Marvels of Modern Medicine

Disease-creating medicines. Companies and doctors who benefit from illness. Can such a medical system – and its’ users be ever healthy?

People blame themselves – while it is ‘medicines’ that create these disorders | No cartoon credit credit available at source. | Click for image.

A third of the U.S. population is now overweight, making it just a matter of time before normal-size people are actually in the minority. Americans have so ballooned in size, government safety regulators worry that airline seats and belts won’t restrain today’s men who average 194 pounds and women who average 165 pounds, in a crash. The Lancet recently reported that rising obesity in the U.K. will cause an extra half a million cases of heart disease, 700,000 cases of diabetes and 130,000 of cancer by 2030. And the overweight and obese are 80 percent more likely to develop dementia writes Kerry Trueman on AlterNet.

Obesity raises Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance costs and affects national security, writes David Gratzer on KevinMD.com, “since thousands of recruits are turned away from military service because of failed physicals and poor overall health.” It also shortens “the lifespan of millions of decent Americans who deserve better,” he writes.

Yet eating too much and exercising too little, considered the root of obesity, are not the only probable culprits. Here are some other factors that are often overlooked.

Depression and Depression Drugs

Classic depression is characterized by a decrease in appetite, weight loss and general despondency. But in 1994, “atypical depression” debuted, a subtype of depression characterized by an increase in appetite and weight gain (as well as oversensitivity to rejection by others). Unfortunately, both types of depression are often treated with popular antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro and Paxil and antipsychotics like Seroquel, Zyprexa and Risperdal,, all of which can pack on the pounds.

Welcome to the industrial society. Food that harms and medicines that are poison! | Cartoon credits embedded | Click for image.

To keep the weight gain from affecting Pharma sales, the pro-pill site, WebMD, tells patients that keeping the pounds off is their responsibility since only “healthy eating and exercise help control your weight gain.” But it also counsels if the pill weight gain is “so strong that it simply can’t be offset by any amount of calorie restricting or even exercise,” the psychoactive medication “to help overcome your depression is far more important.” To whom? (via 8 Surprising Things That May Be Making Americans Fat | Food | AlterNet).

Entry Restricted

With gate-keepers in each direction, the ‘modern’ medical system is closed to everyone – except a few ‘insiders’. Patent-protected pharma companies, specialists (in the parietal-occipital lobe, for instance), regulators who depend on incomplete and partial information decide the fate of our health – and disease. Pharma companies decide what information regulators, specialists and users will know.

And what they don’t tell us hurts us.

An establishment that protects and promotes itself. | Cartoon credits embedded. | Click for image.

Costs – and more

This edifice definitely creates financial ill-health – and frequently physical disease also. Like this above extract shows, modern medical system has created obesity into a national disease across the West.

And the people think, it is their personal eating habits behind this national epidemic of obesity.

After double-blind, randomized, clinical testing on rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, cattle – plus you and me, after a few decades, 90% of these medicines are found to become ineffective – or have side-effects.

Like they make you unfit and obese.

Wife: – No, actually the initial complaint was a headache. Wife: The heart-attack happened after seeing the doctor’s bill. | Cartoonist – Kirtish Bhatt; source & courtesy – bamulahija.blogspot.in | Click for image.

---

---

Related Articles

• 10 Companies Decide What We Eat (behind2ndlook.wordpress.com)
• Bilderberg: Silly stories …? (quicktake.wordpress.com)
• Egypt raids on US NGOs (2ndlook.wordpress.com)
• The Paleo Diet Moves From The Gym To The Doctor’s Office (npr.org)
• How to Avoid the Obesity Epidemic (everydayhealth.com)
• Understanding Atypical Depression (everydayhealth.com)
• Difference Engine: Food for thought (economist.com)

India’s backward traditional medical system!

Estimates vary but ‘modern’ medicine derives drugs and active molecules from pretty traditional sources. Time to take a 2ndlook at ‘modern medicine’.

This is even more truer of India!

The controversy centres on the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, a searchable database of more than 230,000 formulations. Some 200 researchers took eight years to create the database after scouring ancient texts on Indian systems of medicine — Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga — in Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Urdu. The database is available in English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. (via India protects traditional medicines from piracy : Nature News).

‘Discovery’ of ‘modern’ medicine

The Western ‘cure’ for malaria, quinine came from cinchona tree bark – which was a known cure earlier than its ‘discovery’ by the West. The two biggest cancer drugs, vincristine and vinblastine came from the Madagascar periwinkle – which was again part of traditional knowledge. The drug reserpine  comes from Rauwolfia serpentina a plant native to India, Sri Lanka, etc.

