Pharmaceutical Industry, Sickness, Ethics, Death.

Is the Pharmasickical, oops

Pharmaceutical Industry

slowly killing us?

Headings

The Moral Sickness in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Medical Treatment as the Primary Cause for Death in the USA

Is Daily Medication Killing Senior Citizens

“It’s the environment, stupid.”

Steps towards change in sickness management

The Limits of Western Medicine

 Is the Pharmasickical,

oops Pharmaceutical Industry

slowly killing us?

THE MORAL SICKNESS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Far too much of the Pharmaceutical Industry is sick. Very sick. The body of much of the industry has a tumour in the brain. The cancer has spread through much of the body of the industry to public relations, marketing, medical sales infecting staff and hospitals, management and doctors worldwide. The sickness also affects patients, their family and friends, as well as the poor.

Some of the major players in the pharmaceutical industry have a contemptuous record in terms of honesty, trust and integrity. USA and British governments have failed to engage in a proper regulation of this sick industry. British owned, GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s sixth largest pharmaceutical company, had to pay a $3 billion settlement to resolve civil and criminal allegations of marketing widely used prescription drugs for unapproved treatments and using kickbacks to promote sales. This was the largest settlement ever in the False Claims Act on record in the history of the USA. Another big player in the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer, the American owned multi-national, had to make a $2.3 billion settlement including a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine. Johnson and Johnson, another American multi-national, had to pay $2.2 billion. And so the list of a corrupt pharmaceutical industry goes on and on.

Numerous powerful companies made false claims about some of their medicine and gave kickbacks to doctors to sell their medicine. Large corporations were found guilty of ‘off-label use.’ This is the use of drugs for an unapproved age group, unapproved dosage and unapproved form of administration. Such abuse carries with it significant health risks for patients as well as a violation of ethical guidelines. Off label has no scientific support or very, very little. The substantial settlements reflect the determination of the pharmasickical industry to place market power above over the health and peace of mind of its customers.

GlaxoSmithKline state their purpose as market leader in the pharmaceutical industry. “We are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better, live longer.”

That arrogant claim is surely breath-taking.

The Chinese government has accused GlaxoSmithKline of paying hospitals, doctors and government officials to buy their drugs. Whistle blowers have accused the pharmaceutical industries of providing fraudulent “research” papers to bolster sales, contaminated and defective medicine, selling unapproved drugs, overpricing medicine and recommending drugs that could be life threatening. Major drug companies, who bribed foreign hospitals and doctors, have had to pay major settlements to the US government. Some in the pharmaceutical industry seem to use illegal endorsements as their business strategy to maximise profits.

Certain bio tech companies, drug companies from the board of directors to the sales and marketing teams display a depth of moral corruption to maximise profits. Millions die worldwide because they cannot afford the medication while millions of other people die because they can afford the medication and take it far too much of it. Like the big banks, the pharmaceutical industry mercilessly engaged in the pursuit of profit regardless of who suffered. Death from medical treatment is one of the three biggest causes of death in the USA.

MEDICAL TREATMENT AS THE PRIMARY CAUSE FOR DEATH IN THE USA

One team of researcher placed death from medicine as the highest cause for death in the USA. The researchers authored a detailed paper with numerous footnotes titled “Death by Medicine” whose findings were described as “absolutely shocking.” The 2001 report stated that the number of deaths caused by conventional medicine were 783,936 per year were greater than heart disease of just under 700,000 death and death from cancer of 550,000. Governments need to pass legislation warming people of the risk to our health from medication. These warnings need the same visibility as health warnings about the danger of cigarette smoking. Legislation must stop the promotion of painkillers and the range of opiate based drugs supposedly sold to protect the lives of the public. People face death, pain and sickness from medication, hospitalization and surgery. There is an epidemic of addiction to pharmaceutical drugs which gets passed on through hereditary traits from either or both parents from one generation to the next.

