I have begun to read more about "Big Pharma." In no way am I able to grasp the extent of what and how this medical industrial complex (to borrow a term from political/economic theory) invades andcontrols our lives. The more I read, the more overwhelmed I am with understanding just how vast and interrelated all the components are in terms of economic, political and social impact. It is far more than one person can hope to comprehend. It is not possible to know even enough to control how one's own life intersects, as all of ours will, with the medical care available to us as individuals. It is a dynamic, self-perpetuating structure of competing interests so expansive and pervasive that I would venture to say receiving care and treatment for anything at any time in our lives, is probably as much responsible for killing us as it may be for returning us to so-called health. The business of healthcare is tantamount to the complicated machinery that generates the economics and momentum for war. There is as much evil in this vicious and carefully balanced construct of power and force as there is in anything destructive that we can imagine. And the horror here is that the loss of life that occurs as a result of the movement of this power is considered"collateral damage" in exchange for profit.
I am at a loss as to how to identify and classify the most potentially destructive of the components in the mess of what we know and accept as healthcare. I am struck by the insignificance I feel in the face of an incomprehensible set of Nuremberg-like directives regarding how, why, when and, most importantly, what we receive in the way of medical care. I am one woman who lost her son in this vortex. I can and do reduce all of what has happened to me and to Maxx down to the particular, the details, the horror of his illness and death. But I also know that we, my family, is representative of the millions and millions of other individuals world-wide who are caught up in the intricacies of a diabolically envisioned and implemented system of treatment, the sole and corrupt impetus of which is to make money.
A sampling of what I've been reading
this week includes:
An article by Marcia Angell, author of
The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do
About it (Random House, 2004) published in the Boston Review
(May/June 2010) as well as another she wrote which was published in
the New York Review of Books entitled Drug Companies and Doctors: A
Story of Corruption, (January 15, 2009). More information about Ms. Angell can be found at
I am at a loss as to how to identify and classify the most potentially destructive of the components in the mess of what we know and accept as healthcare. I am struck by the insignificance I feel in the face of an incomprehensible set of Nuremberg-like directives regarding how, why, when and, most importantly, what we receive in the way of medical care. I am one woman who lost her son in this vortex. I can and do reduce all of what has happened to me and to Maxx down to the particular, the details, the horror of his illness and death. But I also know that we, my family, is representative of the millions and millions of other individuals world-wide who are caught up in the intricacies of a diabolically envisioned and implemented system of treatment, the sole and corrupt impetus of which is to make money.
A sampling of what I've been reading
this week includes:
An article by Marcia Angell, author of
The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do
About it (Random House, 2004) published in the Boston Review
(May/June 2010) as well as another she wrote which was published in
the New York Review of Books entitled Drug Companies and Doctors: A
Story of Corruption, (January 15, 2009). More information about Ms. Angell can be found at
The scope of her work in the area of medical ethics and as the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine is amazing and relevant.
I have also been looking closely at Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization, global in scope, originally founded by Dr. Sydney Wolfe
Dr. Wolfe has been the head of the Public Citizen's Health Research Group for two decades
and is the author of Worst Pills, Best Pills.
and is the author of Worst Pills, Best Pills.
The links listed below cover information that can take days to review and absorb. The material is
literally mind boggling.
http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/Exprts_intrvw/m_angell.htm#Top
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