With 200.000 plants medications already in a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, Indian Traditional Medical Pharmacopiea could be the world’s largest!

By the way, Dr. Mansukh Wani and the late Dr. Monroe Wall, ‘discovered’ another two important compounds in cancer chemotherapy, taxol (extracted from yew trees, most famous being the Himalayan yew) and camptothecin (from the Chinese ‘happy’ tree) – for which they received many awards.

The true source of genius

Dr.RA Mashelkar, a senior scientist and administrator, writes:

“A recent study by an Indian expert group examined randomly selected 762 US patents, which were granted under A61K35/78 and other IPC classes, having a direct relationship with medicinal plants in terms of their full text. Out of these patents, 374 patents were found to be based on traditional knowledge …”

Another writer notes,

in the early 1990s roughly one quarter of all prescription drugs sold in the United States contained plant products – half of those were from the tropics. The value of those compounds was greater than $6 billion per year.

Hiding your sources

In the past few decades, Western ‘innovations’ have proliferated – in basmati rice (by RiceTec), isabgol (psyllium by Kellogg), neem oil (by WR race), haldi, arhar dal extracts, ngali nut (for arthritis, from India, Sri Lanka and Solomon Islands), jar amla (for hepatitis) – and these ‘innovations’ have been exposed for what they are – piracy.

Interestingly, Viagra, the brand name seems to be rip-off from the Sanskrit word for tiger – व्याघ्र vyaghra. Chinese have long believed that tiger bones make a good aphrodisiac.

Yogasanas have been patented in the USA

Based on the above survey and cases, the Indian Government has initiated a project - Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). Based on TKDL data

The European Patent Office (EPO) has rejected 15 patent applications of various international companies during the past one year after it found they had used India’s traditional medicinal knowledge to prepare certain products.

“We identified 36 cases of bio-piracy and took them with EPO. Fifteen cases have been already rejected by the EPO.

We expect another 21 to be rejected soon,” V K Gupta, Director of Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a project to conserve and share the knowledge on the Indian medicine systems, said. The government has embarked upon digitalising the traditional knowledge under TKDL project.

The government started the TKDL project in 2001. About two lakh medical formulations have been digitalised under it.

With more than 200,000 lakhs formulations, stretching to 1 crore pages, the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is a mine of Indian medical knowledge. It is now exposing how Western drug companies have been using traditional sources to create ‘intellectual property rights and patents – and use the same against the very people who created the knowledge in the first place. The Western pharma industry’s dependence on ever-greening their patents for continued prosperity has hit a wall with the growth in Indian challenge.

Kellogg’s Bran Buds cereal containing Isabgol – psyllium husk.

For Indian medical systems, it is the beginning of a renewal. For Western medical systems, this the beginning – of the end. And they ‘know’ it.

In February 2002, India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Peru, Venezuela and South Africa — countries that are rich in biodiversity — signed an alliance to fight bio-piracy and press for rules protecting their people’s rights to genetic resources found on their land.

It was Einstein who said, “

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Related articles

• Concerns Mount Over India’s Role In Incubating Drug-Resistant Bacteria (voanews.com)
• Ayurveda: Using food as medicine to heal (times-news.com)
• India’s best spas rated, recognised (news.in.msn.com)
• Kerala’s Rs 600 cr Ayurveda industry in jeopardy (ibnlive.in.com)
• When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed (theweek.co.uk)
• Chinese Melamine or American Vioxx: Half a million dead and no questions asked (counterpunch.org)
• In India, oversight lacking in outsourced drug trials (openchannel.msnbc.msn.com)
• Vioxx decision fails to relieve critics (blogs.nature.com)
• Scientists Spot How Cox-2 Painkillers Raise Heart Risks (news.health.com)
• Scientists Spot How Cox-2 Painkillers Raise Heart Risks (nlm.nih.gov)
• Court urged to hasten Vioxx heart attack claims (theage.com.au)
• “When Half a Million Americans Died and Nobody Noticed” (theamericanconservative.com)
• Health Buzz: Home HIV Test Backed By FDA Panel (health.usnews.com)
• Why were risky, ineffectual bone drugs approved, some are asking (intrepidreport.com)
• Robert Caro and the Lost History of the 1960s – Plus a Vioxx Note (theamericanconservative.com)