Drug companies continue to discredit or disregard complementary medicine, alternative lifestyles and a healthy diet and exercise. Pharmaceutical drug have become a serious health hazard for those buying medication whether prescription or prescription free drugs. Such medication can seriously damage our health in the short and long term. In an independent review of the nutritional Institute of America, a non-profit organisation claimed that medication was the leading cause of death in the United States, whether through adverse drug reactions, medical error, hospital infections, procedure errors and lack of follow-up of medical prescription

The Institute of Medicine in the USA reported that an estimated 230,000 to 284,000 men, women and children die from medical treatment every year in the USA. This analysis placed death from medical treatment as the third biggest cause for death after heart disease and cancer. Nearly half of these deaths occurred due to the negative effects of medication, even when patients kept to the prescribed daily intake of medicine over an extended period of time, as authorised by the family doctor. The Institute also reported another 80,000 deaths in the USA due to infections in hospitals. There were 20,000 deaths due to hospital errors and another 12,000 deaths were due to unnecessary surgery.

The number of medical deaths from the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry amounts to the equivalent of a large passenger plane of passengers falling out of the skies every day. The death toll from medicine ought to generate widespread protest against the pharmaceutical industry to make drugs safe for use. Instead, regular use of pharmaceutical drugs gradually leads millions into a daily addiction while the industry rakes in massive profits.

The pharmaceutical industry needs to be taken into public ownership. The industry fails to provide a service to people in need. Massive profits, corrupt values expensive drugs have made the industry unfit for purpose. Our beloved NHS (the National Health Service – the nearest thing we have to a religion in Britain) needs a corresponding PHS (Pharmaceutical Health Service) to provide affordable drugs to patients in the UK and worldwide through an ethical and trustworthy service.

IS DAILY MEDICATION KILLING SENIOR CITIZENS

Doctors will issue death certificates on their patients who have passed away. Perhaps the death certificate states that our loved one died from an organ failure. Doctors cannot tell us whether the daily medication slowly and gradually contributed to organ failure. It is not unusual for people over the age of 65 to be swallowing five to 15 tablets twice daily, morning and evening. Do these drugs extend a person’s life or do the same drugs reduce life expectancy? The pharmaceutical industry makes money on every single tablet swallowed. It appears that the accumulated impact of drugs may make the patient weaker and weaker so their doctor then prescribes even more drugs. There is a sickness in the system.

Dehydration, poor diet, bedsores and infections weaken the capacity of the elderly to cope speeding up pain and sickness and death. Such conditions alongside complications through medical and surgical care with over prescription of drugs can become a death sentence, even for those relatively healthy at the start of the treatment.

Healthcare workers offer a senior citizen a glass of water with the tablets twice a day week after week, year after year. Elderly people have to endure on a daily basis the consequences of such medication including frequent bouts of diarrhoea and constipation owing to the impact of these drugs. Irregular bowel movements serve as minor symptoms compared to life-threatening ills, and a slow and gradual weakening of the whole body through enduring such absorption of drugs twice daily. Doctors may well find themselves prescribing more drugs to stop diarrhoea or constipation in an ever increasing struggle to keep a person feeling well. Medical staff and home healthcare workers may not realise that the issue of such drugs in such numbers on a daily basis may slowly and systematically kill the person. There is the urgent need for a monthly examination by a seasoned professional to determine whether all the drugs swallowed genuinely serve the real interests of the patient. Healthcare workers and patients need to go online and actually check out the drug, its purpose and its side effects to see whether or not such medication remains vital.

When the elderly take multiple pills at the same time, due to multiple health issues, the risk to more ill health correspondingly grows with a relentless battle taking place between tablets and organic life. For example, laxatives can contribute to weakness, weight loss and more confinement to bed. Physicians then find it very difficult to distinguish health problems related to age, environment (inactivity, diet, hospital and depressed state of mind) and the impact of medication.

Bed bound or house bound, the patient may require nursing care due to the outcome of the daily input of a cocktail of tablets. Healthcare requires a multi-discipline approach including diet, exercise, mindfulness/meditation training, lifestyle and complementary medicine.

