The Hundred-Year Lie

The Hundred-Year Lie

March 12, 2011

I have a rather extensive book collection that at some point would like to use one room in our home as a library.  We shall see if that is possible in our next house if we ever get this house sold.  The vast majority of the books in my collection are non-fiction.  I've never been much into fictional literary works so my book collection reflects that.  Like many books in my collection, I am re-reading The Hundred-Year Lie by Randal Fitzgerald.  This is a documentary style account of how food and medicine are destroying our health.

Over the past couple of weeks while nursing the worst of my injury, I had ample time to ponder the pharmaceutical aspect of this book.  Let's face facts.  In North America we have an abundance of over the counter drugs for everything imaginable, many of them pain relief oriented.  Heaven forbid if we feel any pain, our body's natural signal that there is something wrong!  We seriously numb every single little pain right down to a mosquito bite!  When our kids were teething, they got a wet wash cloth to chew on and unless spiking a fever, that's it.  Fast forward to our grandkids teething and they are given medication to stop any pain.  I really fear this is a negative thing though.  Kids have gone through teething since the beginning of mankind.  A mother's loving arms to sooth a teething baby seems to me the better choice than medications.  The problem is the pharmaceutical companies have brainwashed us into believing pain is bad. It isn't.  Pain serves a specific purpose.

It is not in the best interests of the pharmaceutical companies to cure any disease with their drugs.  If they cure the disease they lose a market for their high priced drugs aka they lose money.  Have you ever noticed that some of these drugs actually do a lot more damage than good?  I'm sorry but if getting a bit of pain relief from symptom X is going to cause me to go cross-eyed, bald, walk pigeon-toed and cluck around like a chicken then that drug regardless of any benefit cannot be good for the human body.  The worst part is the doctors as in those who took an oath to do no harm buy into the pharmaceutical hype by prescribing drugs to their patients that ARE going to do harm on some level.  Think back on the drug thalidomide given to pregnant women for nausea.  My gosh those children affected by the terrible side effects of thalidomide have paid a huge price.  Have we learned nothing?  No!  On a personal level one drug I was taking for asthma results in decreased bone density and another one increased risk for depression and suicide along with a myriad of other side effects.  I upped my dosage of Vitamin C and D then gave both drugs the boot.

There is no doubt the pharmaceutical companies are killing us.  How much we buy into their propaganda is up to us though.  There are a lot of ways of dealing with illnesses, diseases, and minor discomforts without resorting to these powerful drugs that are doing more harm than good!

Garden Gnome
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