Big Pharma and Capitalism
[Documentary, Info, and Perspectives] Big Pharma & Capitalism
[Article] Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
“Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention, anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society..” – Bruce Levine, Ph.D. – http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/
[Documentary] Big Bucks, Big Pharma (2009)
“Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry’s marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment. Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being.” –http://www.myspace.com/video/iceberg/movie-documentary-big-bucks-big-pharma/54926879
[Essay] Capitalism Makes Me Sick, by Ina P.
The following was delivered at the Rail’s “Rant Rhapsody Redux: Missives from the American Fall” on October 16 at the Bowery Poetry Club.“Economic deprivation and stress beget trauma, trauma begets deprivation, cascading down through generations. It’s the only real trickle-down in our economic system. And if you look at all the other diseases of capitalism—obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, addiction, and so on—we are nearly all sick and suffering from it in one shape or another. It’s killing us all.
And it all comes down to nothing: to dirty, filthy, illusory money.” –http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/11/express/capitalism-makes-me-sick
[Data] The pharmaceutical industry spent $231,600,000 lobbying the state in 2012 alone. –http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/09/opensecrets-mailbag-lobbying-bribery-big-pharma.html
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