Elderly people on daily medication remain especially vulnerable to addiction to drugs. As a result, they may face different expressions of chronic ill health, countless visits to clinics, frequent meetings with specialists, more drugs, hospitalization and surgery. Elderly people report that they have long since forgotten the reason for taking the drugs. Their physician never or rarely goes through the list of their daily medication to address the particular drugs and the quantity swallowed. The patient, the healthcare worker or the family will have to take determined action to see whether or not the current prescriptions really serve the interests of the patient. It is not unusual at all for patients to reduce their medication and within two or three days start to feel they are getting better! The person begins to feel more alive as the body releases more energy previously spent fighting the impact of chemicals absorbed into the blood stream. Initially, their bowel movements might start getting back to normal through reduction in drug intake.

The daily desire and impact of drugs upon society generates millions of extra visits to clinics resulting in further prescriptions to deal with their negative, plus countless numbers of visits to the A and E (Accident and Emergency) departments. There are numerous hospital admissions due to ill health from inappropriate medicine. These admissions place more financial demands on a vulnerable health care system urgently in need of increased state funding.

Yet, despite this nightmare situation, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment refuse to allow a holistic health treatment for NHS (National Health Service) patients. Complementary medicine offers treatment free from the unhealthy and life risking consequence of our current healthcare system. Management, control of sickness, pain and profit take first priority for the industry, not the transition of people from sickness/pain to health. The profits of the industry depend upon people taking medicine.

The entire basis of modern health care in the West needs a revolution to overthrow the present system of sickness management. The current system kills many, many people or, at the very least making vast numbers far worse off as a result of daily medication. Hospital, doctors and nurses fear to admit to any error of judgement due to the terror of a law suit, even though one in 20 hospital patients pick up an infection in hospital or get worse in their condition due to the medical care offered.

An estimate one in three of the population could suffer adverse effects from medical treatment. This indicates an industry and medical establishment out of touch with its primary remit – namely to bring healing and health to people.          Every age group from a foetus to the elderly find themselves vulnerable to the intrusion of unwise and unskilful drugs, radiation and unnecessary operations, as well as vaccines against future disease.            Adverse drugs can impact on an elderly person’s emotion and mental faculties causing much distress and unhappiness through

• collision of taking too many different at the same time
• inappropriate use of medicine
• overdoes from non-prescribed drugs
• overdose from prescribed drugs
• taking any medicine
• taking the wrong medicine
• too high a dosage

Rather than the drugs increase the quality of life of patients, the cocktail of daily drugs reduces the quality of life of patients. Patients who have to take several drugs per day need to take one tablet at a time with a good break before moving onto the next tablet to give body an opportunity to adjust to the impact of the chemicals upon the organs. The very young and the very old can suffer equally from sickness and pain from unwise use of medicine.

Countless numbers of doctors, specialists, nurses, social workers and scientists in laboratories dedicate their lives to public health. Scientists engage in endless hours of research in their dedicated attempts to find cures for disease, sickness and pain that haunt the lives of millions of people. We have much to be thankful for in terms of their efforts. Yet compassionate doctors and nurses, along with dedicated scientists, also need to address the larger picture of the relationship of the pharmaceutical industry to health. Society continues to be grateful to the immense scientific/medical research into body and mind issues directly related to the brain but the condition of the brain is the outcome of other conditions.

The Alzheimer’s Society in the UK published a leaflet to support their campaign against Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, of often leading to Alzheimer’s. The leaflet appeared in a British daily newspaper. The leaflet stated: “One in three of us over the age of 65 are expected to develop dementia before we die. In the UK, people fear developing dementia in later life more than any other health condition. That includes cancer, heart disease and strokes.

“Dementia never goes away. In fact, symptoms gradually get worse. The leaflet then goes onto state: “If we are to cure dementia and better understand the causes, symptoms and progression of dementia, we can only do this through research. Research takes time; regular support is the best way to ensure we find the answers- we can’t afford not to. We must invest more on behalf of future generations. This is crucial if we are to save lives and create a world that is free from dementia.”

