Health

The Independent (UK) today reports on the story that SPGB previously reported upon in June of how the pharmaceutical industry preys on the poor to trial new drugs. Clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs are a sensitive business. But tests can be expensive. If they go wrong, companies are liable for compensation. No surprise, then, that in...
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Mental illness in America has become an established epidemic. So-called miracle drugs like Prozac are taken by 11% of the population – and Prozac is only one of the 30 available antidepressants on the market. Antidepressants are accompanied by anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic drugs. Xanax, America’s leading anti-anxiety medication, is so ubiquitous that Xanax generates...
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Poisoned for Pennies – The economics of toxics and precaution: principal author Frank Ackerman with Lisa Heinzerling, Rachel Massey, Wendy Johnecheck, and Elizabeth Stanton (2008)   The purpose of Ackerman’s book is to expose the weaknesses of the “cost-benefit method” of economic analysis, which has been promoted heavily since the Reagan administration, and increasingly...
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Each year half a million people in India and other tropical countries catch visceral leishmaniasis, also known as black fever (kala-azar). Infected by the bite of a sand fly, they rapidly weaken and lose weight before dying with painfully swollen livers and spleens. A safe and effective treatment for black fever was found long...
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  Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment (originally published in WSR #20) All chemicals ingested or applied externally have the potential to be introduced into sewage systems and from there to aquatic or terrestrial environments. When those chemicals are components of personal care products such as suntan lotions, makeup, and toiletries, or...
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The latest book by Aubrey De Grey, “Ending Aging” (St. Martin’s Press, 2007), raises the mind-bogglingly provocative possibility that science may within 20 years be able to extend human life long enough to develop successive improvements in life-extending therapies, thus potentially rendering humans capable of a youthful lifespan of 1,000 years. It all seems...
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Female circumcision, like male circumcision, is a practice that dates back to the remotest of times in history. Today, however, the former has come under fire by feminists and other concerned groups and individuals. Why male circumcision is not touched is not clear. Perhaps the whole issue is still part of the male chauvinistic...
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Nature can sometimes do worse things than capitalism. An earthquake kills 40,000 in a few minutes. A tsunami wipes out 200,000 in hours. And now the Department of Health contingency plan for bird flu in Britain is contemplating a ‘not impossible’ 750,000 deaths if the H5N1 virus goes pandemic. The government is buying up...
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Presidents Bush’s satisfaction numbers are dwindling across the US, with the war on terror, Iraq, the lack of preparedness for bad weather, and Karl Rove leading the way as the causes. To save his legacy as the man who freed Iraq and ended the world wide terrorist threat, Bush finds himself making decisions that...
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I find the Terry Shiavo case very interesting and confusing. I can see how both sides have a case. Terry’s husband, believing he is fulfilling his wife’s wishes of not being left a vegetable, has finally filed enough legal documents to get the feeding tube, the tube that also provides her with water, removed...
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