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Have you noticed the increase of drug company advertising directly targeting consumers? By 2011 eMarketer predicts the total pharmaceutical advertising spend will grow to a whopping $40 billion a year. Pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars a year to spread the word about drug therapies formulated to treat everything from ingrown toenails and insomnia to high cholesterol and depression. How many billions? Well, by 2011 eMarketer predicts the total pharmaceutical advertising spend will grow to a whopping $40 billion. That’s still three year away, but the evidence of Big Pharma’s plans to drug America is easily discerned by watching just about any channel on television today.
Recently, I was watching a TV commercial for a self-proclaimed breakthrough drug I was encouraged to “ask my doctor about.” As I was watching the ad all I could think about was how difficult it must be to produce an appealing promotion for a product that has so many devastating side effects. You’d have to be a marketing genius to peddle some of these drugs. One “pharmaceutical therapy” that aims to help people with insomnia sleep better at night, for example, comes with a laundry list of possible side effects, including but not limited to hives, difficulty breathing, swelling of the face, lips, tongue or throat, impaired thinking, slowed reactions and drowsiness. The commercial admitted the drug can be habit-forming and stopping usage may cause withdrawal symptoms. By taking this drug, then, you can get a good night’s sleep but may wake up with hives and swollen eyes, unable to breathe or drive to work. Wow! Do you still feel you should call your doctor right away? If you do then the marketing team did an award-winning job with its campaign.
It may surprise you to learn that some drug companies are spending more each year on advertising and marketing than on research and development of new products. Roughly $60 billion dollars is spent yearly on illegal drugs in the United States, according to U.S. government estimates. These publicly-traded legal drug dealers, however, are now surpassing illegal drug revenues. Obviously, there are big bucks in the sale of legal drugs. Eli Lilly, maker of Prozac, for example, is a $61 billion company that sells its products in over 140 countries. And who hasn’t seen a commercial about Viagra? This drug is made by drug giant Pfizer, a $170 billion company. Forbes magazine reported that depression drugs like Eli Lilly’s Cymbalta show a sales increase in 2004 up a whopping 727 percent!
The Rise of Anti-Depressants
Pastors, church leaders, counselors and parents need to be aware of the dangerous and ever increasing medicating of America. Recently, we were meeting about our church’s effectiveness in outreach and street ministries. One of the team leaders offered an observation on the use of prescribed medications among people they were meeting on the streets. What the team discovered was an “obvious increase” in people taking psychotropic, antipsychotic, and psychoactive drugs. All are mind altering. “Why the increase,” you ask? Because the major drug pharmaceutical companies, networking with the so-called health care experts were able to get depression labeled as an “official” disease.
There is major money available to doctors, psychiatrists, hospitals, clinics and drug companies in the wake of this movement. All they need to do is find somebody who’s depressed. Did you know that psychiatrists have the right to prescribe drugs, hospitalize patients and treat people against their will? In America, being a “little depressed” seems to equate to a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Of course, Bipolar Disorder makes health care cash registers sing! It seems even people who question their purpose in life are targets for prescription drugging. In 1937 noted psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote, “The moment a man begins to question the meaning and value of life he is sick.”
The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. For some, huge profits have opened the door for corruption and mammon temptation. In 2006, for example, Schering-Plough, best known as the maker of allergy drugs Claritin and Clarinex, settled a lawsuit with the Massachusetts U.S. Attorneys’ Office. The company paid $435 million (that’s a $180 million criminal fine and another $255 million to resolve civil aspects of the investigation). What was Schering-Plough’s violation? The company was charged with allegedly providing payments to managed care organizations and doctors to entice the purchase of its products and for giving false pricing information that would defraud the Medicaid program. In November 2007, Merck & Company agreed to settle roughly 27,000 lawsuits relating to the pain killer Vioxx, a drug found to cause heart attacks, strokes and other serious side effects, for nearly $5 billion!
Hooked on Legal Drugs
Those are not the only such troubling incidents. In October, the FBI raided Florida-based WellCare Health Plans of Tampa looking for possible Medicare fraud. According to The St. Pete Times Staff Writer Kris Hundley, “For the past two years, analysts have been asking how fast-growing WellCare Health Plans of Tampa has been able to make so much money running government health plans for the poor and elderly.” It looks like big profits red flagged them and the investigation is ongoing.
How do folks get on legal drugs? Consider Austin, a 29-year-old man who passed out at his job one day. One of his coworkers called medics, who examined him and wanted to take him to the hospital. Because he had no insurance, he resisted. They medicated him and he woke up in a hospital’s psychiatric ward four days later. As he was coming out of whatever medication they gave him, he told me doctors asked questions about his mental health and family medical history. (Psychiatrists don’t do “talk therapy” according to Dr. Peter R. Breggin, M.D. and author of Toxic Psychiatry, but rather ask questions only to determine drug treatment.)
