious; exercise is a drag, so you may as well go directly to the pharmacy.

UneedUs: the axis of disempowerment

Like true drug dealers, Big Pharma makes it a point to promote dependency in its customers. The mission is simple: get people thinking about drugs as a first-line solution to physical problems. “You can’t manage your health on your own: you need us. You need us to design the drugs and test them in clinical trials. You need us to monitor your symptoms and adjust your dosage. You can’t possibly know your body on your own. You are powerless.” Ultimately, this systematic disempowerment produces the precise opposite of health; a weak, dependent and passive population. Hippocrates would be appalled.

Fueled by fear

Not surprisingly, fear plays a big role in Big Pharma’s marketing style. Lurking behind the smiling faces of happy drug consumers is the implicit threat of physical disaster. If you don’t “ask your doctor” your body will fall into an inevitable sink hole of disease and your loved ones will be dragged along with you.

We see this threat in many ads, but one particularly vivid example has recently appeared on health-related websites. Users are greeted with a big question mark and the ominous message, “What you don’t know could kill you.” Follow the link and you’ll discover that “You may be at triple the risk of developing the condition again in the future.” What’s this?” you wonder as you click through. “Talk to your doctor and click here for your online risk assessment. It’s a visit that could save your life or the life of a loved one.” This fearvertisement turns out to be a pitch for deep-vein thrombosis, an occasionally serious condition that is currently being hyped into a compelling medical emergency.

Universal disease: the dreams of medical marketers

While romantics dream of universal health, Big Pharma dreams of the inverse, a world in which the entire population is afflicted by chronic, incurable syndromes that require frequent diagnostic tests, expensive specialists and pharmaceuticals. The ideal Big Pharma customer is afflicted with disease throughout his lifespan. He is literate enough to read medical advertising, yet docile enough to follow directions “Ask your doctor about the green pill.” He doesn’t know what the green pill is, but he asks his doctor anyway, just to be sure.

A particularly chilling manifestation of this vision comes, not from Big Pharma itself, but from one of its pusher clients, Target. An advertisement in popular news magazines showcases its newly designed medication bottles with personalized, color-coded rings “to clearly identify the medication for each family member.” The advert shows three smiling children and their father, each with his own personalized bottle of drugs. The assumption is clear: if you’re a human being, you are supposed to be on something.

Turning disease into the default

Big Pharma’s direct-to-consumer strategy is not mere advertising. It is an audacious attempt to rework the default status of the human body. As Moynihan and Cassels put it in Selling Sickness, the goal of Big Pharma is “putting disease at the center of human life”

For the vast majority of human history, vigorous, robust health has been the default. Yes, there were plenty of infectious diseases, suffering and early death in the mix, but if you managed to avoid the pathogens and the predators, your body would be strong and resilient. The norm, as it is for all animals, is health.

Big Pharma wants to change all that. From this point forward, you are assumed to be diseased. You may be asymptomatic at the moment, but that’s a temporary state. By redefining what’s normal, we can make you sick merely by moving a few data points on a graph. Given the right kind of management, you will soon become a patient/customer. Once you are absorbed into the body of Big Medicine, you will become dependent for life.

Call to action

Obviously, we need is an antidote to Big Pharma. (Hmm…Maybe there’s a pill for that…”Taken once a day, this convenient new medication will decrease your anxiety about pharmaceutical marketing and help you live free again. Ask you doctor about Pharmaway.”)

Satire aside, we can begin by taking matters of health into our own hands. We start by taking care of our bodies with a movement-based lifestyle and a food-based diet. Craft a lifestyle that promotes health and independence and don’t deal with Big Pharma unless it’s absolutely necessary. (Avoid Big Pharma like the plague!) Don’t believe what you see in a Big Pharma advertisement and don’t allow your relationship with your body to be defined or distorted by fear marketing.

Use pharmaceuticals only as a last resort. Give your body a chance to seek out homeostasis on its own. Let your natural regulatory mechanisms do their thing. Make your body stronger with robust physical movement, stress relief and joy. It’s really the best approach; just ask your doctor.

References

Selling Sickness: How The World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
Nation Books 2005

The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
Marcia Angell

Peddling Paranoia
Alan Cassels

Suddenly Sick: The Hidden Big Business Behind Your Doctor’s Diagnosis
Seattle Times, June 26 - June 30, 2005

No Free Lunch: an alliance of health care providers who believe that
pharmaceutical promotion should not guide clinical practice

This article is a copy from http://goanimal.com/newsletters/2005/big_pharma/big_pharma.html

