Pharmaceutical Drugs

What is it with the United States and pharmaceutical drugs?

Anyone who has to purchase pharmaceutical drugs knows how expensive they are. According to the 2002 Drug Industry Profits American citizens pay hundreds of billions of dollars every year on pharmaceutical drugs. While citizens loose more and more money as prescription drug prices increase, pharmaceutical companies get richer and richer.

Our government also gets rich off the drug industry. Since 1999, the drug industry has given more than 45 million dollars in political contributions, and it's spent hundreds of millions more on an army of more than 600 lobbyists to work its will on Capitol Hill.

I’m sure you’ve seen the drug commercials on television that show people living horrible lives until they take the magic pill and life is wonderful. Then at the end they quickly spout off the long list of negative side effects some includes internal bleeding and even death! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYwljWbg2Vs&feature=related

There are so many different natural remedies out there that have been used for centuries that don’t have the horrible side effects that synthetic drugs have, but the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t want you to believe natural remedies are credible, because then they’d loose out on your money.

Gender

No matter how far we have come, gender inequality is still alive and well. The pay gap between men and women has become smaller, but men still receive more money than women when working the same type of job with the same credentials, according to Gender Differences in Pay.

Linda Babcock, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of economics conducted a study resulting in the realization that men are twice as likely as women to negotiate a higher pay raise. This might explain why men still receive more money than women.

Why is it that women do not ask for more money? Perhaps it is because of how women have been, and continue to be, treated in society. Women are taught to be silent and demur, while men are to be outspoken and aggressive.

So we should teach our women to be more outspoken and to go after what they believe they deserve and the problem should be solved, right? Wrong. There are those in society who still believe women should be more “womanly,” meaning quiet and subdued. If women were to possess more of the typical “manly” traits of aggressions, potential employers might be turned off.

All of society, not just women, needs to realize how women have been oppressed and rethink what women and men’s rolls are. Women should be allowed to speak up and receive the pay they deserve, without being looked down upon or penalized for doing so.

Sex

I am working on a feature length documentary on the sex trade in Cambodia and the U.S. and I have amerced myself in the fight against sex trafficking for the last couple years of my life.

Something that I have found time and time again is that people in the United States can’t, and wont believe that sex trafficking happens here in the U.S.. They say, “Nah, it couldn’t happen here, we’d never let such a horrible thing happen.” So they turn a blind eye to the atrocity that are occurring right under their noses.

An estimated 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year and at least 300,000 American born children are trafficked within the Unites States annually. That’s a total of 317,500 people, a majority of them children, that we have found that are trafficked in the U.S. yearly. Most experts believe that number is way higher, it’s just hard to determine how many are really out there.

We have this wonderful thing called the Trafficking In Persons Report put together by the U.S. Department of State. The Trafficking In Persons Report explains the issue of Human Trafficking (the overall umbrella that sex trafficking falls under), what’s being done about it, victims stories, and more. One thing particularly helpful is that they break down each country and show how bad the issue of human trafficking is there. Only problem is they have neglected to even include the United States.

No wonder people wont believe sex trafficking is an issue in the United States, when the government wont even acknowledge it!

Kill, Kill, Kill!

I finally watched Bowling for Columbine the other day, and let me say, I was quite disturbed.  The topic wasn’t really anything new to me, it just brought up a lot of emotions.

The movie addressed the school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School where two teenage boys came to school with guns and shot a whole bunch of students. Many students were severely injured and some were even killed.

At one point in the movie it went through many different wars the United States was involved in and showed people that had died because of the United States’ involvement. This is the list that I copied down:

• 1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.

• 1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed.

• 1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vienamese President Diem.

• 1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.

• September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile, Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.

• 1977: U.S. backs military rulers in El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.

• 1980's: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.

• 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds "contras." 30,000 Nicaraguans die.

• 1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.

• 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.

• 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.

• 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.

• 1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.

• 1998: Clinton bombs "weapons factory" in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.

• 1991 to present (?): American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.

• 2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."

• Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.

