Saturday 22 March 2008

WOMEN TARGETED IN DRINK CAMPAIGN


The interest in the UK Telegraph article about alcohol that you can read here, is not so much the article itself which is just another piece of fear mongering from public health in the UK (soon to come to a neighborhood near you), but the comments that the readers left.

The UK citizens that commented, are collectively outraged at how much their government is now controlling their lives based on false statistics and outright lies. The general sentiment portrayed in the comments, is a cry that enough is enough and that the UK Telegraph should stop serving as a mouth piece for all this propaganda and do some investigative journalism instead.

As public health becomes more and more aggressive against lifestyle issues, people are opening their eyes to a reality we predicted only three years ago.

The driving force behind government encroachment into our lives, starts at the WHO (World Health Organization) and spreads like a cancer throughout all civilized societies starting with those countries where pharmaceutical giants have a bigger control and powerful front groups to do their bidding.

One commentator suggested that the killjoys take a pill and get over it already. May we remind this commentator that this is indeed where they’re leading us. A pill for every ailment real or invented!

From Scientists predict brave new world of brain pills here are some of the items on their menu:

On the menu: range of treatments

· Ritalin (methylphenidate) is used by a small number of students in an attempt to improve exam results and by business people to improve performance in the boardroom

· D-amphetamine also improves memory but only for people of a certain genetic make-up

· Rimonabant is used as an antidote to the intoxicant effects of cannabis and a treatment for heroin relapse. But it is sometimes also used to enhance the high produced by these drugs by reducing their side-effects

· Naltrexone is already used to treat chronic alcoholism and narcotic abuse. It works by blocking the pleasure receptors that are normally activated in the brain when people use the drugs

· Propranolol, a beta-blocker, is used to treat high blood pressure, angina, and abnormal heart rhythms. It is also used sometimes by snooker players to calm their nerves

· Modafinil, a stimulant developed to treat narcolepsy, has been used by soldiers to improve memory and judgment. It is also used in treatment of cocaine addiction

From University of Connecticut is fighting alcoholism with a pill

The potential market for alcoholism drugs is huge. Roughly 17.6 million Americans -- about 8 percent of the adult population -- suffer from alcohol dependence or abuse, according to the NIH. And alcohol-related illness costs the nation an estimated $86 billion a year in lost productivity, according to government data. By shifting treatment into the private realm of a doctor's office, these new drugs could appeal to people who would otherwise never seek help in a group setting such as AA.

"What it will do is make alcoholism a mainstream problem that family practitioners deal with," says Bankole Johnson, professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who oversees clinical trials on some of the new drugs.

In many ways, the move to treat alcoholism with drugs mirrors the shift in treating depression that came more than a decade ago, when new antidepressants like Prozac hit the market. The drugs helped doctors view depression as medical problem and treatment expanded to include pills as well as behavioral interventions.

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