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Antibiotics

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

ANTIBIOTICS
Initially, penicillin and other antibiotics proved to be extremely effective, saving the lives of millions of people who otherwise would have died. However, the euphoria surrounding these “miracle drugs” quickly began to fade. Streptomycin almost completely lost its effectiveness after two months of use, especially on pulmonary tuberculosis. It also left many patients deaf or permanently dizzy. However, because the life-saving benefits still clearly outweighed the drawbacks, postwar physicians continued to prescribe strong drugs like these, and they became the treatment of choice for most acute conditions.
Within several decades, they began to be used prophylactically to prevent future infection, as well as remedially to treat existing disease, and antibiotics were routinely added to livestock feed, over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and other non-prescription products.
In the United States, 240 million doses of antibiotics are prescribed every year, almost one per person. One of every three hospital patients receives an antibiotic, and physicians routinely administer antibiotics for everything from the common cold to pneumonia.
Altogether, medical use accounts for 60 percent of antibiotic use. The other 40 percent is used in livestock feed to promote rapid growth. By 1980, 75 percent of all cattle in the United States received antibiotics, 90 percent of swine and veal calves, 50 percent of sheep, and nearly 100 percent of chickens and poultry. The drugs not only were used to prevent infection but to fatten up the animals and ensure maximum growth—and thus profits.
In recent years, research has shown that antibiotics can interfere with the production of red blood cells, the metabolism of vitamin B-12, and kill benign or beneficial bacteria in the intestines that synthesize Vitamin K, biotin, riboflavin, panthothenate, and pyridoxine. These nutrients are all associated with proper immune function and protection against disease. Side-effects associated with antibiotic use and misuse include diarrhea, rashes, fever, allergic reactions, hemolytic anemia, bleeding, bone marrow toxicity, and disorders of the kidneys, liver, and central nervous system. The rapid spread of candida albicans and other acute infections has been associated with chronic antibiotic use that has disrupted the normal homeostasis in the digestive system and enabled the selection of pathogenic strains of yeast, fungi, bacilli, and other microorganisms. See Drug-Resis-tance, Infectious Diseases.

• End of the Antibiotic Era? In a review of the history and therapeutic use of antibiotics, two medical researchers in Texas document how the modern science was lulled into complacency. “The scientific community grossly underestimated the remarkable genetic plasticity of these organisms and their ability, through mutations and genetic transfer, to develop resistance to antibiotics,” they explain. “Antibiotic resistance has made potential killers out of bacteria that previously posed little threat to mankind. The indiscriminate and reckless use of antibiotics has led to a fast ap-proaching crisis in which human dominance of the planet is threatened by single, elementary cells of the microbal world.”
Source: J. W. Harrison and T. A. Svec, “The Beginning of the End of the Antibiotic Era?,” Parts I and II, Quintessence International 29(3):151-62, 1998 and 29(4):223-29, 1998.

• Overprescription of Antibiotics - Abuse of antibiotics is contributing to disease, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Every year doctors write 12 million antibiotic prescriptions—one in every five—for colds, bronchitis and other viral infections for which antibiotics are useless. “Every time we use an antibiotic, we run the risk of promoting antibiotic resistance, or drug resistance, by bacteria,” said lead scientist Ralph Gonzales.
In the last 10 years, an epidemic of Streptococcus pneumoniae that is resistant to penicillin drugs has developed and is a leading cause of ear and sinus infections, meningitis, and other common illnesses.
Source: R. Gonzales et al., “Antibiotic Prescribing for Adults with Colds, Upper Respiratory Tract Infections, and Bronchitis by Ambulatory Care Physicians,” Journal of the American Medical Association 278(11)”901-4, 1997.

• Dangers of Antibiotics - In a critique of modern medicine and agriculture, a noted public health official presents evidence that the overuse of pharmaceuticals is creating an epidemic of new drug-resistant diseases.
“The sheer magnitude of this assault [the creation of new diseases by antibiotic-resistant microbes] is staggering. For four decades now, we have thrown hundreds of tons of antibiotics against our Hollywood imagination of microscopic enemies. In the process we have sown seeds for a whole new array of actual germs and diseases. . . . We favor simple technological fixes for complex disease entities, while our medical complex fosters a near-sighted one-germ, one-chemical mentality. Together, these positions contribute to a world view that encourages the proliferation of new chemotherapeutic agents, and in turn, the proliferation of new disease entitles. . . . The answer clearly does not consist of throwing more troops into a losing battle.”
Source: Marc Lappé, When Antibiotics Fail: Restoring the Ecology of the Body, (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1986).

• European Meat Tests Positive for Drug-Resistant Bacteria - In samples from a European Union-licensed meat-processing plant, German researchers found that 8 percent of minced beef and pork samples tested positive for vancomycin-resistant enteroccoi (VRE), antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria associated with human infections.
Source: G. Klein et al., “Antibiotic Resistance Patterns of Enterocci and Occurrences of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci in Raw Minced Beef and Pork in Germany,” Appl Environ Microbiol 64(5):1825-30, 1998.

• WHO Calls for End to Antibiotics in Livestock Feed - The World Health Organization has recommended phasing out the use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth. “Farms are factories of drug resistance,” stated Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation, Genetics, and Drug Resistance at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “The non-therapeutic misusage is just causing more multi-drug resistance in human therapy. They can transfer resistance, whether it’s something we eat or touch or waste that’s tilled into another source.”
Source: Stan Grossfeld, “Animal Waste Emerging as U.S. Problem,” Boston Globe, September 21, 1998.

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