Although well-intentioned, the Alzheimer’s Society deceives itself and others if it honestly believes scientific research is the only way to cure dementia and that the pharmaceutical industry and medical scientists can create a world free from dementia. The way forward to stop dementia or a dramatic slowing down of its impact will take place through environmental change – a healthy, organic diet, free from pesticides and genetic modification, pure water from source to tap, exercise that enables oxygen to circulate around the body including the brain. Governments need to legislate to ensure a massive reduction in our daily absorption of pollution of land, water and air affecting mind and body. Our brains are also vulnerable to toxic electromagnetic fields, power lines, flashing pictures and the accumulated negative impact of modern technology including television, mobile phones and frequent air travel. There is no mention in the leaflet of addressing these conditions for dementia and Alzheimer’s.

The leaflet refers to “Malcolm, a fantastic pianist, composer and a music lecturer at Cambridge, who spoke several languages. Alzheimer’s robbed him of everything he cherished.” Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease aged 51, the leaflet stated “Malcolm went for two years without a proper diagnosis, after initially being diagnosed with depression. Within just four years, he had lost his ability to read, write and spell.” One wonders how much distress and pain it brought to Malcolm, his wife and family knowing he did not receive a proper diagnosis for two years. How many millions suffer due to a wrong diagnosis? To its credit, Alzheimer’s Society offers moral and practical support to family members and friends of those suffering with dementia.

Forgive the impertinence, but I am left wondering whether the Alzheimer’s Society, itself, suffers from some form of collective dementia through forgetting the significant impact of environment factors upon the mind/brain. We require radical change in lifestyle and society not through believing in decades of research to find a medical concoction to try to slow down or stop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

”IT’S THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID.”

            Former US President Bill Clinton made famous the catchphrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” We can apply the same principle to the primary causes and conditions for health. “It’s the environment, stupid.”

Fear holds the medical system together. Doctors fear to take any risks with their patients in terms of reducing or ending medication in case the health of patient seems to get worse before it starts to get better. The nurses fear to hold back from administering the drugs. The pharmaceutical industry and medical establishment fear that any change in the system will reduce their power, control and profit over a nation’s health.

As we age, our immune system weakens with less and less capacity to resist and overcome the daily intrusions of drugs. The same drugs on one person of a different age with different capacities in mind and body will make a different impact on the cells and the chemicals making up the brain from the same drugs given to another person. Drugs frequently serve as a gross invasion taking no account of the personal dispositions of every patient. Drugs can act throwing petrol on the fire to put it out for certain people. The materialistic based industry takes no account of a person’s actual relationship to ill health and the importance of the person’s perception of pain along with the emotional/psychological/spiritual view of pain. The state of mind, application of mindfulness and meditation, can contribute to healing and health of mind and body

We cannot rely upon medical institutions. AMA (American Medical Association) refused to condemn smoking in the 1950s and early 1960s claiming a greater need for more research. Over a 16 year period, the AMA received around $18 million from a consortium of tobacco companies with the AMA maintaining its stance on the need for more research. Owing to vested interests, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical establishment, foundations, charities and medical scientists often cannot see the wood for the trees. These medical institutions cannot see outside the box of their own dogma around health. They are medical cults who sincerely believe they only know the true way to health.

The system of sickness management and control we live under keeps us vulnerable and eventually robs us of life. Powerful and influential businesses, organisations and societies fear to question the values and prejudices that inflame sickness and unhappiness and instead retreat into research, DNA testing, medical trials and expensive health care treatment.

STEPS TOWARDS CHANGE IN SICKNESS MANAGEMENT          

Doctors find themselves in the unenviable position of contributing to the ill-health, pain and death of their patients as well as their recovery. Patients literally put their lives in the hands of their doctor and hospitals, even when the illness is not life threating. The medical profession needs more strings to its violin when offering prescriptions for health. Rather than an immediate response for any kind of health care, medication needs to be regarded as the last resort. Such an approach will lead to a significant reduction in the use of medication, more self-knowledge and more knowledge about drugs, whether prescribed and non-prescribed.

