In the fall of 2001, the editors of 12 prominent medical journals collectively announced that they would refuse to publish research on new prescription drugs unless the authors provided assurances that they had had unimpeded access to the data and were fully responsible for the paper’s conclusions. The announcement was an extraordinary admission of just how extensive industry control over medical… return to article
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Reader Comments (41)Page 1 of 1 pagesConspicuously missing from this article is the systematic dismatling of the authority of, and corruption of, THE FDA - THE BIGGEST WHOREHOUSE IN WASHINGTON D.C., by the biggest whores in the world - PHARMA.
JUST SAY NO TO PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS. What your doctor doesn’t know can really hurt you, cripple you or kill you.
BTW, does anyone know the real reason Bush opposes stem cell research? It’s because he’s also in the pocket of PHARMA. You see, stem cell therapy is aimed at CURING DISEASE. PHARMA is not in the business of curing disease, they are in the business of treating the chronic symptoms of disease while the underlying disease continues unabated. That’s the PHARMA business model. In fact, some PHARMA drugs actually worsen the underlying disease, the symptoms of which they are prescribed by uninformed doctors to treat.
Once stem cell research cures a disease, all of the PHARMA drugs currently selling for billions of dollars to treat the symptoms of that disease will become OBSOLETE.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 7, 2005 at 1:59 PM Lefty you really need to get a grip. Sure stem cell research will cure all our ills, just as nuclear power will be too cheap to be worth metering. :)
(And those bad companies that brought us antibiotics, viagra, treatments for AIDs, etc should all be confinscated by the government, who could really make things better!)
Ha ha ha ho ho ha ho ha!!!! Somebody stop me! Shooting fish in a barrel has such limited appeal. . .
Posted by wow on Jun 7, 2005 at 3:27 PM WOW is a typical conservative. When he can’t respond to an argument, he makes up an argument to respond to. Who said stem cell research was going to cure all of our ills or that drugs should be confiscated by the government? WOW is just another GOP Don Quixote fighting windmills. Go gettum WOW.
I think it’s fair to pidgeonhole WOW into the “Sub-110(IQ) monkey boy” brigade.
There are only 2 kinds of conservatives, WOW: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks. You would be an idiot. Unless your just a Tom Delay shill trolling liberal message boards. Then, you would be a crook. Good boy, WOW, here’s a Scooby snack.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 7, 2005 at 5:06 PM Lefty - it is foolish to stereotype large groups of people. Offensive too. While some leftists might be both intelligent and well informed, you certainly are neither.
Posted by Tom on Jun 7, 2005 at 6:09 PM Lefty,
Don’t give them ammunition. You are absolutely correct that one of the reasons Bush opposes stem cell research is that the pharmceutical industry is in the business of treating disease, not necessarily curing it. To cure it would cut off a buyer. I know that sounds cynical, but if you caught the drift of this article, it actually matches the MO of the drug companies.
No, WOW, it won’t cure everything. But to push us back to the Stone Age makes Bush look a lot more like a certain other religious fanatic from Saudi Arabia than a modern Christian American.
Is this some kind of game to you neocons? Let the country became a fascist, one-party dictatorship with no labor or wage laws under Uncle Tom Libertarians like Janice Rogers Brown and idiots like William Pryor, who thinks it’s your right to pour mercury in your water supply, so long as it’s on your property? You and your ilk are the nation and will be the destruction of it.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 7, 2005 at 6:40 PM Is it just me or do other people find that such blanket statements weaken our cause: “There are only 2 kinds of conservatives, WOW: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks.”?
Part of the liberal mindset is to have an open mind. Can anyone here actually read conservative writers and find that they are ALL (or even most) idiots or crooks? While i can usually see their arguments, i still typically disagree with them. But to reduce their lines of thought to evil or crookedness, well then, that is what we accuse the “other side” of doing. I personally believe we (and they!) should be above such. Otherwise lets just rename “politics” to “religion”.
Posted by Mary on Jun 7, 2005 at 8:05 PM Well, now we have Tom and WOW! The classic conservative good cop/bad cop of the message board. WOW is the offensive ass, and Tom is the hypocritical, offended ass. Tom, you didn’t object to WOW’s offensive tactics or conclusions, did you?
