The elite, which I generally define as the institutions putatively viewed as protecting the public's interests, have done well in discouraging apostasy. They paint any "heretic" as an Alex Jones type with tin foil on his head and black helicopters buzzing above his house. I suppose even amongst the unjustified smears of racist, misogynist, and idiot, the "crazy-person" label might be the most socially damaging. And thus the lies persist...
Perhaps the biggest and most harmful lie, backed by a coalition of government (FDA), media, academia, and the medical field, is the Big Pharma Life Trajectory. An article at AlterNet wonderfully summarizes how our over-medicated population got suckered into this horrible health crisis. Before I excerpt the article, let me present what I consider the Big Pharma Life Trajectory:
Age 5: Is your child hard to handle? Does he not fall asleep fast enough? Does he cry a lot? Then pump him full of Ritalin!Now onto the article. A clinical psychologist, Bruce Levine, breaks down the problem as follows:
Age 15: Don't like how your face looks with all those bumps? Don't worry, Accutane is perfectly safe (besides liver damage, birth defects, and deadly allergic reactions).
Age 30: Feeling a little blue? Having trouble falling asleep? Don't like your job? Boyfriend getting on your nerves? Here's a little pill called Prozac that will fix everything.
Age 50: High cholesterol? Holy crap, you're going to get a heart attack anytime now, so take this. And don't worry about those crazy people suffering from hallucinated side effects like joint stiffness, cataracts, or muscle nerve damage.
Age 75: Can't get it up? Everyone needs an active sex life in their 70's, so take this magic pill too.
Big Pharma Corruption: Follow the money, especially when it leads to government.
Not only does the drug industry have influential psychiatrists such as Biederman in their pocket, virtually every major mental health institution is financially interconnected with Big Pharma. Congressional hearings also exposed the American Psychiatric Association psychiatry’s premier professional organization, as being on the take from drug companies. In 2006, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the APA’s $62.5 million in financing. Most relevant here, the APA is the publisher of the psychiatric diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and thus the APA is the institution responsible for creating mental illnesses and disorders.They make stuff up: This is especially profitable when done to children, as now childhood rambunctiousness, not to mention general bratiness, has become pathologized. Fancy names sure help, right? Who could argue with erudite sounding terms like "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", which was originally called, "being an annoying little punk."
While psychiatry lost homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1980 DSM-III, the APA found other groups it could pathologize, groups that could not mobilize and resist, most notably children, who are now routinely given psychiatric diagnoses for behaviors that many of us view as normal for their ages.Unreliable Diagnoses: None of the practicing "experts" ever agree. And believe me, parental pressure motivates the diagnosis much more than any verifiable facts, such as rich parents who want their kid to get extra time on testing.
What this study demonstrated was that even when experienced clinicians with special training and supervision are asked to use DSM and make a diagnosis, they frequently disagree, even though the standards for defining agreement are very generousBiochemical Imbalance Mumbo Jumbo: Ever read a psychiatry text? It makes post-modernism appear lucid.
depressed Americans became far more receptive to serotonin-enhancing drugs such as the “selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft...Pseudoscientific Drug Effectiveness Research: They lie about drug research and Big Pharma has all the top researchers in their pockets. If you know about the speciousness of academic research, you need no further explanation here.
SSRIs can make some depressed people feel better; however, alcohol makes some shy people less shy, but that’s not enough evidence to say that shyness is caused by an alcohol imbalance. The truth is—and scientists have known this for quite some time—that serotonin levels are not associated with depression.
In 2000, a Psychiatric Times article concluded: “In fact, when antidepressants are compared with active placebos, there appear to be no differences in clinical effectiveness.”He missed some stuff that contribute to problems like depression and childhood irascibility (such as single motherhood, the low-fat diet craze, 'Bowling Alone' syndrome) and pandered a little bit to leftist interests, but overall Dr. Levine does a great job of showing the corruption of the entire medical drug industry. This problem persists because there's no accountability; all the groups are in the scam together. Yet their credibility does not diminish, even as the FDA advises eight year olds go on statins and anti-psychotic drugs be given to toddlers. And those that speak out against this scam get branded as conspiracy theorists and quacks.
33 comments:
One large and notable exception to this is antibiotics. They are over-used and over-prescribed no doubt, but when they are used properly, there is no substitute for them, and they save a lot of lives.
