Does the medical profession really want society to be healthy?
Does this world, where business and money interests are supreme, want
society to be healthy and tranquil? The answer is a big NO. No one wants
to break her/his own rice bowl. The pharmaceutical industry, the most
powerful lobby in the world today—thrice as big and powerful as the oil
industry—will certainly not want people to be healthy. The medical
profession is trying its best to make more and more people come into
their net by ‘regular health check-ups’ of the healthy, run for the
heart, run for cancer and so on; it is also doing its best to create
iatrogenic illnesses. Hospitals, especially the corporate ones, seek
more surgical post-operative complications, as the latter nets more
money into their kitty than the original surgery itself.
Last year’s budget to treat non-fatal adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in
Europe alone was $80 billion! Please give me one good reason why anyone
should want to treat simple acne with azithromycin; but that is exactly
what is done and on a long-term basis. A recent issue of The Times of
India, in a front page news report, mentioned a study done in one Delhi
medical college hospital, which showed that all (did I say all?) germs
in the acne now have become resistant to azithromycin, a high-end
antibiotic reserved for respiratory infections like pneumonia!
Antibiotics are the time bombs waiting to explode anytime now.
