Tuesday, December 6

Opiates are the religion of the masses.

Pharmacy


When I go on rare occasions to the pharmacy, I sometimes wish the privacy acts could be waived for a minute, so I could know just what is going on with the large size grocery bags of pharmaceuticals lining the floor behind the cash register, waiting for pick up by whom? Diabetics? Aids patients?

I suspect it is neither. Just a large set of very good customers for Pizer, Merck, and the rest of them.

Devout Muslims pray at least five times a day. Devout Americans apparently medicate at least that often. This is to keep living? So we can...find out who wins American Idol? Oh, and watch pharmaceutical commercials?

Our ability to keep people alive has far outweighed our ability as a society to pay for such, and we are not weighing quality of life or value of life issues carefully enough, in my opinion.

Consider this my living will. If I need more than, say, three pills a day to keep me going, forget it. No drastic surgeries, life support, kidney dialysis, etc. And if you ask me my name and I can't give it to you, let me go. Hell, I'm not sure I wanna go on living if I can't cast on twenty and make a stockinette swatch, get what I'm saying? Knitting is life, and the rest is just...well, not necessarily worth living.

Some people are so sick and so medicated that the only time they get out is to get groceries, which is convenient because they can pick up their drugs at the in-store pharmacy. The local Winn-Dixie supermarket (oh Qwerty and Jurassic that is the name of a local grocery store chain here, in Chapter 11 btw) would not be in business at all were it not for the pharmacy. The two streets that intersect at that Winn Dixie have a pharmacy on EACH of the four corners. Walgreens, cross the street, Rite Aid, cross the street, Winn-Dixie (with a pharmacy), cross the street, Publix (with a pharmacy). One article I found pointed out that WalMart alone employs over 6,500 pharmacists.

And then we have the whole thang about pharmacists who will not fill plan B birth control prescriptions or, the latest outrage, herpes medications, because it goes against their personal religious/moral intentions. One thing you can say in favor of Christian Scientists, folks, is they do not become pharmacists. They understand hypocrisy. Fundys who have a problem with anything the FDA says is legal should stay out of the business. Period.

There's some scary stuff going on out there, folks.

Edit: On further consideration, there isn't anything funny in this post, and that's not why you come to Blue Gal. So anyhoo, Poundy has a good idea: if your pharmacist won't let you have birth control, take your brats in there and...drop 'em off!!!

And here, courtesy of Chickenhead:

euthanasia

9 comments:

  1. Yeah, the pharmaceutical companies are making a killing off of living. Pills for things you didn't even know you had. Thanks for visiting my Blog, I like yours but haven't been able to come over for a while.

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  2. I take four different meds every day for my bipolar, but I suppose I'm a special case.

    Blue Gal...I have GOT to show you this link!

    *rubs hands together excitedly*

    http://www.hetracil.com/

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  3. yeah the hetracil site reminds me of this one:

    http://www.pfoxs.org/

    Comrade Kevin is also a mensan. Yi. Birthday, Mensan, crazy. I give up. You and DJL Sr. are just too much.

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  4. BG, I hope you NEVER need more than three pills a day to keep the sass rolling. I agree that pharmaceutical ads walk a line between harmful and sublimely surreal. Just today, I went for my annual GYN exam and burst out laughing when the doc pulled out the stirrups. Right there, cute as can be, were little black stirrup covers advertising a popular antibiotic that women take for UTI infections.

    That said, I am extremely grateful for the arsenal of drugs (yes, more than 3 per day) that keep me healthy and active in my geezer years, despite a genetic rosetta stone that should have (and probably would have) killed me off by the time I was 40.

    The issue is really one of pricing, profits and availability. And, yes, any pharmacist who has a moral impediment to dispensing prescribed medications is in the wrong business. They and their employers must be held legally responsible for conduct harmful to society.

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  5. Yeah, but AL, you KNIT. Nuff said. The value of your life is never up for questioning. I was talking about the other people. Geez.

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  6. Between Big Pharma and Big Insura, they f*** you coming and going. That's why our health costs are through the roof. And then they want you to think it's trial lawyers so they can take away any chance them being responsible for any of it.

    Faugh! A pox on all their houses.

    BTW, BG, love the title!

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  7. Yeah, thinking more about AL's comment, I don't think it's just a matter of "profits, pricing, and availability." The problem is not just with our stars (big pharma and big insura) but with ourselves, our endless hunger for a pill, or a large grocery bag of pills, that's gonna help us live forever. More availability just increases the mental addiction level, if that's even possible. There's a book out about this, called Generation Rx. I'll try to get it out of the library and report back. And somehow, we think that if this medicine is made more universally available, mankind will benefit to the point of a coming of heaven. Sounds pretty fundy to me. Like a religion, huh?

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  8. Can part of the reason for that be the massive advertising push by the pharmaceutical companies, with commercials depicting mountains, meadows, hand-holding lovers - not even mentioning the medication - the "Little Purple Pill™" - basically telling consumers to ask doctors for their product, whether they need it or not?

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  9. not to mention the massive marketing research to get just the right shade of purple for the pill. Pills to match your lifestyle...

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