Tom, if you are offended by being called an idiot or a crook (or both) then stay in your house with your windows and doors shut and all of your media tuned into Douche Limbag. If you are going to troll a liberal message board, you’ll just have to get used to being offended.
And BTW, stop being such a conservative crybaby.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 7, 2005 at 10:01 PM Mary,
I understand exactly how you feel.
Ok, that’s B.S. I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you don’t understand that the real enemy of America is Bush and his ilk (the crooks) and their supporters (idiot voters), then be prepared to be . . . part of the pavement (as in, you’re either part of the steam roller, or part of . . .)
If you want to be kind, courteous, gracious and civil, and tactful, God bless you. I’ll bring some flowers to your funeral.
For me, candor has always proven to be the more effective approach.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 7, 2005 at 10:17 PM Ya know….I used to agree with Mary and her sort…Be reasonable, intelligent and surely they will hear you out and be swayed by your superior argument..but this supposes that conservatives think like we do…They don’t. They don’t care about reasonable,and they really don’t seem to give a crap about what anyone, especially liberals, think. Read Anne Coulter, Mary, and tell me she has any reason to any argument. We’re the enemy.(Think about this for a monment and it’s really quite bizarre-we’re all Americans but because we don’t parrot what they think, we’re the enemy-it has no logic)
I think they just troll these sites to yank our chains. I think it is a game with them.They have the country, and they don’t intend to share it and don’t have to compromise or consider the rule of law or how their policies affect real people. They are gonna do their way because they can. It’s the ole cut off your nose to spite your face thing.They don’t see what they’re doing as destruction. It’s just getting their way.Unfortunately, they will destroy us. In fact, after reading the article before this one about what they intend to do to PBS, I think a little offensive candor is in order.
Posted by Kayla on Jun 8, 2005 at 3:01 AM “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work of scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there’s no end to it. We know the air’s unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our teevees while some local newscaster tells us today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it is supposed to be. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything’s going crazy. So we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is, please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my teevee and my hair dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything, just leave me alone. Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I WANT YOU TO GET MAD.
I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street. All I know is first you’ve got TO GET MAD. You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being goddammit. My life has value.” So I want you to get up now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the window. Right now. I want you to yell, “I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANY MORE!”.
Get up from your chairs. Go to the window. Open it. Stick your head out and yell and keep yelling.
First you’ve got to get mad. When you’re mad enough we’ll figure out what to do about the depression.” —-Howard Beale NETWORK Paddy Chayefsky 1976
Posted by passingitalong on Jun 8, 2005 at 7:38 AM Dear Jennifer Washburn,
Thanks a lot for this well researched and written article. I hope that many, many people read it and realize just how bought out the “professions” in America are.
You think it’s just the politicians but discover that is not just the military-industrial complex “offering” us F-22s that are more nearly the problem than its solution but also the medical-industrial complex, with its prozac and youthful suicides and studies by “scientists” that sell the one and hide the other.
It goes illustrates folk wisdom : wealth and morality are inversely related.
Posted by John Francis Lee on Jun 8, 2005 at 10:07 AM John F. Lee said:
“It goes illustrates folk wisdom : wealth and morality are inversely related.”
I don’t think that’s true. At least, it doesn’t seem to me to be inescapable conclusion. On the other hand, I know some very wealthy people, who practice respected professions, and not one of them (the really rich ones) made their money honestly. They all had an angle, a cheat, a lie of some kind, that they found worked well for them.
Whether it’s was mortgage fraud, medicaid fraud, false advertising, systematic overbilling, falsifying/maunfacturing evidence, taking kickbacks (Bush’s modus operendi) etc., etc., it seems that, if you want to be REALLY RICH, and if you’re willing to be a crook, it’s there for the taking.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 8, 2005 at 11:03 AM If you think that’s rich, listen to this. In Bush’s new energy bill before Congress, several billion have been set aside for development of a new power network that is supposed to be awarded to a subsidiary of Halliburton. That division will be headed by a former chief executive of Enron, who was directly involved in the California power scam of 2 or 3 years ago.
