A shocking article from the People’s Pharmacy asks, “Could you or someone you know have ADHD without realizing it?” and lists the warning signs. Why is this shocking?
Because People’s Pharmacy has a long history of side-stepping the industry symptom mongering that is designed to sell drugs–suggestible, judgment-call, self-diagnosed diseases siphoned through Ask Your Doctor ads to create “demand,” customers, and hypochondria.
Like Pharma ads, a recent People’s Pharmacy story cajoles, “Are you always late for appointments?” “Do you start projects but have trouble finishing them?” and “Do you sometimes interrupt people or finish their sentences?” As comedian Chris Rock once joked, “Do You Fall Asleep and Wake Up in the Morning? You May Be Suffering From…”
Are people joining the world of Ask Your Doctor ads in which an ad that warns about stroke, fatal bleeding, blindness, cancer, blood clots, and “permanent paralysis” still somehow sells a product?
Pathologizing normal human behavior to sell drugs is the calling card of Pharma and it works. Clearly people like to “live with” the cascade of conditions Pharma fabricates and floats; in addition to the many “I suffer from” websites and clubs, magazine racks entice future hypochondriacs with new publications for growing disease fraternities. Yes, in the richest country in the world, people seek sickness.
People’s Pharmacy is not the only outlet unexpectedly conveying industry messages.
This summer the once-respected Bloomberg news trumpeted, “The $360 Billion Market that Medicine Got Wrong for 20 Years,” validating the new menopause capitalism.
Haven’t you heard? Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT), once linked to cancer and CVS diseases, is now safe and recommended according to “re-analysis” research by Wyeth-funded James H. Clark and Wyeth’s ghostwriters?
Did anyone expect drugmakers to let the menopausal hormone franchise–arguably as pivotal as GLPs in its day–die?
Like GLPs, press coverage of MHT is not about the pathologizing of healthy people but whether Pharma or “alternative” health should make the products and rake in the profits.
As newsrooms shrink, most health care “news” emanates from industry press releases explaining Bloomberg’s specious assertion that “medicine” got it MHT “wrong.”
Nor do rote and AI “reporters” realize that Pharma now funds entire medical centers so that individual researchers promoting drugs can claim to be conflict-free?
Do We Trust Big Meat?
Even as MAHA demonizes red dye and vaccines, it promotes seriously tainted foods and shills for ranchers and Big Meat.
For example, the food animal vaccine market, estimated at $11.55 billion, is not acknowledged by MAHA activists or the mainstream news media itself, funded by food industry ads. Who can say, hypocrite?
Why alarm people about African Swine flu, Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, herpes, Newcastle, screwworm, Cyclospora, listeria, E coli, rhabdomyolysis, hepatitis, ringworm, rinderpest, Marek’s, TB, BSE, BMD, RVF, and the other macabre animal diseases endemic to the US farm? Merck may sell 49 vaccines for poultry, 25 for cattle, and many more for pigs, but don’t ask–don’t tell.
Vaccines are not the only unlabeled components in MAHA-promoted food. Much of the world actually boycotts what Americans eat daily.
For example, the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) ban meat treated with artificial growth hormones, which keeps out standard US beef. Why the ban? Their public health agencies correlate US beef hormones with breast and prostate cancer. Are US incidences of these cancers higher? Would mainstream news cover such geographical disparities?
What about antibiotics, growth promoters like ractopamine, chlorine dips, giant woody breast chicken and GMO and cloned meat products in US grocery stores? Why aren’t the nutritional perversions on the label? Why are the products even on the table?
As Big Food and Big Pharma shamelessly fund news, medical schools and practices and lawmakers with the help of Big Tech and AI, expect more thinly disguised industry messages like those from the People’s Pharmacy, Bloomberg and MAHA.
