Janet Maslin's New York Times review of Melody Petersen's book Our Daily Meds is as full of vitriol for the pharmaceutical industry as Ms. Petersen's book appears to be, citing a number of "dirty tactics." I'll focus on one criticism that the book levels at the industry, and which Ms. Maslin happily parrots: that Big Pharma "medicalizes" normal conditions, causing people to take drugs for diseases that aren't really diseases, and that everyone should just live with. Says the review: "[T]here are the business strategies that have created illnesses out of what used to be facts of life, labeled them as syndromes, and have hooked customers into long-term use of medication to cure them."
I used to carry this sort of cynicism around with me myself. Seeing drugs like Detrol (is having to go to the bathroom often really a condition?) and now Mirapex (for "restless legs syndrome") obtain approval and get advertised endlessly, I wondered if this was indeed an insidious tactic of Big Pharma to get us all to take drugs we don't need.
Then I realized the attitude that underlies this criticism: that some amount of suffering is inherent to the human condition.
Think about it: Maybe it's within the scope of normalcy to have to go to the bathroom once an hour, but is it desirable? What if I have an all-day meeting with a client? Is it any comfort as I constantly excuse myself that what I am doing is "normal"? Even if my condition is "normal," might I be willing to spend the money to make things better than normal? What's wrong with that? We might as well ban makeup because it's "normal" for women to look plain, or ban luxury foods because it's "normal" to scratch food from the ground like our ancestors did.
In a free market, each of us would be free to decide whether the risks and price of a drug are worth the benefits, whether the drug treats overactive bladder or ovarian cancer. There is no need for the paternalistic implication that some drugs are not worth it to anyone and, worse, the implication that to be human is to put up with suffering.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
... the paternalistic implication ...
I think the idea of paternalism is a clue to the problem of identifying the nature of the particular form of statism ruling our lives, both medically and otherwise.
This is not jack-boot statism that demands that we sacrifice our lives for the State or the Race or the Class. Instead, we live under "guidance" that regulates our lives in the name of benefitting us.
I see this as Parentalism, which is the belief (-ism) that the state functions as the Good Parent of society. Like any good parent, this state sets rules to keep the family functional as a whole and to protect the immature and the decrepit. Parentalism is paternalism and maternalism combined, emphasizing their common denominator: forceful, final decision-making for the benefit of family members.
Superficially Parentalism is not totalitarianism. Our state Parent allows us freedoms, just as any good parent does. Children can decorate their own bedrooms (within certain guidelines, of course); make some esthetic choices with their own things; and choose electives at school. But the Parent state manages everything overall--for every family member's benefit, of course.
Parentalism captures the essential, distinguishing characteristics of our particular form of statism: ultimately forceful guidance combined with vacuoles of freedom, all for the supposed benefit of individual "family" members.
Burgess, let me say that I'm delighted you're commenting on this blog, and your latest comment is one of the reasons.
Post a Comment