Governments, the medical establishments and the pharmaceutical industry, with the support of complementary medicine, need to develop programmes for safety in public health. That will take an expansive view of healing and health involving patient responsibility, taking skilful action and taking great caution with the use of drugs.

Such intervention requires a diversity of therapeutic approaches to empower people who are unwell in mind and body. Our culture of medicine needs to develop new ways to recovery largely free from daily medication, otherwise the patient, young or old, may slip back into patterns of behaviour that first triggered mental or physical ills. Genuine care requires ongoing attention in a practical and systematic application with drugs use, only if necessary, as a last resort. Such a treatment would reduce dramatically the sickness, pain and deaths caused by medication. It is not an exaggeration to state that iatrogenic sickness or deaths has reached epidemic proportions.

Iatrogenic sickness or death refers to sickness, pain or death due to doctors or medication. Outside medical circles, the four syllable word iatrongenic has barely entered into public discourse. The pharmaceutical industry would not like the concept to enter into the public discourse as iatrogenic deaths would join cancer, heart disease, diabetes as primary causes for death. This could trigger the necessary revolution against the pharmaceutical industry for its widespread harmful control of health of society and the public cost in health and payment.

The pharmaceutical industry needs to instruct their agents, namely doctors and pharmacists, to initiate steps to protect patients from misuse or abuse of drugs. Doctors have to take responsibility for overprescribing drugs, especially the varieties of painkillers, leading to more and more deaths through overdose. Governments, the industry and the medical establishment can start the process of root and branch change to make the shift to health instead of prolonged pain management.

These steps include:

• Doctor and pharmacy asks for and receive a signed agreement from the patient he or she will use the drugs for a minimum period.
• Large print on packaging of risks to health of abuse or misuse of painkillers and anti-depressants.
• Package states clearly in large print the risks of regular use such drugs whether on prescription or non-prescription pain killers and other repetitively used drugs.
• Patient agrees to keep precisely to the doctor’s stated use and the patient signs this agreement.
• Patient agrees to meet with his or her doctor if the patient sees that she or she experiences a growing dependency/addiction to the drugs.
• Patient keeps drugs in a cool, dry and safe place, out of reach of children, and never available for other adults.
• Pharmacy to provide medication for a maximum period of one week or two weeks.

Patients and their families and friends need to work together to help a sick person get back to health. Sick people are vulnerable. They may not have the inner resources, nor knowledge, to challenge the type of medication they take or the quantity. The patients can feel themselves to be a victim of their situation and that perpetuates a submissive attitude. We become a victim when we feel sorry for ourselves. Families and friends with the support of  the sick person need to co-operate together so they feel empowered to act to protect patients from addiction to medication.

Since 2000 the number of prescription painkillers in some Western countries has more than tripled. This huge increase in the consumption of drugs reflects the increasing levels of stress, anxiety in the mind-body condition and a gradual lowering of the pain threshold as the population pursues more and more pleasure and comfort amidst heavy demands at work, study and home. The increase also reflects the power of greater advertising of pain killers from headaches to aching joints. Profits of the drug companies run into $billions. People cannot cope with headaches, stomach upsets, back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain so they reach out immediately for a painkiller at their local pharmacy or via a prescription. The same principle applies to problematic mind states. Drugs suppress worries, anxieties, fears and sleeplessness rather than a person gaining some insights into the causes for such states of mind and for making inner change in priorities.

Bent on maximising profit, drug companies denigrate all kinds of medicine except allopathic medicine. These companies persistently undermines homeopathy, Ayurveda medicine, herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, traditional remedies, acupuncture and other traditional disciplines in its determination to maximise its own power and influence worldwide. Every patient who rejects complementary medicine contributes to thousands of Euros to the profit of orthodox medicine, decade after decade. Public belief in the pharmaceutical industry generates billions of Euros for the medical establishment. It makes complete financial sense for drug companies to disparage other forms of medicine through a few laboratory trials, even though Western medicine kills people.