How much money would we have saved from the deficit if we hadn't been so gung-ho about war and funding other groups to be better at killing more people?

We teach Americans that it's okay to go to other countries and massacre everyone, because they are "bad," but then we turn around and think we can punish people here for murdering someone. We don’t understand when teenagers come to a school and kill people. How does that make sense? How can't people see that it's the same thing?

I go between being saddened to enraged that people could be so heartless and cruel with no remorse, just killing and somehow justifying it!

No matter where we come from we are all human beginnings with lives, and families, and hopes, and dreams, and fears. How can we justify killing another person, no matter where they came from or what they did?

It hurts me to think that we are capable of such horrific things, then rationalizing the killing, that is unless it’s someone here in the U.S. killings another U.S. citizen. Why are our lives somehow more important than those in other countries?

Indigenous People

Native Americans are the only ones who can rightfully call themselves American. This was their land until the “white men” took everything from them. We took their homeland, their pride, their lives, and in return we gave them diseases, reservations, alcohol, and casinos.

Native American substance abuse levels are higher than those of any other group and
the death of Native Americans due to alcohol is three times higher than everyone else.

Their propensity to alcohol, that we introduced them to, along with their lack of pride, we stole from them, has lead to a great amount of physical and sexual abuse.

Native American women experience the highest levels of sexual and domestic abuse of any group in the United States.

According to Amnesty International, "Many experts in the movement believe that Native women are raped more often simply because there is very little done to stop it. Tribal courts and tribal law enforcement agencies have not been provided with the resources necessary to provide sufficient protection from sexual assault."

What are we doing to change this?

In a monologue a Native American woman tells her story of abuse, ending with, “They took our land. They took our ways. They took our men. We want them back.”

Dichotomy

As a whole Americans seem to be pro-war when it comes to fighting for freedom and that type of thing. After 9/11 when the Iraqi war began you would see people not only flying their American flags, but bumper stickers, t-shirts, and more with “Support the Troops” were everywhere.

The United States government has gotten us into a lot of wars with, and sometimes without, the support of the American people. With a government and a nation being pro-war and about the troops, why are veterans just disregarded?

Let’s get this straight, I’d be hard pressed to think of an instance that war and killing another human being was necessary or appropriate.

I am saying that regardless if you support war, the people fighting it are human beings that come back with great needs. If you do support the troops, then you should support them even after they have fought the war.

Why are there so many veterans (WWII, Vietnam, Iraq) out on the street, drug addicted, and/or with mental illnesses? If we were treating them with half the respect we gave them while they were fighting, perhaps this wouldn’t be the case.

I don’t support war, but I do support the people that have to fight them, even when the fighting has ceased.

Spoiled

I don’t know, maybe I see all that the American government lacks and all the negative things that come along with it, because I’m just spoiled.

Like a child that has grown up in privilege, being given almost anything they wanted, and lacking practically nothing, they focus their attention on what little they don’t have…A spoiled brat.

Perhaps I have lived with so much freedom and opportunity that I just take it for granted. Instead of looking at the wonderful things about being an American, and all the freedoms we have, that so many countries in the world only dream of having, I instead choose to look at what is still lacking.

I can’t even comprehend what citizens in other countries go through with a dictatorship and/or no real rights to speak of. There’s obviously a reason why people from other nations flock to America.

We might have a lot of issues we need to overcome, but when I really think about it, we are pretty blessed to have all that we do have.

I think both sides need to be able to look at the merits of each other’s arguments.
Some people are gung ho about America and believe that what America stands for and what it offers is amazing. That shouldn’t mean you don’t analyze our government and it’s ideals and point out ways in which change needs to occur.

On the other hand, those who disagree with American policy and corruption, need to take a second and see all the amazing things that America has to offer, and realize how fortunate we are to be living in a country that offers freedom and a chance for the people to make decisions.

When I say this, I am talking to myself as much as to anyone else. It’s easy to get stuck on the negative and notice what you don’t have, instead of stepping back and being grateful for what you do have.