Ummm.. Yes

[mrlich]

Think that I missed this when it came out, so I'm linking to it now. From the always awesome xkcd.

Comments

[spiritualmonkey.livejournal.com]

That clip to the right comes from the book Our Daily Meds: How the pharmaceutical companies turned themselves into slick marketing machines and hooked the nation on prescription drugs. Here's the author's interview by Bill Moyers, video & transcript. Big Pharma is marketing drugs they know don't work in most people, and which cause SERIOUS side-effects including crippling and death.

Healthcare in America is not run by science, but by business. For all our impressive, FINANCIALLY PROFITABLE, scientific tools, why I we as a nation so fat, unhealthy, weak, and in pain? Why are we spending so much to irradiate, carve, and toxify people when we know we as a society eat shit and sit on our asses all day?

Jack ate healthy, exercises every day, and survived heart surgery at 95. Americans are dying on the surgeons table at half that age routinely.



Much love bro. I think I woke up cranky. The year is dying, tomorrow is Solstice, tomorrow night is Langstenacht. ;-)

[lawbabeak.livejournal.com]

The commercialization of medicine has been scary - I think allowing advertising was a BAD idea. On the other hand, we finally have an oral medication for MS. Before now, you could only treat via intra-muscular injection, sub-cutaneous injection, or infusion (at an infusion center). When there were only four inject-it-yourself meds, each had its own media kit to try to convince you to Pick Me! Pick me! I think the economy has led them to cut back a bit (no free tote bag with the info book, DVD, and snazzy wall calendar). But they still (even the oral folks) have "nurse navigators" available 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., mostly to navigate insurance bullshit and figure out who deserves a "scholarship" for the drugs that cost $1300/month. Yes, they are all alarmingly similar in price. Hmmmm....