0% of Americans on Perscription Drugs
06-25-2013, 10:31 PM
Quote: (06-25-2013 03:59 PM)MikeCF Wrote:
Quote: (06-25-2013 02:37 PM)Therapsid Wrote:
The category "prescription drug" is simply an artifact of government regulation and the FDA.
Put it this way - if someone said 90% of Americans take aspirin, would that be worth losing sleep over?
Did you read the article?
Quote:Quote:
"However, the second most common prescription was for antidepressants -- that suggests mental health is a huge issue and is something we should focus on. And the third most common drugs were opioids, which is a bit concerning considering their addicting nature."
That's hardly an aspirin.
Why don't you look at what people are actually taking?
This is the list of the 10 most common prescribed drugs.
http://www.webmd.com/news/20110420/the-1...ibed-drugs
Note that most are fattie medications.
So yes it is indeed telling that 70% of Americans are on prescription drugs.
Yet life expectancy has never been higher. As bad as the obesity epidemic is, as damning the high rates of mental disease are, etc. the fact is that people in industrialized countries are healthier and live longer than any generation in the entirety of human history.
One would think that this simple fact would take priority of place in any discussion of pharmaceuticals and modern medicine.
But no, unfortunately most of us fall prey to the cognitive bias to look for human agency in the ills that plague us. For the same reason that people worry more about terrorism like the Boston marathon bombing than about accidents like the chemical plant that blew up around the same time, people also tend to blame corporations and modern technology for cancer and other health problems instead of the myriad natural causes which modern medicine combats against. We're always ready to blame other people, modern technology, and big pharma for our health problems when they're overwhelmingly just the product of our faulty physiological makeup. The bias is always to look for ways we can do less, ways we can prevent other ostensibly bad people from hurting us, rather than to search for ways to cure and overcome the miseries that have plagued mankind since time immemorial.
The balance sheet is clear - modern medicine with all its arsenal of pharmaceuticals and expensive invasive procedures is better than the alternative. And it's not even close.
Yet some of us still yearn for halcyon days when people didn't adulterate their bodies with man-made drugs and chemicals, despite the fact that these same generations lived shorter, more miserable lives.
Science blogger Keith Kloor puts it well:
"Although our improved health and longevity are due to science, we moderns in the industrial world increasingly blame diseases (some that are wholly psychosomatic) on technologies that we owe our less-diseased, better-living lives to. What many of us are most afflicted with today are assorted fears and dreads stemming from the very advances that have made us the wealthiest, healthiest humans of all time."
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