“To the Point” discusses the pharmaceutical sales
To the Point, an NPR program from KCRW in CA, featured one of the authors of Selling Sickness which is a volume discussing the landscape of pharmaceutical sales in the U.S. Central to the thesis of this book is a critique of the drug industry’s intent to market many pharmaceutical products to North America.
Recent ads on television have introduced medication for restless legs syndrome which was one of the medical conditions questionably mentioned by the hosts of the To the Point which illustrates that a number of dubious conditions have emerged in the North American ethnomedical vernacular. Although this condition may have legitimate roots it stands to reason that the specificity and focus of the wide variety of pharmaceutical products available speaks to an aggressive effort on the part of drug companies to “create� consumers of niche drugs.
It may be that restless leg syndrome cannot be contested as a bona fide ailment. The question that should be asked is “where did this ailment come from?�…�Why does it occur?� Obviously there exists nascent health or medical issues that deserve attention and medication, but what are the social, political, and economic roots of such sickness?
Life within physically constructed environs.
I normally would not invoke a physical anthropological topic but I couldn’t help noticing a phenomenon this evening. Thinking of “public pathogens� in the contemporary human landscape I have to imagine that in ancient times the substrates harboring viral infectious (i.e., doorknobs, counters, other surfaces) were notably absent. The question at the fore is “to what extent do contemporary fixtures have on the spread and propagation of infectious diseases?�
Of course many know that increased population density equals increased infection occurance based on increased contact with other humans. Straightforward enough, but I still insist that living behind closed doors has much to do with increased suffering in the present human age. More on this condition in later conjecture.
SfAA Meetings 2006
“World on the Edge� is the theme for the Society for Applied Anthropology’s 65th meeting held in Vancouver, British Columbia. Unlike the AAA meetings I volunteered at, (mentioned in the previous post) I will actually present at the upcoming meeting.
My paper will be based on the research I conducted for my master’s thesis project. Although the core discussion of my thesis could directly plug into the meeting’s theme, I have retooled some of my data in order to participate Paul Durrenberger’s session titled “Class and Collective Action.�
The upcoming SfAA meeting will likely provide a better opportunity for networking than that of the AAA meetings based solely on the increasingly smaller size. It will be interesting to see the dynamics of a much more manageably-sized meeting.