@Remnant,
but antibiotics have a known effect on a known cause of disease.
SSRIs have no real effect on depression, yet are prescribed constantly because they are money-makers. Statins have low effectiveness for many in the population but are the go-to drugs for anyone with high cholesterol, regardless of whether they might help. You need a detailed serum panel and possibly some genetic testing to determine if a particular statin will work for you, yet, if cholesterol is above a certain number - STATINS! STAT!
@One, glad you mentioned the low-fat diet craze in terms of childhood behavioral issues. The brain is composed of fat, and fats compose the myelin sheaths which insulate the nerve pathways. Imagine how a house with naked wires would be burning out fuses and panels, and causing fires or irreversible damage to sensitive equipment. The same happens to our brains absent the right fats in the diet, and I don't understand why docs and shrinks continue to push the low-fat agenda on parents.
I think there are many reasons why my kids are happy and well-adjusted - other people comment on it, strangers at the park or grocery store, family members we don't see often - and I think their diet is part of it. They are happy and sane, intelligent and developing well for their ages. I will never put them on drugs save for occasional antibiotics when they have a warranted need for them, or some ibuprofen for aches and pains.
Funny the prescience of writers like Huxley. The WN community is eagerly waiting the day when babies can be grown in artificial wombs. The pharma industry is training the good sheep to be dependent on their products. We are well and truly fucking ourselves if we follow this horseshit-studded path.
Yeah, and it's not just the psych field; all of traditional medicine has moved to the drug intensive model because of the corruption of big pharma, government and the medical associations. And let's face it, most people have bought into this model as well. "Going to the doctor" results in the expectation of receiving a shot, getting a prescription, or both. If not, people will go to a different doctor. It places no expectations on the patient outside of taking a pill on a regular basis. Lifestyle changes and diet changes are too difficult.
You should do a follow up post on corruption and how they shifted the blame to capitalism, the imaginary free market running wild. It's rather brilliant if you you think about it, blame the rape victim and in the same breath propose more rape to make things right.
Hey, what's wrong with Roaccutane?? I took that stuff for just a few months when I was a kid and it fixed my skin permanently. The benefits to the quality of my life since then are immeasurable.
The point about the APA being paid for and controlled by pharma companies is the one that really turned the lights on for me. They also control the American Heart Association, the major cancer and diabetes organizations, and the American Medical Association. Basically any official sounding foundation with a lot of power in healthcare. The hospitals are often just as bad.
It's time that it becomes common knowledge that the healthcare industry views people as a resource to be exploited. They're not in the business of curing people. It's far more profitable to create lifetime customers by chronifying diseases and providing temporary symptom relief. I learned a lot from this cardiologist's blog about how the system works:
http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/
Most of these problems are caused by our modern diet of refined carbs, industrial seed oils, gluten, and soy. But diet changes don't make anyone much money, especially when you're moving away from packaged foods that make a lot of money for processors and advertisers, and toward simple ingredients like meat and vegetables that send more of your cash to the grower. (If you buy a pound of ground beef for $3 today, the farmer got about 75 cents for it. Buy a box of cereal for $3, and the various grain and sugar farmers who produced the ingredients might get to split a nickel between them.)
I used to think the ADD/ADHD "epidemic" was nonsense, until I got diagnosed with it myself and did a lot of research, and started working with kids. The drugs for it are stimulants, which would make an "annoying little brat" with normal brain chemistry even more annoying, not sedate. So there really is something to it; a kid who can't sit still or focus mentally until you dope him with meth isn't just being a brat because his parents don't believe in spanking. But obviously we didn't evolve in one generation from having one problem kid in each classroom to a quarter of them, so it's not genetic. Most of these kids just need to be cut off from sugar and refined carbs, and fed more healthy fats (sat, mono, and omega-3s).
There's also plenty of evidence that gluten is a major cause of depression and other mental problems. Cut wheat out of your diet and all sorts of things can clear up, from acne to depression to headaches to bloating. Soy has phyto-estrogens that may explain the increasing effeminacy of men and coarseness of women since soy products were added to practically every food product. Take away soy, and men might not need Viagra anymore -- for two reasons.
