Beware Pharma!

It is odd that the industry which is supposed to be the one we can turn to for help is actually one of the biggest wolves in sheep's clothing.

2008 I visited the dentist and after a brief check up was told that I grind my teeth in my sleep. First time I was ever told this in 30 years of visiting a dentist. The solution offered was a specially moulded orthodontic shield at some considerable cost. I said for that money I'd work on my subconscious and stop grinding!

Returning a week later for x-ray results I over heard the patient before me being told exactly the same thing.

Listening that summer to Russel Brand's radio show he was reading out a letter to the papers by some ex-girlfriend in which she said he even wore a gum shield to bed... orthodontic shield Brand insisted and explained it was to protect his teeth from grinding...

Ah ha I thought even the famous get scammed.

Obviously a company that sells Orthodontic shields had sent an army of representatives out to dentists across the South East offering dentists a slice of the commission for every one that was sold.

Unfortunately in a Capitalist country it is profit and sales that matter not service to customers. I notice (possibly unconnected) that I never had this problem with my previous NHS dentist in 20 years.

I am writing this now because a friend has just been told at the end of the 2 years treatment required for his daughter's photo-epilepsy that in fact she never had the condition at all. In this case the drugs did help with her condition, but it is odd that she was never accurately diagnosed before treatment started and why should the specialist only inform them after the end of treatment? Was he getting a percentage from this drug company?

I have friends who work in the pharmaceutical industry and basically this is exactly how it works... and worse. One pharam giant a few years ago stopped research into oral vaccines despite being ready for clinical trials so they could divert funds to the far more lucrative new viagra market. Oral vaccines would all buy eradicate the diseases that plague the third world - but there is little money here so little attention from the industry. What is worse is that they protected all their research so that no-one could carry on from where they had left off.

This is all basic economics but it shows how all the supposed benefits we are endlessly told come from capitalism are actually over shadowed by endless costs. The WHO has done huge amounts of work to improve the health of the world's people, why does this body not wield the money of the pharma giants and fund such research? It is because it is not in the interest of investors, even while it would be in the interests of billions of non-investors.

One doesn't need to look far to see the problems that we have to accept (and agree with?) if we support the dominant way of life.

Health may start to become a feature of this blog. A friend is exploring with some suprising positive results homeopathy. I also need to digest at some stage Hans Georg Gadamer's "Enigma of Health" that I read a few years ago.