America’s Legal Drug Culture
Yesterday’s post highlighted the good, the bad, and the ugly of big pharma in America. We are all beneficiaries of the technological advantages and the convenient availability of modern drugs from our nation’s health care system. Yet, in many ways, we are victims of the same.
Simple deductive thinking on this subject would lead us to a conclusion that is unfortunately not reality. As I noted yesterday, the U.S. is the home to more major pharmaceutical companies than the rest of the world combined. There are more prescription drug options available to Americans than can be found anywhere else on the planet. We Americans spend more on legal drugs than people of any other country in the industrialized world. Therefore, if our country, by comparison, has more and better conventional drugs, and we are using them more, we should have less of a cancer problem than any other country. Yet, Americans live fewer healthy years and have a higher cancer mortality rate than most other major countries. So, the questions that no one wants to ask surface. What are we doing wrong in the long, protracted war against cancer? What is not working? What can we do better? What needs changing in our strategy?
Obviously, our lifestyle, diet, and environment have some influence on our overall health deficiencies, particularly cancer. But, as the most pharmaceutical dependent nation on earth, we should be the most healthy nation on earth with the fewest cancer patients and the lowest cancer mortality rate. The truth is that the narrow parameters of our pharmaceutical dominance is short changing us, especially in the cancer realm. Exclusive dependence on harsh, toxic chemicals are generally not effective. Conventional treatment is vastly more effective when accompanied by natural, less harmful, enhancing methods of therapy. This practice, known as integrative therapy, by integrative oncologists is the core of a new strategy that must be accepted by the mainstream medical community. A half century of business as usual by big pharma cannot be allowed to continue. Learn more about integrative oncology. Get involved and support the science that exists and needs to be applied.