America’s anthem: ‘I wanna be sedated’

[elisa]

It’s hard to imagine that what was once a Ramones hit has become an underlying new trend in America. One doesn’t need to look far to pinpoint what this new trend is. In fact, it might be on a commercial between segments of your favorite show.

What used to be considered benign ailments or “conditions” that would stem from mild psychological issues, which can be resolved by chats with psychiatrists, are now being quickly prescribed medication to stop activity without getting to root issues.

Now doctors and medical groups are exposing made-up illnesses. As noted by CNN, “An article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says the pharmaceutical industry has funded and driven an effort for the last six years to have the theory of ‘female sexual dysfunction’ clinically confirmed and publicly accepted.”

It further details how, “The director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, Dr. John Bancroft, [believes] lack of sex drive is in many cases a healthy and functional response for women faced with stress, tiredness, or threatening behavior from their partners.”

This example may not seem to be a cause for immediate alarm, due to the fact that consumers ultimately have the right to choose whether they accept treatment or not. However, the reality is far more insidious.

Currently, many public schools implement policies that mandate children who have behavioral problems to take psychotropic drugs, according to Cybercast News Service’s Web site.

Parents are forced to choose between changing their child’s school or following through with the school’s policy. As a result, parents are coerced into medicating their children.

Currently, a group of Republicans and some Democrats have entered a bill into congress called the Child Medication Safety Act (H.R. 1170).

The bill proposes that schools cannot mandate policies to coerce parents and force children into taking psychotropic drugs.

In May 2003, the bill passed the House by a vote of 425-1, but it is currently locked in congressional committee debate under the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Senator Edward Kennedy is one of the major dissenters to the bill who is calling for major revisions.

He believes that such a bill will unintentionally undermine the current advancements in detecting psychological disorders in a younger school generation.

He’s backed by the American Psychological Association that sent a letter to the Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce stating, “given the bill’s strict enforcement mechanism, classroom teachers and other school personnel could be expected to be fearful of the risks of speaking openly with families about a student’s emotional well-being and/or behavior, or recommending a mental health evaluation.”

The hand of pharmaceutical companies knows no partisan lines. It feeds off America’s subconscious hypochondria. Children who die from side effects from these drugs, such as Paxil and Zoloft just to name a few, go unnoticed, as documented by articles on Cybercast News Service’s Web site and in The New York Times.

In fact, the current administration is encouraging courts to throw out cases in believing that juries are not expert enough to make a judgment on such issues, and that such action would undermine the role of the FDA.

However, people fail to realize the pharmaceutical companies’ heavy-handedness in the FDA itself.

Dr. Alastair J.J. Wood was believed to be President Bush’s top nomination for commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in 2002.

With his credentials unchallenged, pharmaceutical companies and its lobbyists made a statement that Dr. Wood’s obsession with drug-safety review would deny many patients of life saving drugs. Days later, the White House dumped him, and Senator Bill Frist commented, “There was a great deal of concern that he put too much emphasis on the safety.”

Current business practices of pharmaceutical companies undermine the democratic fabric we hold so dear. We cannot allow ourselves to accept this evangelical nihilism that drug companies abuse to attain their goals. Not only is this practice detrimental to our health and safety, but individuals remain weary, often refraining, to take steps to improve their health.

Drug creation and market introduction by pharmaceutical companies make the ‘80s cocaine plague and the fictional, Hollywood drug playboy Tony Montana look like Nurse Ratched.

Fortunately for us, there is no money in lobotomizing Americans