Chemical Slavery: Drug Pushers and Big Pharma Join Forces

Pharmaceuticals were once life-savers, and in many respects they still are. Scientific research and miracle drugs have eliminated smallpox. Other diseases -- including polio, AIDS, cancer and malaria -- have been ameliorated and may one day disappear as well.

But something happened a few decades ago. Head shrinkers used a public relations technique -- positioning -- to convince the public that mental illness is a physical disease. We call mental illness "illness" as an example of how successful the shrinks have been.

Most modern mental illnesses have been created by a majority vote, by members of the psychiatric profession, printed in a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) which has no statistics, but it sounds good -- sort of mathematical. And that manual is ensconced on thebookshelf next to real medical texts that address such things as anatomy, bacteria and viruses, circulatory systems, lymph glands, tumors and other real things that pertain to the health of the body.

Under the lie that mental health is physical, anti depressants -- for example the "serotonin reuptake inhibitors" -- are positioned as correcting a brain chemistry imbalance said to be in the brains of depressed persons. No such imbalance in the brain chemistry of a mentally ill person has ever been found, but that is a minor point to pharmaceutical companies that managed to convince 11 percent of Americans that they are depressed and need medication, and that many more go untreated. According to one source, depression has doubled in only a decade, but the reasons are "unclear."

Perhaps the deliberate drugging of Americans by psychiatrists, medical doctors, pharmacists and advertising agencies have something to do with it. Prime time television is now largely sponsored by pharmaceutical companies touting drug cures for those made-up illnesses voted on by psychiatrists. Pharmaceutical companies convince Americans that feeling low is not their fault, that it's a brain chemistry imbalance that can be cured by a pill, several times a day, for the rest of their lives, paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, or some other public source of funding that avoids the nasty question of "how much is this going to cost?" Or "How can you pay for this?"

Many of those pharmaceuticals are addictive, and many of them create a drug high. In fact, pharmaceutical drug abuse causes more overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin combined, and is now just about tied with traffic deaths as the leading cause of "accidental death" in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for a month. "A big part of the problem is non-medical use of prescription painkillers—using drugs without a prescription," said the CDC report, "or using drugs just for the ‘high’ they cause.”

So the prescription pad and the local pharmacy have outstripped the corner pusher in drug-related deaths. But global pharmaceutical sales are big business and, according to a New York Times article, lobbying by pharmacists and drugstores have hindered efforts to put stricter controls on even the most-abused pharmaceuticals.

Enter "medical marijuana," the final bridge between medical and recreational drugs. It's undoubtedly much less harmful than many other drugs, but it is an updated version of the old "alcohol for medicinal use" joke about alcoholism. In California, anybody can get a prescription for "medical" marijuana but communities are wising up and trying to exclude the "dispensaries," as they are now called rather than the more accurate "head shops" or flat out "drug dealers." Marijuana growers have used the same technique as pharmaceutical manufacturers -- convincing regulators and the public that getting high is good medicine. Now, as "medical providers" weed growers have achieved super high THC potency and semi-legitimacy. All one must do to get high legally is become a victim of pain, a victim of "post traumatic stress disorder" a victim of scary ideation or God knows what else a druggie can come up with: "I'm sick," wink wink, and voila! You are legally able -- even entitled -- to get high.

There ARE crazy people out there. Anders Behring Breivik, for example, admitted to murdering 77 innocent people in Norway and said he regretted not killing even more. If anyone is crazy, he is. One psychiatrist said he was nuts, another said he was sane, then had second throughts. Perhaps the shrinks should get together and vote on it, as they do with DSM labels.

The problem with being "mentally ill" -- from the shrink point of view -- is that there is a "stigma" associated with it, and normal people still have trouble deciding to be crazy and take pharmaceuticals to fix their brain chemicals. This cuts into the big money and stock prices of the drug companies. They see it as "the tragedy of those needing help who are not getting it," and propose phony screenings of veterans, schoolchildren, new mothers, etc. to recruit new drug users.

And then the trial lawyers -- which take a leaf from the drug companies' playbook and busily convince the public that they are victims -- sue the pharmaceutical companies for killing thousands of people with their phony drugs that sometimes cause murderous rages or suicide. Black box warnings on drugs depress the stock price as well as the major shareholders. Luckily they can take anti-depressants and get high or at least numb to their troubles.

