Since the 1980s the use of anti-depressants has increased by 400% in the United States of America. The total sales of anti-depressants worldwide are over $20 billion. That’s making some pharmaceutical companies very rich and happy, but not many users of anti-depressants eternally happy-given the side effects of the drugs, which include outbursts of rage, deeper, more severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Yet, the global depressed population seems to increase exponentially yearly with children as young as 7 years of age being given some kind of mind altering drug to make them conform to the existential conditions of 21st century living. In a recent article on global mental health, The Guardian’s health editors (Boseley, Chalabi, & Rice-Oxley, 2013) provided an overview of the way we manage our chemical dependent lives in the 21st century. They report that:
“The use of antidepressants has surged across the rich world over the past decade, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, raising concerns among doctors that pills are being over-prescribed…Figures show that doctors in some countries are writing prescriptions for more than one in 10 adults, with Iceland, Australia, Canada and the other European Nordic countries leading the way” (Boseley, Chalabi, & Rice-Oxley, 2013)
In addition to the easy accessibility of these legal mind altering substances a number of States in the USA have legalized marijuana for medical purposes with two states-Colorado and Washington State legalizing the drug for recreational use by people over the age of 21. Here’s some of what we know about the body- mind altering capabilities of marijuana to date. The chemical ingredient of the drug THC remains in the body for weeks after any initial use. In addition regular medical studies of marijuana users indicate that one joint contains 60% more cancer causing substances than a tobacco cigarette. Long time marijuana smokers suffer from regular bronchial and upper respiratory tract illnesses. One study undertaken in Australia linked heavy marijuana usage with the development of brain abnormalities and other clinical studies link continued marijuana usage with the development of medium to long term psychosis and loss of memory. Marijuana is known to change the structure of male sperm leading to sterility as well discombobulate a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Given this knowledge why would any government or any other regularity body deem the drug suitable for recreational use? Is it too cynical to suggest a tax on marijuana sales will boost the coffers of a cash strapped government? Dulling a population’s senses through any mind altering substance is going to create a complacent and compliant citizenry living in no-where land content on going no-where.
References
Boseley, S., Chalabi, M., & Rice-Oxley, M. (2013, November 20). The Guardian-Life Style. Retrieved July 10, 2014, from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/20/antidepressant-use-rise-world-oecd
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Are we as mad as hell and are we going take this anymore?
While a UK regulator is investigating whether Facebook broke data protection laws when it conducted a psychological study on users without their consent, another more serious ethical issues resides in the behavior of the two Universities who collaborated with Facebook.
Cornell University and the University of California at San Francisco seemed to have by-passed their own ethics committees while participating in the study. Any undergraduate, Master’s or Ph.D candidate knows and understands the rigorous process undertaken to get permission to conduct research which involves human subjects and/or animals-especially in the social sciences and psychology and medicine/psychiatry disciplines.
Cornell University has a 17 page document outlining a set of ethical standards to be followed while conducting research, while The University of California at San Francisco has a human research protection program in place.
The disinhibtion effect is a lack of regard for social and ethical standards in personal behavior while online and it seems to have infected the ethical standards of the two learning institutions that collaborated with Facebook. In flaunting their own ethical guidelines while collaborating with the social media website, the universities have let down their respective student populations and may have undermined their own credibility as research based institutions. Unsurprisingly, the social media website seems to have missed the ethical issue all together by wondering what all the fuss is about given that people’s data wasn’t compromised! We all should be mad as hell!
The Serpent’s Egg
The disappearance and subsequent murder of 3 Israeli teenagers on 12 June sparked a huge search operation in Palestinian towns and cities across the West Bank and resulted in the deaths of several people, including two Palestinian teenagers one only 15 years old.
During the search more than 300 Palestinians were arrested in an operation the Israelis ironically called ‘Brother’s Keepers’. Aren’t all followers of the Abrahamic religions brothers & sisters?
It’s a terrible thing that happened to the three Jewish teenagers, but it is also equally a terrible thing that happened to the Palestinian teenagers. It is an equally terrible thing that Jews and Arab Muslims are stuck in their bitter intransigence some 6 decades and more since the founding of the Jewish state.
Israel must also accept responsibility for the deaths of the three Jewish teenagers for they are just as guilty as the Palestinian men who carried out this terrible cowardly act. Both sides are caught up in a bitter cycle of violent hatred of one another despite PM Netanyahu’s attempt to take the high moral ground while speaking at the funeral of the murdered teenagers.
The West’s covering of the story has been biased in favor of the Jewish state and the continued plight of the Palestinians is by and large ignored by the Western media. Ordinary Palestinian men, women and children continued to be stereotyped as terrorists when in fact they suffer under an Israeli occupation in addition to being collectively punished because of the madness of fanatical organizations like Hamas.
Yet equally fanatical are the hard line Israelis who are determined to displace and remove all Palestinians from occupied Palestine and reclaim the land as a modern day Judea for all Jews.
A little over 600 miles away as Iraq fragments and falls apart another fanatical hard-line Islamist group has established a Caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq, calling upon all Muslims to migrate there and establish their homeland. Is there no end to this madness? Sadly not-our fragile little blue planet lost in the universe, seems to slide nearer to the precipice of oblivion with each passing day.
The tit for tat killings and murders by both Palestinians and Israelis brings shame upon the goodness inherent in religions which have evolved since antiquity to help us to seek a better life- one characterized through meaning based on an ethical and moral vision to counter the hopelessness propagated through the distorted vision of a few mad mullahs, corrupt priests and rabid Rabbis who have usurped the goodness inherent in a religious world-view. The battle between Israel, Palestine and between the mad men of all religions is a quarrel
“That will bear no color for the things they are,
Fashion it thus: that what they are, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think them as a serpent’s egg,
Which, hatch’d, would as their kind grow mischievous,
And kill them in the shell” (adapted from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Act 2, scene 1, 28–34 )
The LB Chronicles 