Reading "USA Today" = DIY Frontal Lobotomy

After reading my second copy of USA Today, my conclusion is: regularly reading this paper will have the same effect as a frontal lobotomy. If your mind is not screaming with protest and composing rebuttals on each page, I'm sorry, you're already a goner.

Today's issue has a full page article advertising a drug to prevent heart attacks. The big convincing argument they give is that in a huge clinical trial 2% of people who took the drug had a heart attack, whereas 3% of people who didn't take it had one.

OK, I'm convinced - not. The side effects that it "tends" to give that "usually" go away were listed in the ad.

Hello... Here's the rebuttal: Poor health is not caused by lack of drugs.

You might think this though, if you buy into the paradigm that also underlies a half page ad for flu vaccinations in the same issue.

I commented on this approach to health after my last visit to the US. It's demonic - just like Hiranyakasipu, you try to define all the attack vectors, and then plug each gap.

Get a vaccination for this one, take a drug for that one, get a double mastectomy to avoid the other one... folks, it's madness.

The underlying paradigm is this: "I should be free to do whatever I want with no consequences. I can live how I want, eat what I want, do what I want, and I can use technology to modify the natural outcome of this."

It's the same mentality that has lead us to global warming. "Let's just do whatever we want, and then use some more technology to fix it up later, if there are any problems."

Here are a few more brain dead excerpts:

How to avoid getting MRSA? Ask the doctor about possible risks of infection. Check the hospital's MRSA incidence statistics. Make sure the doctor washes his hands. (Nothing about fortifying your body's immune system or removing lifestyle elements that effectively destroy it)

How to deal with a sinus infection? Well, we're finding out that antibiotics don't help (but we've been prescribing them like they were candy for years anyway - congratulations Einstein!), so instead of that, now we recommend physicians "focus on effective remedies that improve symptom control" (there is the root cause of the malaise right there - address the symptoms, not the cause!).

I'm going to glance over tomorrow's edition - it doesn't take long - just to see if this really is the daily fare, and then I can leave it. I think I grok the message that they are preaching.

Don't worry, I'm going to go easy on the smack down after this post. I don't want to trigger anyone's national pride, and get some devotee riled up about how I'm "dissing the States when Srila Prabhupada loved it so much" or something like that. ;-)

It's the 80's rasa (the 80's so rocked). Think H.H. Hrdayananda Goswami on a college preaching engagement.