As Dr. Mark Harris says, "Favor food that is defenseless when dead." Plants can't run away or bite or gore you, so they have other means to discourage attackers: bad flavor, thorns, hard husks, etc. -- and often substances in the plant itself (especially in the seed, the important part for reproduction) which are hard on the beast consuming it. These probably weren't especially harmful in the amounts and methods used over a century ago; but when we started refining them and eating far more of them, and in some cases altering the plants to produce even more (gluten levels in wheat have been multiplied many times over, because it's what makes bread light and stretchy), the plants started getting their revenge.
"One large and notable exception to this is antibiotics. They are over-used and over-prescribed no doubt, but when they are used properly, there is no substitute for them, and they save a lot of lives."
Let's see how many lives they will save once the microbes evolve resistance to them. The fact that large numbers of people still don't believe in evolution doesn't help.
To give an example of Big Pharma working against the people: in most EU countries and the US, Metamizole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole) - an almost magical cure for headache for which I now am forced bribe my family doctor to give me prescriptions - is banned without a prescription in favor of useless, more expensive "approved" drugs like Ibuprofen. It turns out that you have a minuscule chance to develop the sickness agranulocytosis if you are using it (the chance to be involved in a fatal car accident would probably be somewhat higher).
Since Metamizole is far less expensive than other drugs, of course there are financial motivations to ban it.
This is just one example. But what if there's a cure for cancer out there, but it turns out that selling prophylactics to help people not die in a lot of pain is more profitable? What do you think will happen in that case?
Carnivore said...
And let's face it, most people have bought into this model as well. "Going to the doctor" results in the expectation of receiving a shot, getting a prescription, or both. If not, people will go to a different doctor. It places no expectations on the patient outside of taking a pill on a regular basis. Lifestyle changes and diet changes are too difficult.
Totally agree. While I don't disagree with One's analysis in the OP, at the same time I believe that Big Pharma gets a bad rap. People want this stuff, and the few doctors who are willing to counsel lifestyle changes soon give up because almost no one is willing to make the changes. They'd rather take pills and continue on with their high carb and sugar-filled diets, no exercise, and massive TV watching - the latter conducing to depression I believe.
Big Pharma is only taking advantage of and exacerbating a situation caused by human laziness and lack of future time orientation.
I remember when I was 14 and had bad acne. Turns out one of the side effects is depression. So they stuck me on zoloft at the same.time. Glad I quit the stuff after a month or so
What struck me most re. Big Pharma was how during the early-to-mid-'90s, you'd see these drugs heavily promoted such as Wellbutrin ------ the great new answer to 'Obsessive-compulsive disorder, how they and these new class of mind drugs were on the vanguard to treating depression and other mental maladies ----- which, not so coincidentally, had recently been deemed a purely medical rather than psychologically rooted 'illness.'
Then, a few years later, after the OCD-Wellbutrin mojo had been worked dry and was used up, you started to see these ads on television in which sightly young professional women were shown delivering confident and polished work presentations before colleagues, which were used to exemplify how you and other folk could overcome your ...... 'social-anxiety disorder,' the latest new malady created by the APA and thoroughly fixable via pill or capsule. And what was magic ingredient this time? Why, it was Wellbutrin once more! Since they didn't yet cook up some new lab concoction, they just wrote up a new maladay and attendant marketing campaign for their Wellbutrin, and some of their other new '90s workhorses.
I have a close family member who's worked for decades as a psychiatrist; the stories I could tell ....... let's just say it's everything One and others have contended and much, much more.
I mean, it's true what one commenter here countered ----- that the public itself is aiding this travesty by coming to demand a pill-solution to every ailment. But it's not like B.Pharma didn't not thoroughly foster than dependency with billions of dollars in commercials and print advertising.
There's a lot of people out there who are miserable, unhappy, depressed, maladjusted, lonely, anxious, sickly, alienated, unfulfilled, and so on. People have tried to combat it with turning to religion, becoming do-gooders in search of a cause, distracting themselves with amusements, or drinking booze and using drugs. At one time tinctures of opium and cocaine were legally available and were supposed to be good for whatever ailed people. People desire happiness or at least some form of relief and if a pill is reported to produce that they'll jump at it. Big Pharma is a business and will oversell their wares. If adults feel they get something out of it then that's one thing; giving growing kids some of these drugs is another and needs to be critically evaluated as to for whose benefit they are being given, the teachers or the child. After awhile a more realistic picture emerges of what these things can and can't do emerges. Then it's on to the the next new thing.