This was on the Stephanie Miller show this morning, so if you want to look at the details (which I may not have quoted to perfection), go look on her site on Air America Radio.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 9, 2005 at 4:17 PM Drug Safety Panel Is Criticized
Efforts to Protect Consumers at Risk, Say Senator, FDA OfficialBy Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A05The new drug safety board established by the Food and Drug Administration to restore confidence in the nation’s drug supply will actually set back efforts to improve the safety of the medications Americans take and will not make it any easier to take dangerous drugs off the market, an FDA whistle-blower and a key senator said.
FDA safety officer David Graham said that after reviewing the makeup and structure of the Drug Safety Oversight Board, he concluded that the panel is “severely biased in favor of industry” and that “the FDA cannot be trusted to protect the public or reform itself.”
* * *
The FDA announced the 15-member board last fall in part to identify and review emerging drug safety issues that Graham and others said were not being treated seriously enough; it was formally established last month. It consists largely of FDA managers, with some input from officials of the National Institutes of Health and of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The attacks on the panel come as a steady flow of bad news about safety problems with popular drugs has given rise to competing initiatives designed to reassure the public. The congressionally chartered Institute of Medicine is holding a public meeting today to begin an FDA-requested study of its safety procedures, and Congress is considering bills that would more aggressively address drug safety.
. . . The current voluntary system for reporting serious drug reactions is believed to capture only 10 percent of actual cases. . . .
For Grassley and Graham, the big problem with the safety oversight board is who will sit on it. In his letter, Grassley said 11 of the 15 voting positions on the board are filled by senior managers of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the same office responsible for reviewing and approving new drugs. The safety board was established, in part, to make the safety review process more independent of the new drug review process—an acknowledgment of sorts that officials who approve a drug for sale may be reluctant to see it taken off the market because they tend to be more focused on the potential benefits new drugs can bring.
* * *
In his letter, however, Grassley asked: “Where are the people responsible for post-marketing surveillance who have allegiances only to post-marketing safety and the public’s well-being, and not to the drugs that they helped put on the market in the first place?”
He and Graham also criticized FDA’s decision to keep most of the board’s safety deliberations private, especially “at a time when the agency should be making every effort to improve transparency and accountability,” Grassley said.
Graham noted that before he testified in November, he turned down an invitation from Crawford to play a central role in reorganizing the drug safety program, fearing that it would constrain his ability to criticize the agency.
* * *
Grassley and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) have introduced a bill that would give drug safety oversight responsibility to a board that would have considerably more independence from FDA. Opponents of the proposal, including the trade association for the drug industry, say that they worry that an independent board will focus exclusively on a drug’s risks and disregard its potential benefits.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 9, 2005 at 9:43 PM Thanks for the above informative post, Lefty.
Hard to believe that Christopher Dodd, who worked overtime to pass the law that allowed Arthur Andersen to whitewash Enron, to disappear the pensions of so many of the employees of the companies that Enron trashed, might be working for his constituents good.
Dodd’s a second generation corrupt senator from CT, his father was censured by the Senate for putting “campaign contributions” in his pocket.
Although Dodd primarily carries water for Wall Street I’d bet he’s on the take from the Drug Companies as well, and that his alternative to the outrage proposed by the Republicrats looks good only in comparison.
Or perhaps he’s trying to shake down the Drug companies for more in “campaign contributions”.
Posted by John Francis Lee on Jun 10, 2005 at 7:46 AM I would suspect that Bill Frist (being the owner of the biggest HMO in the counrty) would be the biggest PHARMA pimp in D.C. Imagine the kickbacks HE gets from PHARMA.
And think about the impact stem cell research will have on medical providers and insurers (like Frist). Is that gigantic flapping sound the sweet sound of the medical-industrial mafia . . . er, I mean complex, flying south.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 11:42 AM Lucrative Drug, Danger Signals and the F.D.A.
NY Times
By GARDINER HARRIS and ERIC KOLIPublished: June 10, 2005
Dozens had died and more than 100 patients had suffered serious heart problems by March 1998 after taking Propulsid, a popular medicine for heartburn. Infants, given the drug to treat acid reflux, seemed particularly at risk. Federal officials told Propulsid’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, that the drug might have to be banned for children, or even withdrawn altogether. Instead, the government and the company negotiated new warnings for the drug’s label - though not nearly as tough as regulators had wanted.
