Mental Health, Big Pharma, and Logical Fallacy
An article over at Feministe, “OK. folks, it’s time for a privilege check.”, on how its okay to take pills for problems that people have lived through even before there were pills around to treat them. Comment threads for posts like this tend to attract pseudo-science like moths to a flame. This was confirmed in a post on The Trouble With Spikol, which quoted the original article and some pieces from the comment thread. I’ll chime in from here after the fold.
One commenter had these gems to share with us:
Did it ever occur to you, that perhaps people who are anti-medication are that way for legitimate reasons?
Yes. But you’re not going to give me any.
Rather than attempt to hone your psychic prowess (or lack thereof) and tell them what they’re thinking, how about ask?
I’ll humor you.
Instead of assuming people who are anti-meds are these perfect, healthy people looking down on those that aren’t, figure that maybe these are people who understand the situation more intimately than you imagine?
Here’s where you feed us some nonsense about how the establishment must be wrong because you have strong personal convictions not based on logic or evidence that disagree with it, right?
I have what would be considered incredibly bad depression? Do I take Prozac? No. Fucking. Way.
That’s your choice and I respect it.
Oh, but wait, how can this be? Someone WITH said condition, refusing said treatment? That sort of goes against your entire rant, doesn’t it?
When they evince clear anxiety about how a certain drug meant to change their disposition might take over their personality?
One only has to look at a person on (mental) meds when they’re on them, and when they’re off them.
Wait… do you smell that? Anecdotal evidence, maybe?
It’s like two different people. I’d say that changes their personality. Not to mention the rampant sexual side-effects of that completely useless line of drugs.
Yeah, I said useless. Studies released recently, showed, amazingly enough (not really amazingly) that Prozac has no better of an effect than a placebo. Fancy that.
Actually, that was a single meta-analysis and not a study. And it showed that four anti-depressants had a statistically significant effect over the placebo, but this was not on the level used by the National Institute for Health, in all but the most extreme cases of depression. I’d recommend reading up on this particular analysis as well as what a meta-analysis is and what it means before brandying this about as evidence to support your screed. A good place to start might be the relevant Skepdic article.
I mean, is it that far-fetched to assume a drug company is telling people they’re depressed, and then telling them the only solution is this prescription?
Oh, and you’ll also need this prescription for something to restore your libido, (which, coincidentally, is also made by the same drug company that makes your anti-depressant! How convenient! Prozac, Cialis).
Drug companies want to make money, yes. But the drugs they make do not get past the FDA and reach the market without rigorously being shown safe and effective. This alone makes the “Big Pharma” conspiracy virtually untenable, as the only financially viable way for a drug manufacturer to turn a profit is to produce safe and effective medications.
Granted, once these medications are on the market the pharmaceutical manufacturers will do things which don’t always seem savory to the consumer to ensure that their drugs are prescribed. Does this mean that the drugs are sometimes prescribed when they should not be? Yes, it probably does. Does this cast any doubt on the effectiveness of their drugs for the types of patients for whom the drug was actually produced? No, it does not.
Moving on to more physical ailments, insomnia is a sign of a problem. For the most part, it’s a symptom, not the disease.
Taking a pill for that is a bandage. It’s not going to cure the original problem causing it. Curing your symptoms won’t cure your problem.
Um. What? Insomnia can be the symptom of a greater problem, or it can be the result of poor lifestyle choices. And, yes, taking a pill for it can be a bandage, an aide, to help someone make the necessary lifestyle changes and improve the health of their sleep-cycle. What’s wrong with that?
Plus, people who are anti-drugs are so, because as a society, the US, and most other major nations, are completely over-medicated. We have pills for fucking everything.
People act as though society would grind to a halt without our multitudinous medications.
Except, society went on for multiple millenia without these pills, and did pretty much alright.
We have an over-reliance on everything from over the counter aspirin, to anti-depressants, to everything else. I mean, you name it, they make a pill for it.
So because the human race once survived in a world devoid of aspirin, that means we should eschew safe and effective means for making our lives easier and better?
Rather than fix the actual problems, we’ve resorted to taking pills for our problems, and taking more pills to fix the new problems caused by the first pills.
I’m still waiting to hear your explanation on how to get rid of this headache from reading your nonsense without taking a pill and how it’s somehow magically better than any solution that comes in a bottle.
Another, these:
For myself, I have an extreme distaste for medications, yes. I think Big Pharama, as you said, is corrupt. I think they feed us a lot of stuff we don’t really need and act as though it’s vital. I think they do things purposefully to undermine alternative treatments to various diseases and ailments.
As I mentioned above, pharmaceutical manufacturers strive produce safe and effective medications. That they want them to then be prescribed so that they can make more money has no bearing on their being the safest and most effective treatments available to us.
… My perspective on this was formed early when I realized if I didn’t treat the symptoms of my yearly colds, but instead helped my body recover from them (vit C + echinecea and/or astralagus versus you know, Advil Cold) my infections were cut in MORE than HALF.
A classic case of correlation, not causation. How do you know those particular infections would not have gotten better without the unproven remedies? And even if you do reduce the duration of a cold what’s so bad about treating the symptoms while you have it?
This early experience fueled an interest in learning more about medicine and the toxic chemicals in products I’d been led to believe were vital to my survival (toothpaste, shampoo, antiperspirant…) What I found is that Western medicine is gravely flawed in this regard. It is obsessed with symptoms instead of treatment of causes.
This is typical holistic medicine trope and it’s still wrong.
Tags: Big Pharma, logical fallacies, mental health