Most consumer products promise to make you better looking, more popular, more vigorous and improve one's humdrum existence. It all works to some small degree, usually temporarily. One has to have a feeling of compassion for those dealing with thorny life issues such as dysfunctional children and families, lousy relationships, money and health issues. One doesn't want to hear that there's no fairy godmother out there who can make it all well with a wave of her magic wand.
The government types you're railing against are either former or future employees of the drug industry. Once again you have everything backwards.
Antibiotic resistance from evolution? Hardly. Several years ago, a significant study was done at a veteran's hospital. A number of older men with prostate infections were given antibiotics daily for 30 days. Every day, their bowel movements were lab tested for bacteria.
At the beginning, the bacteria were antibiotic susceptible. After a short time, the bacteria were resistant. Evolution at work?
Alas, at the end of the 30 days, when antibiotics were withdrawn, the bacteria changed back to susceptible, proving something other then evolution was at work. Evolution with a toggle switch? I don't think so.
If you want to know about antibiotic resistance, Google for Norway and antibiotic resistance. They very tightly control antibiotic use and can still use generation one antibiotics, virtually useless in other nations.
In one medical school, the students were told antibiotic resistance here in Mexico is horrible, because people do not need a prescription to buy them. A student called me and asked what doses were normal for certain diseases and antibiotics. Turned out to be exactly the same.
My best friend is a doctor. Not only don't they have MRSA in hospitals here in the country, partly because of better cleaning standards in the hospitals, but they don't have antibiotic resistant TB. They have a cocktail of 4 antibiotics which takes care of anything that happens.
Anonymous age 69
Check out this recent article, One.
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Trans+fats+linked+brain+shrinkage/5922636/story.html
Yeah I'm also curious about your hostility to Accutane. I took it for 6 months and it wiped out my cystic acne permanently - nearly 30years later no health issues whatsoever. I wonder if it belongs in the "Alar scare" category.
I believe that Big Pharma gets a bad rap. People want this stuff, and the few doctors who are willing to counsel lifestyle changes soon give up because almost no one is willing to make the changes.
Oh, is that why statins are the most prescribed drugs in America? Not because doctors still buy into the lipid hypothesis, freak out over cholesteral levels and push statins on practically everyone who walks through their doors, but because patients come in and DEMAND to be given statins.
As a Pharmacist, I will say that I am in the front lines of the lunacy that is the Western Allopathic School of medicine. Supposedly, in the ancient Orient, you paid the Doctor when you were well, he paid you when you were sick. In the West, you always pay the Doctor, whether you are cured or not. The obscene amounts of money that we spend on our “health” are just another way to keep the economy from tanking. They could care less about your health.
Take Antibiotics. Wonderful science that created them originally. And they were derived from natural sources. Now they, and all drugs, are derived from petrochemicals. Do you understand the link? The same people that own the oil companies own the major pharmaceutical houses. Your body can metabolize natural products. Metabolizing petroleum based synthetics helps destroy the liver and affects the homeostatic mechanism that is the human body. Have you ever noticed that once you get on the medical treadmill you never get off? This is because they “find” something wrong with you. Oh goodness! You have Hypertension! You’ll die if we don’t do something!” So you get started on one pill, maybe a diuretic. This of course affects your kidneys and electrolytes so eventually you will have to deal with these issues. But, the diuretic effect wears off eventually, so your Doctor will add a second Antihypertensives, say an ACE-Inhibitor. This affects your Liver and requires annual lab tests. After a couple of years of this therapy, a third medication may need to be added. In the meantime, you have gained 20 pounds. Your lipids are through the roof. Got to have a Statin now. This also affects your liver, plus you may develop painful Rhabdomyolysis. Your monthly medication expense, even with your insurance deductible, that you pay, $200 dollars a month for, runs you another $100 dollars a month. For some reason, you are depressed. Depression! You need an SSRI! And so on and on and on.
Your body is a remarkable mechanism, designed to heal itself. It works as a homeostatic system. When one area is out of balance, your body tries to re-establish balance, But the medicines/poisons that your Doctor prescribes you prevent this. This permanent imbalance leads to imbalance in another area, which your Doctor will only treat with more poison, which causes another imbalance, until your prescription costs outweigh what you pay for food and clothing. And the cost will never go away because the powerful chemicals you ingest shut down the manufacture of natural neurotransmitters. If you tried to go cold turkey, your body would not be able to stop your blood pressure from rebounding until you could start manufacturing enough natural chemicals to do what they should have been doing in the first place.
