SA, a primary tool of what I call the Toxic System is to divide us against each other. You and Paul and me are all fundamentally united in wanting good health for people, but we are divided about the means.
– “You have blamed Node, Dave and others so why not Paul?”
Hmm, good question. What occurred to me first was that Paul and I have actually met in the real world, more than once. Very oddly, that should have made things worse because his behaviour towards me risked escalation of a legal action against Craig. I found the situation extremely stressful and frustrating since I was standing in to support Craig for a very close friend of Craig’s who couldn’t be there. The situation didn’t even end well; circumstances parted us with a heated row pending. But for some reason we have remained in contact and met again, without animosity. I think he and I are both confident of the other’s good intentions.
What occurred to me second is that I do disagree with you to a considerable extent. In your comment of May 16, 20:27, #53649 you wrote:
– “..big pharma not really out to profit by making effective medicines but by actually marketing crap products that not only don’t work but are positively harmful, and guess what? Through regulatory capture they do it because they have their men in the regulatory bodies through the revolving door”,
and these are literally the case. The effectiveness of capitalist “medicine” is merely bait. Capital doesn’t give a damn whether a medicine is safe or effective; it doesn’t make “medicine” to make people better, it does it for one reason only, which is to make profit.
Now I expect your hackles have risen and you feel that is too extreme, but before it was withdrawn vioxx probably killed about as many people as US servicemen killed in the invasion and occupation of Vietnam, and Merck knew there was a safety risk. They went ahead and marketed anyway. They didn’t market with disclosure; “try this, but monitor for heart attacks”; indeed they couldn’t have done that within the Toxic System, they’d never have got vioxx licensed if they’d have disclosed the risk, because the system is adversarial.
Capitalist medicine is effective only to the extent that bait needs to be convincing. We put a real maggot on the fishing hook, don’t we?
– “Anti Vaxcers are dangerous and cause death of children”
You already posted a link elsewhere that shows that neoliberalism, again, is the major culprit, placing so much pressure upon parents that their lack of time and attention account for the majority of children who go unvaccinated.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Division. Those medieval maps weren’t actually wrong, were they? We know now that the “monsters” were actually undocumented species of giant squid, cetaceans and algal blooms, but they really were there, and sometimes they posed dangers to medieval sailors. But their true nature was mostly hidden by the ocean itself.
I have more to write on this but it’s time, always time… Issues have become polarised, inexorably, over decades. You wrote:
– “I have my own experiences and know what it is all about”
and I’d like to ask you to write about this.