Austin told me he couldn’t focus on their questions because of the medication. He said the doctor at the hospital diagnosed him “bipolar.” So the physician prescribed him “appropriate” medications including Prozac, Abilify and two others that he couldn’t remember. I asked him if they ever explained the side effects of these medications. His answer was “no.” That’s amazing considering these medications can be fatal with consequences including heart attacks, impotence, tremors, permanent tics and suicidal thoughts. When Austin asked the doctor how long he would have to take these medications, he was told, “for the rest of your life.” Can you imagine that? These are medications that cost over $400 a month – each. No wonder Medicare is breaking our country while drug companies get rich. I asked Austin if he had ever been depressed and he said “never.” The concern for him now is the deadly danger if he abruptly stops taking these drugs without professional guidance.
Targeting Our Children
Many of us are unaware of the risks of prescription mind-altering drugs and others have become dependent on them. Even our nations’ children are targets. Most psychotropic prescriptions for children, like Ritalin, for instance, are given for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Others are given antidepressants. The Journal of the American Medical Association in February 2000 released a study showing a 50 percent increase in prescribing antidepressants such as Prozac to preschoolers. In some cases, taking medicine is required for attending school and those who don’t comply can be dismissed or removed from the home by the state. Talk about clout! Even state-run foster care programs are out of control.
The Florida Statewide Advocacy Council released a report that revealed more than 55 percent of children in Florida State Foster Care are taking psychotropic medication, including infants and toddlers! A pediatrician had not even examined more than 40 percent of those taking medications. Of the 5 percent that had been examined, their diagnosis included subjective “adjustment disorders” such as bed-wetting. The investigation concluded, “Unnecessary dispensing of psychotropic medication remains a threat…” Side effects of these mind-altering drugs include decreased blood flow to the brain, cardiac arrhythmias, disruption of growth hormone, weight loss, permanent neurological tics, psychosis, depression, insomnia, social withdrawal, suicidal tendencies and decreased learning abilities. The Food and Drug Administration has also reported a possible increased risk of suicidal thinking and attempts in children treated with the antidepressant drug Paxil.
To be sure, the side effects of these drugs are scary. Elli Lilly warns, “In clinical studies, antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults with depression and other psychiatric disorders.” Could the instances of school killings be linked to the use of these types of drugs? A simple search on the Internet links many school shooters using antidepressant drugs like Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft, Luvox, Paxil and others.
Reviving the War on Drugs
Soon physicians will be targeting those who “someday will get depressed.” Yes, they are trying to determine your inclination to depression. Are you a candidate for a bad day, unhappy feelings or anger? Then you can bet you will soon be prescribed some drug to “control those symptoms of a mental health disease.” Does drug therapy work? According to a Duke University scientific study of 56 severely depressed people, three 30-minute workouts each week brought relief equal to drug treatment.
Remember the U.S. War on Drugs of the 80s? What happened to First Lady Nancy Reagan’s slogan that she championed, “Just say no?” Folks, we have entered a dangerous medication minefield. Consider the increase of autism among our nation’s children. Is this dreaded malady the side effects of vaccinations? Many think so, but this isn’t exactly a new problem. It’s just one that is getting bigger as attitudes shift. In the 70s “the practice of drugging children has no sound basis in law, medicine, or social policy. As such, it represents an ominous step along the Orwellian continuum of social control through psychotechnology,” said Doctor Larry Brown in an article posted in Psychiatric News in 1975. By the 80s views had changed. Pediatrician Martin Baren said, “If a child has an attention disorder, then he has a chemical problem and needs Ritalin as much as a diabetic needs insulin.”
The drugging of America is a serious matter. What does the future hold if we continue down this path? Parents will allow “mental health professionals” to use drug therapy on their children, opening the door to devastating permanent side effects. Schools will outsource problem children for drug therapy treatment without their parent’s permission. Millions of our children will end up on legal drugs unable to enter society, work and be productive citizens. People will be deceived into believing they must take drugs to avoid “inherited biochemical brain imbalances.” Multiplied millions of elderly will be “control drugged” in nursing homes. Those in psychiatry and related medical fields will become ever dependent on the revenue from prescribing drugs to keep their jobs. Others will suffer permanent brain damage from the side effects of drug therapy. Unhappiness will be diagnosed as a treatable mental sickness through legal drug therapy. There will be an increase in gruesome murders caused from the side effects of legal drug use. Malpractice lawsuits will cost the health care industry billions and Medicare will go bankrupt. And finally no trust for the health care industry as a whole, including thousands of good physicians and health care workers that really want to help people.
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