Letters to the Editor
little m!
Published Letters: 21
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I don't get it either Glenn!
[Read the article: What is the rationale behind the prescription drug laws?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If people are competent enough to self-medicate with alcohol, they probably competent enough to self- medicate with almost every other substance I'm hyper-allergic to alcohol so I don't have the luxury of "unwinding" with a glass of wine (at least not without having my throat close and getting hives all over my body). Unless I'm in deep pain, the pain caused by rebound headaches from most OTC meds just give me a splitting headache. I'm so sensitive that even caffeine (another major drug that puts my heart into arrhythmia). In fact, the only drug that does give me any relief when I am in pain between 7-9 is illegal and reportedly not physically addictive . . . but as an adult, I'm not allowed to manage pain in that manner.
Whenever I travel to Mexico or France, I always return with OTC meds that I can only get with a script in the states. I use them very sparingly because of my general sensitivity to most substances, but I know my own body better than any doc I've ever been to in my life.
Are the incidence of drug abuse higher in Mexico and France for selling diet pills or OxyContin OTC? I actually don't know and don't have the time to research right now.
I do know that when I first traveled abroad it was one of the things that really took some wrapping my brain around. I had always just assumed that there was a good reason for it and that it was a universally accepted norm.
I do know that there are many studies (again don't have time to look them up and link right now) that indicate that doctors do a very poor job of managing chronic pain in patients. I once had a dislocated shoulder with severe bruising, etc. and my ER doc just refused to give me anything and recommended a couple Advil when I got home. This--when I couldn't use my arm for almost six weeks). I was so glad for my stock of purchased-abroad pain killers. I have a brother who is an ER doc and he says that docs under-prescribe out of fear of being busted for treating patient pain (because the Feds would know my pain level and appropriate dosage better than I would) and because they see pain so much, that they become numb to it . . . I wish I had become numb to it too.
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Way crazier than I'll ever be . . .
[Read the article: Who funds and runs the Politico?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. The presumption that there is no such thing as "objectivity," has to be one of the most noxious and successful lies ever to gain currency with some members of the body politic. This one huge lie greatly undermines and weakens our community everyday.
I fear this notion that everyone/everything is subjective is taking over our populace and is leading us to hell in a hand basket. This is a truly poisonous idea.
If there are no "facts"--given that one of the primary definitions of the word "objective" is "actual," and one of the primary definitions of "actual" means "existing in fact," then we get to pick and chose whose idea of relativity we want to listen to. Say that Reporter A reports that 2+2=27, because he just feels that way; Reporter B reports that 2+2=4, because she is a professional writer who knows about math principles and has researched the information; Reporter C reports that there is no such thing as "+," so two things added together don't equal anything and Reporters A and C both work for anti-math news outlet owners and Reporter B works for a news outlet that just reports the news. Of course, since there is no such thing as objective reality, we as a community just get to pick and chose which of the Reporters of A, B and C, we most agree with. We shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads at all that the news outlets that Reporter A and C work for exist largely to muddy the waters between fact and fiction.
According to some posters here, none of the three are to be trusted to give good information and it doesn't matter at all who owns their respective outlets--they are all equally to be distrusted. That's been the point of stressing over and over that the media has a bias . . . That was one of the conservatives principle strategic deliverables in the early 80s to convince everyone that there was no such thing as unbiased news reporting. Because the day they won that round would be the day that those of us proud members of the reality based community were left without one of our strongest weapons--objectivity--Truth with a capital "T" as someone here called it . . . So, those guys who used to look down their noses at the left for our supposed situational ethics--created a complete paradigm shift where there was no distinction between fact and opinion.
There are many news people who attempt to bring professionalism and lack of bias to their reporting. In fact, it is the hallmark of great news people that they can put their own viewpoints aside and report what actually is occurring (not is being said to be happening), but what is actually happening.
This professionalism is the level of accountability we should demand and expect from our news outlets.
Thanks Glenn for helping your community to do that!