Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 23 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
Life Arts    H2'ed 7/25/12

The Drugstore in Your Meat and Other Table Top Terrors--book review by Hugh Iglarsh

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   1 comment
Message Martha Rosenberg
Become a Fan
  (84 fans)

 

Review of Born with a Junk Food Deficiency  

by Hugh Iglarsh

 

Excerpted from New City

 

 

Martha Rosenberg's scrutiny of Big Pharma and agribusiness is so bleak and unrelenting, it sometimes seems to go beyond muckraking into something more closely resembling war correspondence. On one side of the battlefield are the pharmaceutical companies, depicted here as blockbuster-fixated marketing organizations that, having run thin of obvious diseases to treat, seek to convert the fixed circumstances of life--being young, being old, being male, being female--into medicable ailments. Their comrades-in-arms are Monsanto and other gene-tinkering research companies, whose overarching mission is to overwhelm and supplant nature with profit-driven science. Allied with both of them are revolving-door regulatory agencies and interest-conflicted professional associations, and much of the authority and knowledge structure of society, from the military to the university to the media.

Book now available
Book now available
(Image by Martha Rosenberg)
  Details   DMCA

 

On the other side is just" us, reduced to guinea pigs and passive inhabitants of an increasingly chemicalized reality. Only in America are prescription drugs treated as advertisable commodities, creating the widespread impression, after sufficient battering by pharmaceutical TV commercials, that every variety of human suffering and inadequacy is a preventable symptom of pill deficiency, and producing an irresistible pressure on even the most conscientious of physicians to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe.

 

Author Martha Rosenberg--an Evanston-based writer and cartoonist whose pithy if rough graphics dot the text--notes the predictable result of this unequal contest: Direct-to-consumer advertising means that the U.S. has the "sickest people in the world," at least in our own media-chondriacal imaginations, while the glut of highly advertised junk food saps our vitality and leaves us vulnerable to such preventable conditions as obesity and type-II diabetes. According to Rosenberg, the agribusiness and pharma industries are locked in unholy commercial embrace, the food suppliers creating the chronic illnesses, unknown to less-affluent societies, that Big Pharma expensively prolongs, while the pharmaceutical companies supply the livestock antibiotics and growth hormones that make possible the humanitarian and health horrors of factory farming.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Martha Rosenberg Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Grassley Investigates Lilly/WebMD link Reported by Washington Post

The Drug Store in Your Tap Water

It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Are You Sure You're Not Psychotic Asks Shameless Drug Company?

Another Poorly Regulated "Derivative"--the Antidepressant Pristiq

MRSA and More. Antibiotics Linked to Obesity and Allergies, Too

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend