Viagra is a fine example of prescription drug abuse, of the sort that will make a joke out of our efforts to institute a national health care. Ever since Bob Dole, then the leading Republican candidate for president, was enlisted to break the embarrassment and taboo against discussing these matters, we have not been able to consider the Republican party with complete seriousness. Americans now just assume that this sort of thing is central to the meaning of happiness, and, as usual, American medicine and psychology follow in the chorus to sing along. Just yesterday, there was a serious discussion in the halls of congress about the need for a female version of the same thing. The American drug companies are cashing in, and soon Obamacare will be taxed with supporting this most serious issue in American politics and medicine. News agencies will barely report that heart problems have been linked to Viagra. But if any funding could be found for a scientific study, we suspect that circulatory corruption would be only the beginning of the harmful side effects of this profitable drug. If the matter could be studied, it would be found that Viagra is linked to an increase in pedophilia. Common sense, upon reflection, might easily know that the last we want to do with the perverse American honoring of sex is to jack these drooling codgers up with artificially increased appetite. We need only suggest an hypothesis to be tested: that ninety percent of the time that pedophiles are arrested, legal or illegal Viagra or some other form of these enhancers will also be found. And do we really want the High School gymnastics teacher to be taking Viagra, and perhaps conducting practice in his four hour mode? The stupidity of Americans is just astonishing, layed bare on certain points of great contradiction like these. Do not worry, though, the gymnastics and swimming coaches have been drug tested, and do not smoke!
It is difficult not to fall into comic sarcasm without spelling out explanations that perhaps would not need to be given if America were not attempting to go the way of imperial Rome as the great city was entering its most corrupt phase. The comedian Dennis Miller once joked, “See Alice!” He also noted that if he were possessed of a four hour long erection, the last person he would call is his doctor. So it is clear after all that these companies are very concerned about the side effects, far more than advertising! But hey, just don’t smoke weed! It is against the law. It is the promotion of Viagra and the psychiatric drugs without a scientific basis and in disregard of the consequences that makes a joke out of American drug prohibition. The drug companies, paying off our politicians and probably organized crime as well, are laughing all the way to the bank, while American public opinion cows along, and the American people are again fleeced, the dupe of another very simple strategy to profit while corrupting our nation. But ask those Republicans the first indication of one suitable for high office, and they will assure you that it is that he is rich. This is called “success,” a demonstration that one has the ability to manage men, and the fulfillment of the American dream. Perhaps the swindler who devised the prescription drug system would be for them a suitable candidate. We are still, cautiously, supporting Ben Carson, though we have not heard that he agrees on this issue. Perhaps he cannot afford to agree.
The Hippocratic oath requires that medicine be used only to heal. Jean-Jocques Rousseau wrote that he would not take his Emile’ to the doctor unless he is dying, for in that case they can do no harm. The truth is that it is imprudent to take any prescription drugs unless very necessary for a clear and definite reason, because the side effects and the drug interactions cannot be controlled or even known. One would think that the medical doctors would be the first to say this, but it is in reality left to the philosophers, because the doctors are the art of practicing the art of money-making above medicine. In Plato’s Republic, the topic of medicine enters the dialogue as an example of an art that gives what is owed or what is fitting. When discussing old age, again in the first book of Plato’s Republic, Socrates relates how he was present when someone asked the aged Sophocles if he could still have intercourse with a woman. “Silence, man,” he said. “Most joyfully did I escape it, as though I had run away from a sort of frenzied and savage master.”
mmcdonald77 