The US prescribing ADD meds FEAKS me out - I have to say I was horrofied when I was in a US supermarket to see how much coulorants are are in food... eeek no wonder kids aren't healthy. I have issues about prescription medication to kids without significant problems being obvious... it appears tha much of the population are popping pills.... much less likely in the UK where medication is paid, in part by the state...
I never noticed any effect from ritalin myself, was only on it for a few years and literally saw zero difference, but it was a subjective perspective obviously too.
I agree though that people are getting far too heavily into a "throw medicine at it!" mentality. Antibiotics are especially guilty of this... gawd I'm so sick of commercials with the "Kills 99.9% of bacteria!" Yeah but we need a good chunk of that bacteria, and the 0.1% yeu DIDN'T kill is the stuff that's resistant to the antibiotic... so when it multiplies itself 1000X over in a few days, now yeu're back up to 100%, except now they're all the ones that were resistant to the antibiotic used. Do this repeatedly, over and over, and yeu're no longer playing with natural selection, but controlled selection. With the ridiculously short lifespans of bacteria and viruses, it doesn't take long to go through a few genetic generations quickly. If yeu continually apply pressure to ensure only a single type makes it out alive each time, yeu just guarantee it thrives >.>
And hence we're stuck with the so called 'superbugs', though admittedly most of those were developed in places or locations where someone just doesn't take the full dose of medicine prescribed. Yeu know that thing where the instructions say KEEP TAKING THIS EVEN IF YEU HAVE NO SYMPTOMS? Yeah, that part means if yeu don't kill it 100%, yeu're just letting them repopulate. The worst case of obvious superbug was caused because of giving inadequate prescriptions to inmates at a russian jail... give them half the prescription, but don't finish treatment because it's expencive, and great work, now everyone's boned due to it >.>;;
The thing people don't realize is we really don't have more than one 'real' antibacterial to work with right now. There's variations on a theme, but they are all based off the original penicilin since each subsequently discovered one is more dangerous than the bacteria it treats. Soooo we're stuck with variations on a theme.
In any case, the whole "throw drugs at it" mentality is also in large part due to several issues:
A: Patients demand them, even if they won't help. Doctors give a prescription anyway even if they know it's pointless (WTF antibiotics for a COLD!? It has zero effect! It's not caused by bacteria! )
B: Doctors getting paid for prescriptions given. Yeah this's a great idea. I think we're all aware of the generic joke about a car repairman drilling a hole in the oilpan while fixing the car so they have an excuse to charge more. Comming up with plausible, but untruthful diagnosiseses (just pretend I know how to spell that in plural) can mean adding lots of medications... often which can conflict and turn quite bad since some medicines don't react nicely. Go ahead, toss pure sodium into water, neither's dangerous on their own, but they have a nice little party when they get togeather >.<
C: Way too much emphasis being placed on 'cures'. People refuse to even think of the possibility that something may not be physically possible to cure by some wonder drug. We have never even come remotely close to curing the common cold, and yet we expect a pill to crush cancer or AIDS? Yeaaaah, let's just go on believing that... I mean there ARE cures, but they tend to, yeu know, kill the patient. People just don't seem to grasp the concept that not everything can be magically wished away by medicine, due to it being ridiculously complex in its' interactions. Science can learn effects of various things, and how they interplay with each other... however, some things literally don't work in such a way that it's easy or (possibly) even possible to counteract in a way that won't kill the patient or cause worse issues indirectly than the original problem itself.
D: An extension upon C; people in general seem to see science as "the new magic". "Magic cures" being a great description of that... sure we go well yeah it's based in scientific fact! Yeah but uhm... yeu're still expecting for it to magically cure stuff >.> Most every medicine, especially the newer ones for some really nasty ailments, can have excessive lists of side effects... because they work by screwing up the body's chemistry to make it inhospitable to whot it's supposed to combat, or it has to have a very specific set of things to occur to cause the desired reaction, but this can also mean that in order to cause that reaction, it may be forced to cause other reactions which're not desired. There literally just isn't a 'magical' counter to everything... yeu won't find a naturally occuring virus which eats AIDS as it's preferred diet, that has no interest in anything else. (though oddly enough there is actually a virus which does this to cancer... that's still undergoing research though). In any case, doctors can only make use of technology and chemical reactions to incite particular desired reactions... and it's not magic, it happens for a reason, which virtually never really has the reaction itself as the primary effect, quite often the beneficial effect is just a random side effect that occurs because of a set of other factors. But yeah, stop pretending science is magic, we don't get a "cure disease" spell at level 16 that works on everything.
But anyways, I think the largest annoyance, is how it's culturally insisted upon that things should work this way. The "find a cure to cancer!" advertisements on tv are just great... yeah, a magical cure with no side effects, that will cure every cancer type, no matter whot. Unfortunately, cancer is just a generic term to cover thousands of genetic problems when the DNA of a cell is damaged in multiple ways, including the self destruct instructions for when it's damaged. To actually cause cancer is very difficult, for any one case of cancer, there were a near infinite number of cell divisions with minor damage that properly terminated, or were corrected normally. But yeah, finding a 'cure' is a ridiculous fairy tale... we're not going to find something that specifically cures every single type of cancer with no side effects... we *HAVE* cures that will kill cancer, but they have some nasty side effects, and in some types of cancer, they are not survivable to the patient. The trick of finding something that will cause the reaction yeu want, without tooooo overly bad side effects is a shot in the dark often. Yet the term 'cure' it thrown around like it's magic, that yeu can apply it to all cases and it will magically make it go away with no ill effects.
This kind of wording and implication to the masses is just plain dangerous, by breeding ridiculous expectations which could never be truly met. We've seriously just got to stop the abusive use of the word 'cure'.
