This blog is absolutely free of side effects! Please consult your doctor, psychiatrist and therapist before reading this blog as it may or may not alter your thinking. Do not read this blog if you had french toast this morning, left your coffee at home or are too busy playing Candy Crush on your cell phone. You may experience side effects.
Only the federal government would deem it right and proper to bundle the oversight and regulation, (for the alleged public safety), of food and drugs under the same agency. My theory is that FDA is not doing a very good job with either one, so bust ’em up or get rid of them. It’s just more tax money going to waste.
The public food supply is tainted, genetically modified, full of processed sugars and salts, riddled with Red Dye #2 and Blue Dye #4 to make it look pretty anyway and sold with shelf life that can last for months. This diet, generally, is making people sick with all kinds of ailments.
Whoa! Wait a second here! I just realized why the same agency handles food and drugs at the same time. You get sick, you need drugs. Never mind that the drugs don’t do anything except hide the symptoms. Never mind that the drugs often have side effects far worse than what you were trying to treat. At last, it’s all perfectly clear as mud.
Unfortunately, the FDA is as bad at governing the ‘safe’ creation, testing, manufacturing and distribution of drugs to the public as it is overseeing food.
If you want a good laugh while you’re watching TV, you don’t have to search for a comedy show. Just go hunting for a prescription drug commercial. I promise, it won’t take long. You’ll find one in less than four clicks.
If you pay attention, most of the content of the commercial is consumed with carefully worded WARNINGS emanating, in machine gun-like fashion, from the mouth of a voice-over artist who apparently took lessons in speed talking.
The scene opens with a couple, both looking to be just hitting their ‘senior years’. They are cavorting on a beach, twirling and dancing about as they gaze lovingly into each others’ eyes. The sun is setting in the background and mysteriously, they are alone. (Where is that beach???) They come together and kiss as the announcer tells you how ready the man is to make love to his beautiful but aging partner. The only problem is, while you were watching the couple swirl about on the beach laughing and smiling, the announcer was busy reeling off a long string of dangerous side effects of the drug the aging man was about to take so he could do that.
“Taking ___________ drug may lead to sudden loss of blood pressure, heart attack or stroke. Do not take __________ if you eat broccoli, exercise regularly, brushed your teeth within the last 24 hours or fell down for no apparent reason.”
But wait, there’s more!
“Do not take _________ if you are Italian, cannot do three cartwheels in row, had your wisdom teeth removed or if you are dating your doctor’s receptionist. Please consult your physician immediately if you find out he is also dating his receptionist.”
Of course, I’m being somewhat facetious here, but you get the point. If you think about it for a moment, all the prescription drug commercials we are bombarded with are similar. Eight seconds of the commercial tells you what the drug is intended for and the other fifty two seconds is spent telling you how many ways it can kill you, destroy your vital organs, make you brain-dead or wipe out your memory of anything including your own name.
Am I the only one who thinks the long list of side effects in these TV spots is downright scary? Am I the only one who thinks that, perhaps, if the number of things that can go wrong with taking this so-called medicine far outweigh the original intended benefits, it might be a good idea to NOT TAKE IT?
Therapists like to tell you to make lists when you are trying to make a decision. You know the routine. Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper and put all pros on one side and the cons on the other. Can you imagine doing that with a prescription drug commercial? I suggest you record it though, as you will have a hard time keeping up with the announcers rapid-fire spiel as they try to hurry through the bad stuff to get back to the eight seconds of good stuff.
It has to be downright daunting and extremely frightening to be doing that with a list of pros and cons for psoriasis medication only to find out that you may end up with a brain infection or meningitis. (See Raptiva.)
Many of the drugs approved by the FDA often carry side-effects that are just as deadly as the disease they are supposedly treating. Cancer drugs are often carcinogenic themselves. (You just get a different flavor of cancer.) Drugs intended to treat Alzheimer’s often give the patient a stroke. (I guess that makes the Alzheimer’s unimportant after that.) One very popular drug intended to treat diabetes was, in itself, so carcinogenic it was known to be behind an 80% increase in bladder cancer.
I have a question I already know the answer to; How do all these bad drugs get on the market in spite of themselves? The same way genetically altered and mutated food dyed with artificial pretty colors gets on the market. MONEY!
Isn’t it nice to know that the same governmental agency willing to put dangerous drugs in your hands with side-effects that far outnumber the benefits is the same agency that tells you that mutated GMO corn syrup is good for you and it’s okay that it is in just about everything you eat? Yummy, more processed sugar please.
If you use more than ten percent of your brain, it’s not difficult to see the chain here. The FDA approves food that is not good for you. You eat the food. What you eat is what you are. Eat bad food, get bad results. You get sick from the bad diet. You need medicine. The medicine you consume is not intended to fix you, just make you feel better about being sick. The medicine, it turns out, is worse than the food. Now you’re even sicker. You need more medicine. Yikes!
Okay, I’m not feeling too well at this point. I’m going to go have three shots of dark rum followed by a chaser six pack of La Rossa. It has only one known side effect; it will make me forget everything I just wrote.
Ethan Holmes is the author of the newly released novel, Water, available in ebook and paperback.
What would you do if you went to faucet and nothing was there?
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