What Propulsid’s Label Said
Propulsid had a good year anyway. Sales continued to surpass $1 billion. Johnson & Johnson continued to underwrite efforts that promoted Propulsid’s use in children. A survey that year found that about 20 percent of babies in neonatal intensive care units were being given the drug.Two years later, as reports of heart injuries and deaths mounted, Johnson & Johnson continued defending the safety of Propulsid, but then pulled it from the market before a government hearing threatened to draw attention to the drug’s long, largely hidden, record of trouble.
That record, pieced together from newly obtained corporate and government documents, provides an in-depth view of a pharmaceutical company trying to save a lucrative drug in the face of growing evidence of harmful side effects. It is a story that has particular resonance now, as troubled arthritis painkillers - Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra - have again focused attention on what critics say is the federal Food and Drug Administration’s inability to monitor and regulate pharmaceuticals effectively once they are on the market. . . .
See the rest of the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/business/10drug.html?pagewanted=1
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 7:45 PM Somebody wrote: “Somebody stop me!”
Just what the correlation between the price of nulcear power and stem cell research is, escapes me. I thought maybe it had something to do with Jimmy Carter, or perhaps the writer didn’t think stem cell research was worth shelling out peanuts for? Whatever. Never mind the real problems outlined in the article, it’s lots more fun taking pot shots at Lefty.
Bush claiming to be against stem cell research for moral reasons, is of course, absurd. But I still would doubt his real motivation here is preventing advancements in medical science that would cure disease just for the sake of Pharma although such a political stance undeniably maintains his approval by the religious right while supporting the illusion of a president having to make tough choices in the fight for America’s soul—ad nauseum. But suspiciously missing in this picture, too, are Democrats making any significant noise about Bush denying medical research for views held strongly only by a minority of Christians to the detriment of an entire world.
But still, Lefty’s assumption still holds water when viewing the big picture of conservatism -
that by it’s very definition, and executed with zeal by the Bush administration, seeks to maintain things as they are until the status quo can adjust to any new change and so maintain the balance of power.
Posted by Tim Christopher on Jun 10, 2005 at 8:50 PM I seem to be the risk-free venture with certain crackpots.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 10, 2005 at 11:02 PM Psychiatry and Human Rights
Article By Pierre Loiselle - Jun 10 2005 (19 reads)
On May 2nd, dissident mental health professionals joined forces with people who have been psychiatrized to protest human rights abuses in mental health treatments and what they call the collusion between the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric profession. Targeting the pharmaceutical industry’s lobby group PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer’s Association) in Washington D.C., they sounded the alarm on a Bush Administration plan to screen all United States citizens for mental illness.The screening initiative is the outcome of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, a year-long task force which concluded by making recommendations to improve the mental health of Americans, including mandatory nation-wide screening of individuals for mental illness. The screening is to be based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Program (TMAP), established in 1995 - coincidentally when Bush was the governor of Texas. TMAP is designed to standardize treatments for various diagnoses ranging from schizophrenia to depression and its use and influence has spread to over 9 states.
In states where TMAP has been implemented, critics say it has disastrous consequences for patients, while increasing profits for the pharmaceutical companies. David Oaks is the Director of Mindfreedom Support Coalition International, an umbrella group bringing together the voices of those harmed by the psychiatric model of mental health. He explains that TMAP “actually funnels people to the most expensive drugs first; then if those don’t work, maybe they’ll try the generics, and then next up is electroshock.” TMAP recommendations not only suggest using new drugs that are, by their nature, the most experimental, but it excludes methods of treatment such as therapy, exclusively prescribing bio-medical intervention.
“They are already going into schools,” said Oaks. “They are testing the kids and then pressuring (them) to be on the psych drugs but they’ve also called for this program to apply to every single adult, for instance through your general health care practitioner. In New York City already, physicians are being trained to ask certain mental health questions.” The May-June 2005 issue of Mother Jones reported that “in one month, Texas put 19,000 kids on atypical antipsychotics. Half were overmedicated: and as many lacked a diagnosis that validated the drugs’ use in the first place.”
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) have made their allegiances clear on this issue, boasting of their role in suppressing attention to TMAP and Bush’s screening of America. An article that appeared the APA’s membership newsletter stated that the “mainstream media have not touched the story, in part thanks to the APA’s work, for which the Bush administration is appreciative.”