Western civilization has come to place the medical profession on a pedestal. But the truth is, they are just a business. And repeat business is what they are interested in. You’ve seen the business model of planned obsolescence, haven’t you? Why manufacture something that lasts 20 years when you can make crappy products the masses have to keep buying. And make them so it is almost as expensive to repair them as it is to replace them. Your masters look at medicine in the same way. Our ancestors, if they lived to be 70 or 80, were healthier than our 70 and 80 year olds. Why? Survival of the fittest. What we have now is just a slow death, where you require surgeries, drugs, and medical equipment to keep you alive. Although whether you are really living or not is a matter of opinion.
Oh, and speaking of Antibiotics: How many times have you been prescribed an Antibiotic for a viral infection? They don’t work on viruses, but when you’ve paid to see the Voodoo Man, he has to give you something. And you’ll be better in 2 or 3 days anyway. This way he gets the credit. The Doctors convince themselves this is “good medical practice” because they are preventing a potential bacterial infection while you are fighting off the virus. This is done thousands of times a day, so no wonder they have to continue to develop newer Antibiotics due to acquired resistance. Just don’t stop going to your Doctor, Western Man. Your health might suffer, or not, but the economy sure will.
Yes, big pharma fooled millions of doctors into believing that their patients needed these drugs. They also fooled millions of people into believing that these drugs help them. Yet you know what pills do and don't help people better than individuals themselves and their doctors! Quite an amazing young man you are.
Age 75: Can't get it up? Everyone needs an active sex life in their 70's, so take this magic pill too.
How dare they! They should just remain impotent to make you happy!
I get how Christians think that God created us, so if we're sad, lonely, can't sleep, etc. it's because something has gone wrong.
It's weirder if someone falls for the naturalistic fallacy when you don't even believe in God.
Then again, I've learned to stop expecting consistency in your logic. You never fail to be consistent in being spiteful, hateful, ignorant, and intellectually lazy though.
Yes, big pharma fooled millions of doctors into believing that their patients needed these drugs
Don't overestimate the intelligence and integrity of doctors. Many of them are lazy, foolish, and basically shills for big pharma. Example: When my father went in to see the doctor about some gut issues he was having, his idiot doctor prescribed the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin, which is counterindicated for gut problems and also has a tendency to dissolve your tendons but had been pushed heavily by pharma reps as a magic cure-all. Luckily, my father did his own research, threw out the Ciprofloxacin and got an appointment with a specialist, who correctly diagnosed the problem as having been caused by a previous course of antibiotics and recommended lots of probiotics, which cleared up my father's gut issues within a few weeks.
Some Intellectually Lazy DWL emoted....
"Yes, big pharma fooled millions of doctors into believing that their patients needed these drugs. They also fooled millions of people into believing that these drugs help them. Yet you know what pills do and don't help people better than individuals themselves and their doctors! Quite an amazing young man you are."
I don't know if this was addressed to me, but you are a pompous asswipe that has no idea of what you are speaking. If it was addressed to me, I don't do what you think I do. I do Nursing Home Consulting for geriatric patients and audit their charts to try and reduce the number of meds these vegetables are on.
If you didn't address it to me, you obviously are one of those anal retentive DWL's that wander to this site to try and show everyone how you are one of the wise true believers that "see" the Emperor's Clothing. Toilet paper like you do not have the intellectual honesty to analyze what you and your ilk preach and see it for the laughable lie that it is. You are too stupid to look at what has been done, see it is not working, and understand why it is not working. All blow hards like you do is clamor for more of the same, since at some point it WILL work, even though it never has, never will, and can't because it has nothing to do with biological reality. And, of course, it is our fault since we point out how ludicrous what you believe is. If we all just believed in the same mindless religion, it would work and create the perfect world. What was that about good intentions and what did they pave? WAKE UP, brain dead. The TRUTH is neither hate nor spite.
Diogenes, I'm pretty sure he was addressing the blogger, not you.
SSRIs can and do help people. I usually agree with you, but I have to call a spade a spade. Should kids be prescribed them? Maybe not, but let's not pretend to understand everyone's difficulties in life by making statements like "SSRIs have no benefit."
