Continued from part 1: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. begins to take on Big Pharma Part 1
Related to exercise, the Continuing Church of God (CCOG) put together the following video on our Bible News Prophecy YouTube channel:
Here is a link to our video: The Plain Truth About Exercise.
Related to drugs, back in 1976, the old Worldwide Church of God published the following:
Psychoactive Drugs
Technically speaking, a drug is any substance (other than food) that by its chemical nature affects the structure or function of a living organism.
Doctors usually refer to a drug in terms of its ability to treat physical and mental diseases. They stress the therapeutic value. But many laymen now focus on the negative connotations of the word. For them, “drug” has become a four-letter word of the worst kind, an epithet, an obscenity. When used in conversation it provokes strong emotional reactions. It’s a good word to start an argument with, or even a fight.
Medicine and Menace
You encounter a lot of this when discussing drugs. They can relieve pain, prevent infection and save lives. That’s good! But they can also destroy bodily tissue, impair healthy bodily metabolism, enslave by addiction and ultimately kill. That’s bad!
The drug problem would be greatly simplified if drugs were not ambivalent, if they were very selective in their effects. If only drug X eased pain, but was not addicting, if only drug Y helped people relax but didn’t adversely affect the brain or the liver.
But drugs don’t work that way. Rather, their effects are varied and often ambivalent — they have the potential to simultaneously hurt or harm, depending on a number of variables. Because any drug can play both the role of medicine or health menace, any description of its effects is bound to sound like a “that’s-good, that’s-bad” routine.
Morphine presents a good example of a “that’s-good, that’s — bad” story. It came into widespread use as a pain-killer during the American Civil War (1861-65). So effective was it as an analgesic for wounds and amputations that physicians sometimes referred to it as “G.O.M.” — “God’s own medicine.”
That’s good!
But in time morphine was found to be addicting — prolonged use followed by abstinence led to agonizing withdrawal symptoms. “God’s own medicine” turned out to be “the Devil’s own misery.” Hundreds, if not thousands (accurate statistics are hard to come by), of war veterans inadvertently became drug addicts.
That’s bad!
But that’s the nature of opiates. And it illustrates a fundamental principle of pharmacology: any drug can be dangerous depending on the dosage, the duration of use, its purity and many other factors. No drug is completely “safe.”
Recognizing this, the Federal government under the Controlled Substances Act regulates drugs according to their potential for abuse. The drugs are listed in five schedules in descending order of proven abuse potential and current medical usage.
Schedule I lists drugs deemed to have great abuse potential and no legitimate medical use. The score or so drugs on this list include heroin, LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and marijuana.
Schedule II lists drugs with great abuse potential that have legitimate medical uses. Drugs in this list can come under production quotas, and telephone and refillable prescriptions are prohibited. The psychoactive drugs listed here include the opiates such as morphine and synthetic opiates such as methadone and Demeral, certain barbiturates of the short-acting type, methaqualone and amphetamines. Altogether over 1300 drug preparations are listed!
Schedules III, IV and V list drugs with correspondingly less proven abuse potential. The widely used tranquilizers Librium and Valium are in Schedule IV — a classification the manufacturers have protested. Altogether over 3600 drug preparations are covered by these three schedules.
The list is not static. On the basis of new evidence and accumulated experience, drugs are often being added to the list. And drugs already listed are sometimes moved to higher schedules, indicating greater proven abuse potential.
The dual nature of drugs guarantees that the debate over their benefits versus hazards will continue for some time. (Graunke DP. The Dilemma of Drugs. Worldwide Church of God, 1976)
Since that came out in 1976, the opioid crisis has worsened.
Notice also the following:
The term “big pharma” is really making its rounds as more and more people become aware of the fact that the major corporations that manufacture the majority of our “medicine” are actually criminals. The latest example comes from a recent case where a federal jury found multiple top executives of Insys-Therapeutics, a well-known pharmaceutical company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller (opioids), guilty of racketeering charges and contributing to America’s current opioid epidemic.
According to the New York Times:
The verdict against Insys executives is a sign of the accelerating effort to hold pharmaceutical and drug distribution companies and their executives and owners accountable in ways commensurate with the devastation wrought by the prescription opioid crisis. More than 200,000 people have overdosed on such drugs in the past two decades. Federal authorities last month for the first time filed felony drug trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor, Rochester Drug Cooperative, and two former executives, accusing them of shipping tens of millions of oxycodone pills and fentanyl products to pharmacies that were distributing drugs illegally. …
The U.S. Department of Justice document reads:
Several pharmaceutical executives and managers, formerly employed by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., were arrested today on charges that they led a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication and defraud healthcare insurers.
Pretty wild, isn’t it?
This is great, but how deep does the deception go? How much power do these corporations and their executives hold? Below is a great quote from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that explains the issue quite well:
The pharmaceutical companies have been able to purchase congress. They’re the largest lobbying entity in Washington D.C.. They have more lobbyists in Washington D.C. than there are congressman and senators combined. They give twice to congress what the next largest lobbying entity is, which is oil and gas… Imagine the power they exercise over both republicans and democrats. They’ve captured them (our regulatory agencies) and turned them into sock puppets. They’ve compromised the press… and they destroy the publications that publish real science. (source)
We don’t really live in a democracy, we are living in a ‘corporatocracy.’ There are many products manufactured by pharmaceutical companies that are highly questionable in light of evidence like the example above. Take, for example, when pharmaceutical companies were not disclosing all information regarding the results of their drug trials. Researchers looked at documents from 70 different double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) and found that the full extent of serious harm in clinical study reports went undocumented. (source)
Another great example comes from documents showing that pharmaceutical companies are deliberately concealing information for the sole purpose of getting us to comply with an “official” vaccination schedule. https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/05/09/big-pharma-exec-pushing-opioids-found-guilty-of-racketeering/
Yes, many in the pharmaceutical industry are drug pushers. And yes, money influences a lot of “medical” decisions. The Bible warns:
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, (1 Timothy 6:10)
As far as opioids go, the reality is that many people have physical and spiritual pain and they reach out to drugs for relief. This tends to be addictive.
The Continuing Church of God (CCOG) recently put out the following video on our Bible News Prophecy YouTube channel:
13:19
Opioid Crisis
Since 1997, over 700,000 Americans have died related to opioids. What are opioids? What does the National Institute on Drug Abuse teach about them? Why do people use them? Are they effective? Can they be addictive when medically-prescribed? Does the UK have a problem with opioids? Did Great Britain force China to accept opioids in the 19th century? Has pharmaceutical greed been a factor in the opioid crisis? What is the dilemma of drugs? Is switching to non-opioid substances like marijuana the answer? Does the Bible provide insights related to mind altering substances? Dr. Thiel addresses these issues and more. A written article of related interest is available titled “Opioid Crisis Leaves 700,000 Americans Dead.”
Here is a link to the sermonette video: Opioid Crisis.
Notice something the Apostle Paul was inspired to write:
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
As God inspired Jeremiah to write:
11 In vain you will use many medicines; You shall not be cured. (Jeremiah 46:11)
Hopefully, problems associated with drugs pushed by Big Pharma will get more public attention and reduced use.
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