Greed, Money & Healthcare

November 30, 2011

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Remember when we started to advertise how bad smoking was for you? The end result took years but millions of Americans don’t smoke now. This saved millions of lives from cancer. Had we developed a drug to fight cancer it would not have been as affective. People would have smoked, got cancer, taken the drug, recovered, and smoked some more, got cancer again and so on. Our healthcare is a lot like this. We don’t really look at what is causing illness but what drugs can alleviate the symptoms. Nothing is cured it is slowed at best. Suffering still happens. We must fight to have sciences like epigenetics and nutrigenomics used to find the root causes of illness and educate Americans, just as we did with smoking, to change their lifestyle habits. We don’t need more instant partial fixes through drugs. Why can’t we cure anything anymore? The answer, unfortunately, is greed and money.

It’s Time To Occupy Capitol Hill And Fight Political Greed (forbes.com)
Australian women paying a high price for the legacy of smoking (bupa.com.au)

dsarna
Nov 30, 2011 @ 11:28:45

Some drugs alleviate symptoms. Some drugs correct imbalances in body chemistry. Obviously, diet and exercise are the first line “drugs” or choice, but if they aren’t enough, medications can and do save many lives every day.

georgefebish
Nov 30, 2011 @ 13:52:08

I agree but all too many drugs are designed to make money and can be alleviated by good diet, lowered stress and positive thinking. My mom took 29 pills a day. some were to offset symptoms of other pills. Many of her doctors felt she was prescribed way too many drugs. The fact still remains that we have not cured a disease since polio. All we do is alleviate the symptoms and keep most of the population on unnecessary drugs.