The pharmaceutical industry sanctions research on their own terms by using criteria that result in the rejection of varieties of complementary medicine for healing and health. The benefits that patients experience employing complementary medicine get summarily dismissed as if these patients of an alternative approach to healing were all gullible fools. The industry systematically undermines public confidence in homeopathy etc. Despite these attacks, homeopathy continues to be a leading alternative therapy in Europe, especially in France and the UK with many doctors and pharmacists advocating homeopathy. A homeopath will spend one to two hours with a patient inquiring to find out countless details of a sickness and the view of it before making a prescription. Through such counselling, the patient will leave a session with a substantial increase in self-knowledge and personal empowerment to work with symptoms. Millions upon millions in India only go to a homeopath for treatment and have never sought a prescription for Western trained doctors.

Certain homeopathic doctors have made foolish and irresponsible claims around the capacity of homeopathy to cure AIDS, cancers, disease and depression. These diseases remain far beyond the remit of homeopathy and dubious claims make people doubt in the real benefits of homeopathic treatment. The same principle applies with other forms of complementary medicine. Western medicine can provide an accurate diagnosis through tests and functions reasonably well in tackling major health issues including disease, surgery, accidents and severe mental health issues. Western medicine has little to offer in terms of needs for people not requiring the invasive approach of drugs.

Complementary medicine lacks the financial resources to conduct research on the damage to public health caused by the pharmaceutical industry. Besides complementary medicine have much more important areas to address, namely the long term health of their patients. Western medicines constant assault on cellar life weakens the immune system making people more and more vulnerable to ill health. It is hardly surprising that at any given time, more than 50% of Europeans swallows some kind of pill on a daily basis.

Coca-Cola with their sugar/chemical ridden drinks envisage selling seven billions of cans of coke daily – one can of coke for each person living on the planet. They currently sell nearly two billion cans at great cost to the Earth’s dwindling water supply and resources. The pharmasickical industry would love to sell seven billion courses of medicine daily as final confirmation of having total health control over the lives of every citizen on Earth. The industry sells medication to governments, hospitals and doctors in the private and public sector as well as to our pharmacies and chemists on the high street, supermarkets and shopping malls. Like an authoritarian regime, the industry refuses to tolerate the immense benefits of non-harmful forms of health care as advocated in complementary medicine.

This cynical disregard for complementary medicine serves to increase public dependency on conventional doctors and conventional medication and will pay the price for such dependency.

THE LIMITS OF WESTERN MEDICINE

The medical industry and the medical profession employ a threefold strategy to deal with major public health issues.

• To poison the area in the organism through medication
• To burn through the area through radiation
• To cut off or cut out problematic areas through surgery.

The poison, burn and cut methodology has its usefulness bringing immense lifesaving benefits for certain kinds of serious health issues. Brain damage, tumours, cancer, heart disease, addictions, clinical depression may require strong medicine, radiation or surgery to resolve the very real threat to mental/physical health. Yet, the same treatment and the endless prescription of medication becomes a primitive and brutal approach for majority of patients. Appropriate short term medication has the capacity to harmonise very problematic neurological circuity. Such medicine can make a real difference to adults and children’s lives.

More and more children, who experience much vitality and energy, find their energy suppressed in the controlled atmosphere in the classroom or the confinement to being housebound in the family home. The children remain trapped indoors, an unsuitable environment for the major changes taking place in their physique and psyche, especially primary schoolchildren and young people entering and going through adolescence. So psychiatrists pacify they minds through medication of the brain. Such medication seems primarily applicable for a number of highly restless and agitated children behaving in harmful ways but there is a growing concern among thoughtful doctors at the ease and speed that such medication gets prescribed to youngsters who need freedom to express themselves, not medication. Some children take a tablet per for school classes but not at weekends or during holidays. This approach protects the young from developing dependency on the medication. A tablet before class contributes to quality of attention through a reduction in impulsive behaviour and hyperactivity with the tablet wearing off by the end of the school day.