Allen Jones is a whistleblower who lost his job as an Investigator in Pennsylvania at the Office of Inspector General. In a legal affidavit, he reported that “the pharmaceutical industry has methodically compromised our political system at all levels and has systematically infiltrated the mental health service delivery system of this nation.” He publicly exposed extensive pharmaceutical bribery used to bring TMAP into legislation and warned about how “the pervasive manipulation of clinical trials, the non-reporting of negative trials and the cover-up of debilitating and deadly side-effects render meaningful informed consent impossible by persons being treated with these drugs.”
Informed consent is also being disregarded in many cases. In many states, government agencies can force people to take medication. In some documented cases, children were removed from the custody of their biological parents and forcibly drugged for months in state-run mental institutions. The parents had refused to place their child on medication.
* * *
Posted by Lefty on Jun 11, 2005 at 6:37 PM “Oh Lord, hep me, hep me, I been psychiatrized!”
But seriously… (no joke)
http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=174In Florida last month, Governor Jeb Bush vetoed a sensible bipartisan bill underwritten by the Church of Scientology that was brought to public attention most notably by the appearances of Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston as representatives of the CS.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/20/State/Panel_waters_down_lim.shtmlBoth Bills underwritten by CS were vetoed and a final watered down version, eventually signed by Bush, retained state rights to drug (and “psychiatrize”) those children directly in their care - but the final language of the bill was rather vague: It sounds like schools can’t force students to take psycho-control drugs as a prerequisite to attend school but that they can still block them them from participating in certain areas and so effectively force them into the same destructive patterns originally outlined by the CS, and schools can still make referrals and effectly bully parents in some situations, though I could be wrong - government is getting pretty good at obfuscating what they’re actually doing.
Were it not for the fact that the Church of Scientology provided generous support to South Florida in the wake of last years hurricanes, I doubt Bush would have made any concessions at all to supporters of the original reform bill.
Posted by Tim Christopher on Jun 12, 2005 at 12:50 AM “By Hook Or By Crook”
Meaning: By any means possible
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/82400.html
Posted by Tim Christopher on Jun 12, 2005 at 3:17 AM eat yer veggies and do some push-ups, ya sedentary lugs. All the positive ions from yer PCs are making ya hysterical. Ug-ug-ug.
Popeye (as channeled by Rocco)
Posted by rocco on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:28 PM Rocco,
We have been, and we’re getting ready to totally wallop some fascist GOP butt here. The smoke from the gun just keeps ‘a comin’. Now people are waking up and our time is almost here. Get ready for the impeachment hearings!
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:53 PM Margaret,
I am glad to see that there are the hopeful among us, and that you seem to number among them. I must admit I do not, at least in the current paradigm (I am quite confident that complex organisms will adapt to and thrive in the ever changing climate).
As much as warmth as I feel for the majority of contributors to this site, and groups like MoveOn (and even ELF), all the variables seem to me to factor towards oblivion.
I see no imminent impeachment hearings taking place, though they are indeed warranted, nor do I forsee a significant change in the sociopolitical or socioeconomic realms.
I do forsee privately educated elites controlling more and more large populations of barely literate masses with crucifixes ‘round their necks and 25 bucks in the bank accounts. I forsee a court case filling the content vacuum on the news networks left by Michael Jackson’s acquittal. I forsee Jack Barnes and his buddies getting a reality show on The Nashville Network.
And I forsee new and innovative synthetic drugs that make this strange reality a hell of a lot longer for people who really aren’t adding to the evolutionary process (which, I think, is happening at a much faster rate in the southern hemisphere).
God has no ear - only teeth and a stomach.
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:03 PM Rocco,
In order to understand the mind of a conservative, you have to begin with a simple premise - conservatives value the interest of corporate profit above the interest of public health safety and welfare.
Further, recent history demonstrates that conservatives are incapable of any reasonable forethought. Until they personally are unable to breath, contract lukemia from their tainted water, are the victim of medical malpractice or suffer some other personal catastrophy, they will deny that a problem even exists, if the solution is inconsistent with the interest of corporate profit.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:22 PM Rocco said “And I forsee new and innovative synthetic drugs that make this strange reality a hell of a lot longer for people who really aren’t adding to the evolutionary process (which, I think, is happening at a much faster rate in the southern hemisphere).”
