http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/05/our-country-on-drugs.html
One of the world’s largest pharmacy benefit managers announced more success of its drug benefit management this week. More than half of all insured Americans, children and adults, are now on prescription medications for chronic conditions — and 20% are on three or more drugs. Nearly half of all young women in their 20s and 30s are now chronically taking prescription drugs, as are nearly one in three children.
While the media has been quick to conclude this is evidence we’re more chronically diseased and unhealthy than ever, that is not what this reveals at all. Prescriptions are not a measure of health, but of marketing...
Medco Health Solutions, Inc. offers health risk assessments and pharmacy benefit management for major insurance companies, corporations, unions, health maintenance organizations, federal employees and those with Medicare* Part D. It states it is now "the nation's leading pharmacy benefit manager based on 2007 total net revenues of more than $44 billion." Its sales had first reached $1.4 billion in 2002 — meaning, it's had over a 3,143% increase in revenue in just 5 years.
According to Medco’s press release, for the first time in history, the majority of Americans have now been placed on prescription drugs for chronic conditions. People under insurance company managed care, more specifically. The greatest jump in prescription drug sales since 2001 of any group is among young women. Nearly half of all young women in their 20s, 30s and up to age 44 are taking prescription pills, with most on antidepressants — nearly one in five young women in our country is now taking antidepressants. One in three young men of similar ages are also being prescribed drugs, mostly for blood pressure and cholesterol — cholesterol drug sales among young men soared more than 80% over the past 7 years. Prescriptions for cholesterol drugs being given to women in their 40s to early 60s have doubled over those same 7 years. Nearly one out of every three children and teens is taking a drug, most for allergies/asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and antidepressants. And seniors are the most drugged of all, with about a quarter being given 5 or more chronic prescription drugs (28% women 22% men).
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/05/greatest-myth-of-health-risk-factors.html
Even the term “disease” increasingly doesn’t refer to actual clinical illness or disability anymore. Some want us to believe that certain risk factors themselves are diseases, too. [Although this is inconsistently applied, depending on whatever is popular to believe or is being sold. While, for instance, the most “morbidly obese” women (the upper 0.2% of the population, even) live longer than normal weight men, obesity is declared a disease, but maleness isn’t!]
Normal diversity found among a population has become medicalized and those falling outside of arbitrarily-determined “ideal” thresholds are seen as diseased. While any extreme of a health indice, such as cholesterol, could be an indication or marker that something might be amiss and real extremes might be life-threatening, that doesn’t make high or low cholesterol itself a disease or mean that by keeping our cholesterols at some perfect sweet spot we can prevent disease or premature death. The mid-ranges in values where most healthy people fall don’t make appreciable differences in actuality. Same goes for body size, blood pressures, blood sugars, etc.
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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii
Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.â€
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein
.. LOL