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Archives | (September 2003)
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With A Stroke Of The Pen Part Two (cont.)
------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 4 of 6 One of the most disturbing aspects of the huge increase in prescribing psychotropic drugs to children is the notion of using them as a “preventative” measure for such disorders as schizophrenia. The rationale is that schizophrenia tends to run in families and that if a child has relatives who have suffered from the disorder, giving them anti-psychotic drugs as children may prevent the onset of the disease later in life. While there is a 10 percent chance that a child will develop the disorder if one of their parents suffered from schizophrenia, there is a 90 percent chance they will not. But once they start taking anti-psychotic drugs they will have to do so for the rest of their lives. Moreover, these drugs are not benign. They can result in decreased motor skills, high blood pressure and sedation. In other words, they can turn a patient into a zombie. That is why many adult patients stop taking their medication – they cannot function. Children, however, do not have this option. They do what they are told. To condemn a preschool child to such an existence without a firm diagnosis would seem unconscionable to most people, but not, apparently to Big Pharma and its allies in the medical community. Of course, although Big Pharma wraps its advocacy of administering these drugs to children in a mantel of moral superiority by claiming that it is merely “preventative medicine,” it’s really all about money. If the 90 percent of the children of schizophrenics who never develop the disease are nonetheless required to take these powerful anti-psychotic drugs for their entire lives, Big Pharma gets a nine-fold increase in the size of its market! Of course its not just children that are the target of Big Pharma’s “preventative medicine” strategy to fatten its profits. Big Pharma has also set its sights on Baby Boomers in what is perhaps their most outrageous move to date. EVERYBODY’S DRUGResearchers in Australia have come up with Big Pharma’s ideal prescription drug. They call it the “Polypill” and want everyone over the age of 55 to take it – that’s right, EVERYONE! What kind of a pill, you might ask, could possibly be a “one size fits all” drug? Why a pill that has a little bit of everything of course! And that’s more or less what the Australian researchers have come up with. Actually, they claim what they’ve developed is a pill to largely eliminate heart attacks – something bound to appeal to the growing legion of aging Baby Boomers beginning to feel their mortality. |
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