“…Direct-to-consumer advertising means that the U.S. has the “sickest people in the world” -
- at least in our own media-chondriacal imaginations -
- while the glut of highly advertised junk food saps our vitality – and leaves us vulnerable to such preventable conditions as obesity and type-II diabetes.
According to Rosenberg, the agribusiness and pharma industries are locked in unholy commercial embrace -
- the food suppliers creating the chronic illnesses – unknown to less-affluent societies -
- that Big Pharma expensively prolongs -
- while the pharmaceutical companies supply the livestock antibiotics and growth hormones that make possible the humanitarian and health horrors of factory farming.
There are stories here to chill the blood of anyone who has ever placed trust in a doctor, government official or scholarly journal.
We read that the drug companies aggressively target children -
- pathologizing behaviors that only yesterday were thought of as simply a phase -
- because kids make such fine customers in terms of compliance and longevity.
“Few indeed are kids who start out diagnosed and treated for ADHD [and] bipolar disorder… who end up on no drugs,” notes the author.
“Even if they outgrow their original diagnoses—a big ‘if’ with a mental health history that follows them —
- the side effects from years of psychoactive drugs on their physical health – and on mental, social and emotional development – take their toll.”..”
(cont..)
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