Are all mental/physical health issues directly linked to our genes? The industry frequently employs drugs to attack problematic genes. The medical model treats the brain as a machine which starts to break down when a part (s) of the machine malfunction. The attack on genes or their deliberate alteration generates imbalances outside of the particular gene. The use of drugs to attack the certain genes reflects that so-called struggle for conquest over matter. Inside and outside of serious health issues, doctors and patients need to discuss together the benefits of a regular break from the taking of medication.

There is a concern that opioid base of much medication makes the brain less sensitive to the medication. Physicians then prescribe a higher dosage due to more and more reliance on medication to solve issues of mind or body or both. Psychiatric drugs frequently ensure a daily dependency on the drugs for months, years or the rest of a person’s life. Once a person starts such a course of drugs, they may well find it virtually impossible to give up the dependency without going back to their early condition or going through very painful withdrawal symptoms.

The pharmaceutical industry welcomes such experiment in the name of progress as it gives validation to develop medication to change the condition of the neurons in the brain of patients having engaged in ghoulish experiments on animals first. Science currently lives in the spell of alteration, modification and mutation of genes in a roller coaster of bizarre experiments as scientists play life and death with organic life. Hundreds of millions of experiments on the brains of animals, operations for genetic change and modification between animals take place by introducing new traits into life forms or deleting certain DNA in life forms. Animals get genetically engineered for the food industry to make them grow faster, fatter or produce more quickly their products. Animal cloning produces a genetic copy of another animal among the numerous painfully cruel and degrading experiments that scientists conduct.

The profit margin on mass production of a single tablet such as Aspirin, Paracetamol, Viagra and many more tablets can run into $billions, once the research has gone through the necessary tests and made available worldwide. No wonder the industry undermines complementary medicine as it threatens the huge profits of the medical establishment. Profits in the pharmasickical industry rank among the very highest in the corporate world and above the computer technology industry.

We have the capacity to change our way of being, our attitudes and problematic life through a variety of skilful means. Dramatic improvements to health of body and mind occur through changes in diet, daily exercise and getting rid of unhealthy habits and addictions. Self-knowledge along with wise counsel can change a person’s life without risk of harmful side effects through medication. This capacity for change also confirms a freedom from belief in genetic determinism. Endless consumption of medication reinforces dependency on the belief in changing our brain through medication to get better.

With up to 25,000, genes, and countless conditions outside the brain, it seems bizarre to specify a link for a single gene for a single psychological condition. Neither the gene nor the psychological conditions have any inherent existence. Every time the industry introduces a drug to change or curtail a certain gene or collection of genes, the drug also makes an impact on other genes unrelated to the targeted gene(s) targeted. The best known example involves antibiotics. Antibiotics kill harmful bacteria affecting our health and also kill bacteria that support our health. Bacteria can develop antibiotic resistance so antibiotics no longer work to treat infections. The WHO says anti-biotic resistance has become a major threat to public health.

We have to believe that technology and drugs will fix our health. Yes, some drugs and some technology works wonders. We can only applaud the accomplishments of medical science. We have reached the point where pharmaceutical industry and medical science had the urgent need to engage in much soul searching. The lack of transparency, the manipulation of data and the endless self-congratulatory messages from the pharmaceutical industry does not inspire confidence. The stirring of mistrust about this profit needs to be at the top of the list of priorities.

Newspaper contain regularly articles that medical science keeps coming up against doubts, disbeliefs and cynicism from the public who refuse to take vaccines, certain injections and medication. Medical experts keep putting the blame on the public for denying medical science. The medical industry needs to take a good hard look at itself to understand why more and more people look for alternatives to health care than what Western medicine offers. People’s chances for getting better from various sicknesses may not differ that much between the pharmaceutical industry and complementary medicine/

Society needs a revolution in health care. The pharmaceutical industry cannot endorse this revolution because it remains trapped in its own hubris. People will go elsewhere to receive the empathetic attention they need, to learn much more about their sickness, to take the necessary steps and to know the way they can contribute themselves to their process of healing.