Did you mean below the Mason-Dixon line. LOL. Well, Ah resent that memawk, suh. Jus’ cuz’ ahm from the souwth, doesn’t mean ahm an aip, suh.
BTW, I foresee dangerous and deadly new synthetic drugs crippling, maiming and killing folks above and below the Mason-Dixon line indiscriminately for the foreseeable future - ie: as long as they are able to turn Congress and the FDA into their personal whorehouse.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:30 PM Lefty,
Actually, my take on conservatives - and liberals, for that matter - is a tad more zoological. Seeing that territory is the strongest instinct in all lifeforms, we cling to that which our cultural upbringing has taught us is our property, the symbol for our inner drive. For most Americans, this can be as tangible as land, like our ancestors, or as abstract as a string of digits on a bank’s website. As any caribou can tell you, property brings prosperity. Most want that string of digits to be long. How one goes about that only speaks of the organism’s externally learned behavior, and with what the organism identifies: for example, it may be unacceptable for Vikings to loot other Vikings, but not Celts, because the Viking identifies with the Viking clan.
How to reconcile all this with different ideologies, like the ones we see on this site? Lefty, I’m guessing you wouldn’t profess to add zeros to your account’s holdings by killing someone else. But does that make you more moral than a Peruvian native who kills others and eats them to gain power from their essence? They seem to be at peace with this. As Jack Barnes seems at peace if workers are subjugated for the good of a corporate system which does (I must admit) work, if inefficiently and short-term.
I’m guessing that we make our logic fit our beliefs and not the other way around. Beliefs make it a lot easier to function daily. And whether our beliefs are capitalist, communist, or Christian, we make excuses for the contradictions. But oddly, we haven’t seemed able as a species to shake those ancient power structures etched in our DNA, and I’ve known a lot of so-called anarcho-syndicalist leaders who use their status to screw hippie chicks.
The best solution I can come up with is to try to abandon belief structures with the intent of pure objectivity, while identifying oneself with a greater self that encompasses all life, matter, and consciousness. Self-interest works, if we all identify with the same self.
But that ain’t happenin’. On with the drama!
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:57 PM BTW - I meant I think that the people’s of the southern hemisphere will probably evolve more quickly (in geologic time), leaving us northerners behind. Blame all these damn medicines and disinfectants.
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 1:02 PM Someone wrote: “Popeye (as channeled by Rocco)”
Uh oh, it appears that a naughty someone isn’t taking their medication.
Posted by Tim Christopher on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:14 PM Rocco,
I think there is a simpler, more precise description of the human nature you refer to. Tribalism - the primative, vestigial, human survival instinct for loyalty to one’s own kind, and fear and hatred for “others.” This primative instinct is probably the most powerful of human traits and manifests itself virtually all aspects of human existance.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 10:36 PM Well, to respond to this is to enter into a debate a bit outside my expertise…having written thus, there are schools of thought that disagree on this: some hold territory as the strongest animal instinct (of which humans are a member), and some schools, mostly cultural anthropologist, believe that humans should be held in a higher class than our furrier brethren.
I am obviously of the former school. The “human instinct for loyalty to one’s own kind” does indeed exist, however, and is worthy of consideration. But I think of it less integral and more of a superficial layer atop older functions - that is, its level of complexity did not develop until later, and our knee-jerk instincts tend towards the more reptilian, whose instincts allowed the mammalian brain to come into existence in the first place.You make a good point, though, re: Us vs. Them, and it is all so interwoven and interdependent that one who attempts to quantify, separate and categorize all this flirts with the danger of being priggish (as I have done). Let’s just say that there are steps to further evolution, and one of the running themes seems to be a greater and greater identification of the individual with a larger whole. Anything less is not wrong, just probably doomed as an ‘evolutionary cul-de-sac’, as it were.
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:34 PM Tim Christopher,
I have had good medication in months. Know where I can score?
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:36 PM ...Meant ‘haven’t had’. I really need to proofread better.
Posted by rocco on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:37 PM Rocco,
I think territorialism is a subset of tribalism. Think about how many ways humans find to differentiate themselves from each other: nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, fraternal orgs. of all kinds, sports fanaatics (you’re either a Yankee or Red Sox fan, not both), your school, on and on and on.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 15, 2005 at 11:19 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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