Heart Health

Medicalization is a wonderful word. It means the process of taking a natural condition and convincing people that it’s a disease to be treated and cured by the medical profession. Once a condition is medicalized, the pharmaceutical industry can sell drugs, doctors and hospitals can charge fees. The cash registers just keep on ringing up the profits. Once this happens, there’s a kind of bandwagon effect. The condition suddenly becomes a lot more serious. It’s now a disorder or disease. For health insurance companies, it’s a pre-existing condition.

Now there’s a funny thing about health insurance companies. They are never shy about coming forward with new reasons for not paying out on their policies. One of their classic excuses is the “disclosure” rule. The law sounds quite reasonable. If you are sitting in your office and never get to meet the person applying for a health plan, you have to… Read More…

If there is one word guaranteed to strike dread into the heart of a teenager, it has to be acne. As children grow closer to puberty, there are anxious glances in the mirror. Has it come? Will it come? Will I be able to bear it when it comes? There are myths and legends, each new generation reinventing the same terrible warnings of doom as the biological clock ticks on. Everyone is at risk. Who will be first? For a condition that is not a disease, it inspires the level of fear associated with an epidemic likely to wipe intelligent life off the face of the planet. It is as if, somehow, a natural part of growing up has been redefined as a major life crisis. Worse, people can only survive this crisis by the application of science and the consumption of some fairly powerful drugs. Money, sometimes in considerable… Read More…