▪	prescribes junk pharmaceuticals to mask the symptoms of metabolic, musculo-skeletal and psychological dysfunction.
▪	doesn't treat the cause of the dysfunction
▪	doesn't stimulate the body's own recuperative power
▪	doesn't restore poor function to good
▪	disempowers the customer
▪	is reductionist and exclusive in the treatments it offers
▪	is dualist
▪	is a closed shop monopoly
▪	is established within and protected by the State, from whom it receives most of its income without proper delegation or accountability.
▪	squeals like a stuck pig when any other professional group tries to invade its territory

We've reached the beginning of the post junk medical era, the junk medical era being that brief moment in time - from about 1980 to 2005 - when the medical/pharmaceutical industry (MIP) grabbed control of the health systems of the world.

 

And what a take-over it was, as the foxes took over the hen house, running amok, wreaking havoc on the health of nations, and at the same time lining their pockets with money gouged from mug taxpayers the world over.

 

The Conquistadors could not have imagined how such fabulous wealth could be so easily prised from its owners. (In the year 2000 the head of Pfizer in the US took home $40m. The Chairman of Merck had $181m in stock options.)

 

The success of the junk medical/pharmaceutical industry (JMPI) was that they rediscovered the old trick developed long ago by the Catholic Church that it was  far easier to make money out of turning heads than it was by chopping them off!

 

It was the story of the Old Bull and the Young Bull played out in real life. If you haven't heard the story of the Old Bull and the Young Bull click here.

 

All this was done in the name of progress, humanity and compassion. You didn't have to wait until the next life to feel better. With the payment of regular tithes and indulgences you could feel better NOW!

 

Swifties

Stunts and swifties pinched from the Joseph Goebbels's Charm School* were taken to a higher plane.

 

The first swiftie was the way in which the JMPI weaselled it's way into the hearts and minds of people and their governments. It became an established cult on a scope beyond the wildest imagination of ancient clerics.

 

The idea of governments, not the individual or the individual's family, looking after the sick and the poor became rooted in fertile ground. This can only happen in affluent societies where there is plenty of money around that can be creamed off by governments in various taxes and charges.

 

Once established, governments took on the role of channelling the money from the pockets of the affluent taxpayers into the pockets of the JMPI in a beautiful, zipless transaction. At it's basest level it became the most successful third party sting in the history of the world. In Australia mug taxpayers are currently forking out $50B a year to the JMPI.

 

What happiness? What joy? What bliss?

 

Governments ended up subsidizing a range of treatments that diverted the attention of people away from doing the things they needed to do to look after themselves, junk treatments that masked symptoms without restoring body systems to good health. The direction of the of health status of people around the world was diverted from a long and steady road toward improvement to one of terminal decline.

 

The money spent on junk medicine starved all other health promotion programs of funds and deprived them of success.

 

The big one

And then came the big one. The adoption of the philosophy that the health system should be attached to the welfare system proved to be the master-stroke that created the Eldorado for the JMPI. That was what really attracted medical, pharmaceutical and academic snouts to the trough.

 

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

 

The short answer

Madison Avenue met Wall St.

 

The longer answer

The deep psychological foundation of the success of the medical/pharmaceutical industry has been pharmaceutical companies preying on the Christian sensibilities of compassion and sanctity of life. How could you possibly deprive someone of a treatment that takes away their pain, that has the promise of extended (not eternal) life, regardless of the cost? That would be callous; no-one wants to be seen as callous.

 

Then greed too over. The JMPI road roughshod over the principles of humble, committed, dedicated members of the various healing professions until it finally gained the ascendency that gave it the dominant position in health care. It became the super monopoly of our time, the elephant dancing among chickens. It sucked more money out of the community than any other industry group.

 

The great tragedy is that the drug company juggernaut has run over and then scraped from the face of the earth the ancient traditions of healing. Healing professionals world-wide have been marginalised, the health of nations has declined. It's one of the reasons for the decimation of aboriginal cultures the world over.

 

Junk medical research

The intelligentsia in the sheltered workshops were seduced by research funds flowing from the pharmaceutical industry and focused their attention on developing junk drugs to mask the symptoms of body system dysfunctions generated by lifestyle neglect, instead of being in the vanguard of a movement which protected the health gains of the previous 70 years. (There is nothing, apart from horse manure, that attracts flies quicker than medical research funds.)

 

(It's interesting that at this point another swiftie was hatched. Pharmaceutical companies got governments to pay for the research, then plucked the most valuable cherries off the research tree, put them in a fancy packet and sold them at exorbitant mark-ups.

 

The circle has now been completed and it's the academics, not the pharmaceutical companies who are continuously squealing for more money to do more research. This is really code for more money to keep employing us, regardless of how useful our research is.