SSRI's do have SOME benefit, depending on the individual. But, not anywhere near the degree to which they are prescribed. And when you realize that women are more than twice as likely as men to be prescribed these Antidepressants, you realize that it is just the next fad or fashion. There aren't that many truly Clinically Depressed individuals. There are "depressed" people, given the broad description of what constitutes Depression. The American Way: Better Living Through Chemistry. Got a problem? Take a pill. All Hail the Witch Doctor!
Norepinephrine, Epinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin
Its both amazing and depressing that these chemcials or their precursers can have such an effect on our moods.
Youve had some really interesting articles this year OneStdv. I generally skim a few blogs on my phone about three or four times a week. I usually learn something useful each time I thumb in this blog's address on that little droid phone I have. Have a great 2012. M
Youve had some really interesting articles this year OneStdv. I generally skim a few blogs on my phone about three or four times a week. I usually learn something useful each time I thumb in this blog's address on that little droid phone I have. Have a great 2012. M
Appreciate it.
Accutante is a good example of a drug's toxic side effects, deliberately repressed by BigPharma. Roche, the maker of it, has discontinued the drug due to many successful lawsuits.
Class action lawsuits are still pending, and a recent book by a biomedical researcher, Dr. Doug Bremner, reveals the connections with suicide, psychosis, and the use of Accutane:
http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/
The risks are very high with that drug, especially if you've taken it when in the early to mid teens. The drug has been discussed in One's comment sections before. Those and SSRI's are perfect examples of the lies of the BigPharma industry.
Accutane can create long-lasting damage to the body. There are numerous forums online set up by people who have experienced long term severe side effects. It's also notorious for causing birth defects. If you got away with minor side effects, or none, you are lucky.
It is far more dangerous than advertised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotretinoin
Age 30: Feeling a little blue? Having trouble falling asleep? Don't like your job? Boyfriend getting on your nerves? Here's a little pill called Prozac that will fix everything.
Cartoon in a recent New Yorker: Pharmacy retail counter, one customer, pharmacist behind the counter giving a thumbs up sign. Caption: "Prozac? All right! We are kickin' it old school!"
Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry - in 100 words
David Healy
Little Pharma made profits by making novel compounds; Big Pharma does it by marketing. Doctors say they consume (prescribe) medication according to the evidence, so marketeers design and run trials to increase a drug’s use. They select the trials, data and authors that suit, publish in quality journals, facilitate incorporation in guidelines, then exhort doctors to practise evidence-based medicine. Because ‘they’re worth it’, doctors consume branded high-cost but less effective ‘evidence-based’ derivatives of older compounds making these drugs worth more than their weight in gold. Posted parcels meanwhile are tracked far more accurately than adverse treatment effects on patients.
Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry - in 100 words
David Healy
Little Pharma made profits by making novel compounds; Big Pharma does it by marketing. Doctors say they consume (prescribe) medication according to the evidence, so marketeers design and run trials to increase a drug’s use. They select the trials, data and authors that suit, publish in quality journals, facilitate incorporation in guidelines, then exhort doctors to practise evidence-based medicine. Because ‘they’re worth it’, doctors consume branded high-cost but less effective ‘evidence-based’ derivatives of older compounds making these drugs worth more than their weight in gold. Posted parcels meanwhile are tracked far more accurately than adverse treatment effects on patients.
SSRIs can and do help people.
What they cannot do is help people with stuff they were not designed for.
Example giving them for bi-polar depression.
I wonder to what extent this is a matter of people being expected to do things not everyone was designed for. 200 years ago, Aspergers probably just became skilled craftsmen. Sure he's got no personality, but he follows the Biblical commandments perfectly, and his chairs are the finest--clearly an upright person who is surely going to Heaven! Similarly, before you had to sell yourself to your boss every day in an office, who had social anxiety? You stayed on your farm, worked your butt off, your crops came in on time and you fed your family--who cared if you weren't the life of the party at the hoedown? It certainly wasn't the most important thing. There was even an article how antidepressants took a while to take off in Japan--a person simply had a sensitive constitution, that was all. Culture-bound illnesses are quite real. In a more honest society, we might even be able to explore their interaction with population differences in personality distribution. Apparently one of the alleles correlated with ADD is really rare in China...
Post a Comment