For the effect of drugs, it is, in addition to the dosage and the Setting. The expectation is just as important as the environment in which it takes the drug to himself. This also applies to books. You are on the search for entertaining information and resorts to the treatise of the American science journalist Thomas Hager, is you can be difficult to avoid getting on a “bad trip”. The selection of the substances, the one-sided Search and the content used to generate errors from the first few pages of Frustration.
But if you change the Setting, and the book as a document is viewed, you can see the average opinion of the American contemporary culture on medicinal products, the case is different. It now reads exactly the same pages, which have a tired previously, with growing pleasure. Even the mistakes, you can gain a instructive page, because to them the American progress narrative reading. Thus, the author believes that in the world “every year the average life expectancy by four months” would be extended, and “first line medication”.
“the Ten most important active substances in the world”
This colorful Vision is a in the United States, so widespread misconception, and one that he has already been the subject of scientific investigations. In fact, between 1900 and 1999, the thirty years of increased average life expectancy owes to America, and, above all, more education, and measures of environmental hygiene – for example, improving water and air quality, but also the food security. Only five years the increase in life expectancy be attributed to curative medicine, which in turn medications are only a small part of it. In addition, the increase in life expectancy is not a universal law of nature, as the author seems to believe. In particular, in the United States, it goes back for some years.
the selection of The “ten most important active substances in the world,” of which in the German subtitle of the book is especially interesting if you see them as an expression of the American hierarchy of medicines. Because three chapters deal with substances of strong painkillers such as Opium, morphine and Heroin, as well as the corresponding replacement. While the author lets on that the in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century led “war on Drugs” had hardly been successful, is not the overt connection between drug abuse, health system and social exclusion.
in addition to pain medications, he devoted himself to the anti-baby pill, Viagra, knock-out drops (chloral hydrate), as well as antibiotics and vaccines. Almost all of the discussed medicines have been discovered by European or American researchers. In contrast, Hager ignored the numerous substances, the knowledge of which we owe to the indigenous peoples of the Americas: as the Malaria drug quinine, and Curare-derived muscle relaxants, which have been used for decades in almost all the surgeries would be medically less important than the author discussed in some detail, statins, which are taken up by people in rich industrial Nations, sometimes prophylactically to reduce the risk of heart attack. Hager fails in his selection, for a minimum of four billion people, even today, the most important and often the only available medicines are herbal supplements.
in the progress narrative
Physical side effects of drugs knows the author, and warns them to fit, but ecological effects in the plant in vain. For example, the Indian vulture can be led to die on the farm animals, a widely used drug Diclofenac that the birds take up with the eviscerated corpses, and the is there for you even in the smallest amount is deadly. Also, the use of drugs in animal breeding, of rare earths such as Gadolinium on painkillers to antibiotics, which are found in the groundwater and to the emergence of multi-resistant germs, contribute, will not be discussed, since it fits in the progress narrative.