The big pharmaceutical combines that invent drugs to remedy those voted-on illnesses make about $1 trillion per year globally on their products, and are undoubtedly hoping to discredit Chinese folk medicine to open up billions more people to drugs for everything from erectile dysfunction to depression and restless legs. Asians have been traditionally resistant to psychs and pharmaceuticals so watch for a huge push into China.

Is there a solution to crazy people? Locking them up in Bedlam was one idea, exorcism was another. Lobotomies, electroshock and drugs are the most recent psychiatric abominations in our history of desperate but ineffective measures. The solution may come down to effective education, the opportunity to work and to contribute to society, the ability to confront problems rather than run from them, and the necessity to lock up psychos like Breivik to protect society at large. But the solution has nothing whatsoever to do with hooking mildly unhappy or neurotic people on pharmaceuticals at public expense. And marijuana "dispensaries" and pharmaceutical solutions are just another indication that illegal drug cartels and pharmaceutical giants are alike in pursuing chemical slavery for financial benefit, and as such are becoming an equal threat to society.

What needs to change? Outlaw ads that directly target the public for prescription drugs, and that bypass doctors. Make it a felony for a doctor to take free trips and other perks from drug companies in exchange for prescribing their drugs. Return the practice of medicine to doctors of the physical body, and relegate psychiatrists and their patent medicines to the scrap heap of voodoo, fortune telling, phrenology, and carnival sideshows where they rightfully belong.

Is Security Software a Modern-Day Protection Racket?

Stuxnet takes out nuclear production facilities in Iran. Flame listens to traffic, keystrokes, even Skype calls and records the information. China is supposedly hacking into systems all over the world, and so on.

Meantime Microsoft churns out infinite patches for new threats, and every time I start my home computer, it complains that it is at risk. The security software I bought for about $100 a bit over a year ago has expired and if I don't re-up my data will be stolen, my hard drive wiped, my bank accounts emptied, my photos grabbed and so it goes. It continues to stop elderly viruses, but will not be updated to counter the healthy young malware launched 25 seconds ago, that is swarming about, thirsting for my passwords and account information.

 If I were making security software I might worry that nobody would make new malware, and my business in countering said malware would drop like a stone. So far that doesn't seem to be a problem, but were I of a suspicious nature, I might suspect that this billion dollar business in security requires malware for its success and if a malware terminator were found, the entire business would crash.

Thus, my suspiciousness counsels, there is no complete handle for malware, because no one really wants it fixed except the poor consumer.

Vint Cerf, a while back said that the Internet was not built for security, but for communication, and he should know. To get security baked in, he said, we would need to start over, and build a new Internet. Well, that's impossible, so what else do we have?

The bad guys who lurk on the Web to deface, steal, and make bad jokes, and the good guys, who are trying to do a job, finish a spreadsheet, write an article, connect with their friends, make good jokes, etc.

A while back, someone used my ATM card to buy some Armani clothing. I mostly shop at Goodwill, so my bank got suspicious and stopped the transaction. It looks like my information and password was collected by someone who was slipping some kind of electronic readers into gas pumps to record magnetic data and PINs.

 If I had a gas station, I would make damn sure my pumps were upgraded so that nobody could gain access to plant that. If it got out that my pumps were hacked, my competitors would profit and I would go out of business. So I'm not worried about repeats, the financial incentives are to terminate that gambit.

But malware is a different story. It's the hacker's fault, and your fault if you neglect to buy the antidote. And the damn hackers are so clever and determined and malicious that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, eternal patches, eternal software upgrades, eternal subscriptions to this or that virus protection software, backups, etc. If I produced a software that stopped all malware, I'd sell a bunch, then be out of business. No version 3.4.2, no revenue stream.

So if the government is so worried about Chinese hackers, why doesn't it invent a bulletproof security system? Because then China would use it, and our spying would be thwarted. It's like nuclear bombs. You have it, and you don't use it because you're afraid they would use it on you, so you do a low-scale warfare, undeclared war, etc. to keep the soldiers busy and the money flowing. You lose a few, they lose a few, but hey, the game goes on.