 

Governments are unlikely to reduce funding for research because of the hullabaloo that would follow as PhD's were turfed onto the dole. Where else would they go? The same rules of engagement apply to the over intelligent as to the under intelligent. Obviously we need more government funded jobs, not less, on the roads and the railways,  in the post office and the universities to soak up unemployment!)

 

Symptom masking became the catch cry, not healing.

 

Junk pharmaceuticals

Many of the drugs were me-too drugs, no better than ones which had been developed earlier. Drugs for one dysfunction were dressed up and marketed for other dysfunctions. It was the glossy adverts that said they were better. They were just more expensive.

 

Junk medicine

The medical industry hopped on to the gravy train. Hot dinners were swallowed, Grange Hermitage quaffed in fancy restaurants and flash pubs, seats warmed down the sharp end planes, conferences attended at golf course resorts, pens, pads and baubles strategically located around the surgery waiting room, heads patted and turned, palms greased, favours curried and fortunes made. Doctors, gatekeepers of the drug industry bought the glossy adverts and prescribed the drugs.

 

On the advice of their experts, governments kept paying for them.

 

Want to know more about these shenanigans? Get a copy of Overdosed America by John Abrahamson and The Truth about Drug Companies by Marcia Angell.

 

Governments seduction

Members of parliament and government ministers, lay on their backs while their tummies were stroked by the medical, pharmaceutical and academic industries; more hot dinners, more bottles of Grange Hermitage, more back patting, curry-favouring and brown nosing.

 

They anointed medical and pharmaceutical experts as health experts, thereby putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.

 

Governments then went to their 'experts' for advice on how to maintain the  health gains of earlier times. The effect of the advice was to pour thousands of billions of dollars down a big black hole straight into the pockets of the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

 

This became known as the funnel trick.

 

Tax payers were bled dry, governments threatened with bankruptcy, enterprise stifled. The health of nations because worse.

 

Dirty Tricks

Then we started getting exposed to the dirty tricks department. The medical associations started calling themselves 'orthodox' and anyone who had different ideas about healing, 'unorthodox'. This was the mob that was doling out un-natural medicine on the one hand and bagging natural medicine on the other. Territorial skirmishes were started. The humble healer was either run over, rubbed out or excommunicated. Certainly their treatments weren't given the favourable subsidies to attract customers.

 

Order was restored. Anything apart from un-natural medicine is now bagged as 'alternative' or 'complementary' and starved of recognition and status by governments the world over.

 

The seduction

Then the punters visiting their local surgery were seduced. They quickly found that in seven minutes they could come away pain free without paying anything, let alone the price of the time and effort it took to keep in reasonable shape. They were duped into paying more taxes, believing their health treatment was free.

 

Longevity statistics were manipulated to make it look like people were living dramatically longer than 100 years ago. But people started getting older earlier. They became destined to spend the last 30 years of their extended lives with diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, depression, crook backs, fat guts, immobility and eventually Oldtimer's syndrome.

 

It's interesting to note that the people who are living longer today are the people who grew up in the depression, who set themselves on the path to good health well before the junk food, junk medical age. I grew up in a family of six and a dozen Moyles soft drinks used to last from Christmas eve until the long weekend in January. That was living!

 

The effect of the junk medical era was to turn a nation that fifty years before had been tough and hard and wiry, into a nation that was fat weak and depressed.

 

This was progress; until someone pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on and that it takes longer than 50 years for the tough, hard and wiry genes of our grand parents to become the fat, weak and depressed genes that we've supposedly got now.

 

It was exposed as an expensive fraud designed for the benefit of the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

 

End of the junk medical era

Finally the industry became exposed as a giant blood sucking worm that spent more money on lobbying and marketing than it did on research; an industry that failed to oversee the retention of the good health developed in the first 75 years of the 20th Century, let alone improve it.

 

More and more reports came out of the scandalous behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry.

 

More and more drugs were recalled, drugs that we'd been led to believe were backed up by research that was beyond reproach.

 

More and more books were published alerting the populace to the junk medical fraud. Click here to purchase some of the seminal books chronicling this exposure.

 

More people started going to the gym; mugs and old fogies started elbowing the bicep and blow-wave set off the strength machines and elipticals. More people started supplementing their diet, More people started going to slimming clinics. Nestles brought out Jenny Craig, for God's sake.

 

There was a backlash from fit and healthy people who were sick and tired of subsidizing the medical treatments of the fat and lazy.

 

Finally it was the rush to push more and more drugs down the throats of millions of people world wide that finally got people's backs up, got them to wake up to themselves and realize that their high cholesterol levels were not caused by a lack of Lipitor, any more than their high blood pressure was caused by a lack of Avpro, their depression by a lack of Zoloft and their crook back by a lack of Vioxx. Their health wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. Junk pharmaceuticals had become the problem, not the cure.

 

Want to know more? Click here to purchase some of the books I recommend. When you've finished with them pass them on - and don't go to doctors for things doctors can't fix.

 

* If you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one.