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I can remember a time when reading a magazine was almost entertaining. Sure, you always saw an advertisement somewhere in the pages for a certain cigarette brand, or maybe several ads for whiskeys, but suddenly those ads became a bad standard. God forbid, a child may see a man gazing into the sunset while sitting on his horse. After all, he had a cigarette in his mouth and that photograph would cause all young children to notice nothing but the cigarette, and this in turn, would cause all young children to start smoking and eventually become unhealthy adults.
Those days are long gone, but those troubling ads have been replaced with something even more dangerous. It’s difficult to flip through any publication without seeing drug advertisements. We’ve become a population of people who may have become smokers or alcoholics, to the largest group of over-drugged people on this planet.
The United States ranks at about 4% of the world population, but....hold on to your drug pushing magazine....we consume nearly 70% of the world’s drugs. That, you say, should make us the healthiest group of individuals in the world.
WRONG AGAIN. Last I heard, the U.S. ranked near 49th position as far as life expectancy. How is that even possible? We have the technology. We have the educated doctors and nurses. We have the best drugs. We have the best hospitals and clinics and research teams that money can buy. How could this all be possible?
Think about it, and then realize that we, as only 4% of the world population, consume 70% of the drugs. I see a terrible pattern here that only makes those long-ago advertisements seem like a laughing matter.
It doesn’t take a biochemist or super scientist to understand that the problem just may lie in part to the massive quantities of drugs that we are being programmed to ‘ask our doctors about.’ Naturally, your doctor is all too happy to write that prescription for you....he’s making money. It doesn’t matter than you may not need that drug. Your doctor is supposed to be there to heal you and make you feel better. If it makes you feel better to leave his office with a brand new prescription to add to your growing drug collection already at home, he’ll write that prescription with a smile.
I grew up in those times when the dreadful advertisements were a hazard to my health, but I didn’t think, “O-o-o-o, the Marlboro Man....how cool. He smokes and I want to be just like him.” I thought, “Neat picture. Neat sunset. Neat horse. What a jerk. He smokes.” Apparently he was born before all those hazardous ads were pulled and he was lured in. Advertisements will do that to you. They lure you in to make you want to try whatever it is the company is trying to sell, then you run out and get the product and before you realize it, you’re a junkie.
The point I’m trying to make here, in a round about way, is that these pulled ads have been replaced with ads that are far worse and even more hazardous to your health and the health of every citizen of every country. It’s all in the form of higher profits for your doctors and the pharmaceutical companies.
I was just checking out the April 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest. Took a look at the cover, and I see there’s a writeup somewhere about Halle Berry, but the big story is “How Safe Is Your Food?” I’ll have to read that later.
I turn the front cover, and the next page to see the index for the featured articles and I see that “How Safe Is Your Food” can be found on page 120. Turning the page again, I find the index for Reader’s Digest Columns and there it is. Right there on the following three pages is GlaxoSmithKline’s ad for Avodart.
Avodart is used for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH. In other words, an enlarged prostate in men. The ad goes along to say that men taking the drug should not donate blood for at least six months after taking the final dose of Avodart. The reason? The blood donation may end up in a female who may be pregnant. It seems that if a woman is carrying a male baby and she’s exposed to Avodart, the baby may be born with abnormal sex organs. It also says that women who are pregnant or may become pregnant shouldn’t handle Avodart. Sounds to me like this stuff is pretty dangerous.

Frank