“EXPOSING SECRETS THE DRUG INDUSTRY DOSEN’T
WANT YOU TO KNOW” * By Dr. Joseph Mercola, February, 2006
The conventional medical paradigm has
been a destructive influence in our culture, promoting disease
by pinning all focus on mere treatments that patch over
existing illness while virtually ignoring both prevention and
real cure. By far the key contributor to this dangerous
misperception of what "healthcare" means is the pharmaceutical
industry. The drug companies thrive in a state where people
remain sick and more are getting sick, as that means both
repeat customers and a growing base for their overpriced
treatments.
It is no surprise, then, that the drug companies have
traditionally been one of the most profitable industries on
the planet, generating hundreds of billions of dollars in
profit annually.
This enormous amount of capital has
created the largest legislative lobbying influence in
Congress. That drug lobby has been able to manipulate U.S.
laws to maintain a system that perpetuates their influence
through tax breaks, a weakened regulatory system with the FDA,
and loosened marketing restrictions that allow them to target
their message to ever-growing segments of the population.
The last time I received television
signals in my home was when the Chicago Bulls were finishing
their six-time world championship series with Michael Jordan.
At that time there were specific FTC restrictions for
marketing drugs on television, just as there currently are
restrictions for alcohol and tobacco. Now the drug industry is
spending over three billion dollars every year to market their
products direct to consumers.
Exposing
the Secrets the Drug Industry Doesn't Want You to Know
With its very deep pockets, the drug
industry is able to hire some of the most sophisticated and
effective marketers on the planet. These marketers are using
the best that psychological science has to offer to manipulate
both the general public and most medical experts into
believing that health care means pharmaceuticals. (Three
billion dollars spent on U.S. consumer advertising is a large
sum, but it pales in comparison to the fifteen billion dollars
the drug industry spends on marketing to the much smaller
market of 800,000 U.S. physicians.)
Their psychological manipulations and
distortions of the truth have allowed them to effectively
convince most of the population to rely on their Band-Aid
solutions for health challenges. This severe over-reliance on
drugs is hastening the death and disability of most of the
public, as people believe they are "doing something" about
their health issues by taking drugs when the underlying
challenges -- what caused the disease in the first place --
are actually being ignored and therefore left to fester and
expand. Simultaneously, of course, the revenues of the drug
industry continue to increase, meaning ever-fatter checks for
all directly and indirectly on their payroll, and ever-more
money spent on marketing.
Even with the best and most marketing
money can buy, though, the truth can only be concealed for so
long. The drug companies' entire strategy is beginning to
implode. Within the past few months of this writing, Merck,
one of the most prestigious and conservative of the drug
companies, lost $50 billion dollars in their Vioxx scandal ...
a scandal that, by conservative estimates, was behind the
deaths of over 50,000 people. In the aftermath of that fiasco,
Pfizer, the largest drug company in the world, lost $25
billion of their own with their drug Celebrex.
I am convinced that if you are under 50,
you will live to see the day when the paradigm finally
switches back to the traditional notion of medicine. That is,
one that that relies on natural unprocessed foods, healthy
water, air and sun exposure, exercise, proper rest, emotional
balancing and avoidance of toxic chemicals and pollutants.
These hold the true keys to restoring us back to a life of
health and vigor.
ABRIDGED – Feb, 06
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