The “Fosomax controversy”
My original reaction to the “Fosamax controversy” about lack of disclosure about shattered bones due to long-term use was as follows: anyone who was educated about drugs could logically reach that conclusion! Drugs do not heal; the body heals. The body always, in varying degrees, resists the effects of drugs. The function of drugs is to aid the body in its healing process by stimulating its normal functions [stimulants] to speed up the natural process or depressing its normal process [depressants] to allow the body to rest and recuperate. As the body begins to heal the effects of the drugs diminish as the body takes over and completes the healing process. The use of drugs is always to be as a stopgap to aid the body to heal itself quicker and to step in and aid in catastrophic illness and injuries.
Long term use for health purposes is always a bad thing – but sometimes the alternative is worse. Even then the decision is up to the patient and it is his/her responsibility to get information even as he/she provides feedback to guide the doctor. There is no such thing as a “side effect”: this is what the drug does – if used in sufficient quantities over long periods of time. In this particular situation, the longer the drug is used to effect repair the less capable the body becomes in repairing itself. This is what should be called a drug dependency – if the term was used by our media as a more dramatic form of drug addiction in order to promote our abusive drug policies. If you rely on drugs to help repair your body, the body not only becomes less responsive to the drugs but loses its own ability to repair itself.
A sagacious older runner once quipped: “Injury or illness is the body’s way of telling you to take a break.” Your body gets injured or sick because of overload. It needs rest, relaxation, and recuperation. If you take drugs because you feel compelled to subject your body to this abuse for extended periods of time you are always headed for problems. Yet, those who sell drugs promote them on exactly this premise: you don’t have to “miss out” on a hectic schedule that produces stress, anxiety, and even physical duress because of an illness. The message is: don’t let [the symptoms of this health problem] interfere with your busy, productive life. The fact is that if you use drugs to solve problems the problems will always increase and most of the new problems will be caused by drug use.
The problem is that people are deliberately NOT being educated about the proper role of drugs in a health regimen. This is especially true in our public schools and is echoed in nearly all media dialog. Instead children at a very early age are taught the dangerous drugs mythology in order to justify an abusive drug policy that has always increased drug use, drug abuse, drug addiction, toxic drugs, crime, violence and public corruption in every single culture that has enforced it on its own citizenry. The consequences are so consistently predictable it can only be logically concluded that these results are the desired consequences of those in authority.
What’s even worse for young people is that school officials bring in police to promote current drug policy using fraud. When they blame abusive behaviors on use of certain arbitrarily banned drugs they teach kids at an early age how to abdicate personal responsibility. These misconceptions are echoed in pulpits, school classrooms, and TV news throughout the country which deliberately promotes “flexible” moral principles where lying is OK – for a good cause. When lying to promote an abusive policy that rewards evil and punishes the victim becomes acceptable to those who claim moral leadership the country is in real trouble.
However, the most important reason why young people – and by extension the general population – is not being educated about drugs are those who profit handsomely by promoting over reliance and dependency to enhance sales of their drugs. There is something seriously wrong when the primary education about drugs is being provided by those who profit from increased sales. There is no coincidence that the United States is by far the leading per capita consumer of drugs both among the arbitrarily banned and arbitrarily legal drugs. I use the term “arbitrarily” simply because our country has never adopted actual measurable standards for restrictions on any drugs. Yes, I have formally requested those standards from the DEA through my Congressional Representative Peter Defazio – to be blithely ignored. Even our doctors are being indoctrinated by sellers of newly patented [more expensive due to government guarantees] drugs to direct patients to new drug “regimens”. To the doctors’ credit many do resist such direction and/or direct them to positive lifestyle changes to augment those drug “regimens”.
The bottom line is that drugs are NOT the problem – in 99% of the cases. Drugs are just tools that can be used to enhance one’s life. Stronger drugs are always more risky and more addictive than weaker drugs. The bad consequences of drug use are nearly always the result of bad judgment [severe allergic reactions being the most numerous exception]. That said, I am not at all sympathetic to the makers of Fosamax. They profited handsomely by promoting their product as a long-term “health regimen” whether that promotion was explicit or implicit. When drug sellers in this country stop promoting their product as an alternative to recuperation and recovery I will become more sympathetic. But that would put them at odds with all the other sellers of the “American Dream” with all of its “quick fixes”. We don’t need more drugs and “stuff” to cope with a hectic abusive lifestyle; we just need a less hectic and less abusive lifestyle. And that’s what most of my book is about.
Tags: drug education
