Russ Kamer

.@AKECassels, author of “Selling Sickness,” says his entire view of medicine changed 30 years ago because of one disease: osteoporosis. In the early 1990s, “a major pharmaceutical company in the US created a new drug to treat this condition—osteoporosis—which at that point wasn't very well understood. In fact, there wasn't really an agreed upon definition,” he says. Representatives from pharmaceutical companies and doctors convened at the WHO and decided which level of bone density ought to be considered "normal." “They set it at a certain level, in a way that…diagnosed something like 50% of the female population over 70 with having this condition…Basically overnight this portion of the population that has bone density below this now has this condition called osteoporosis.” They effectively “medicalized normal aging of the basically entire female population. Overnight,” he says. The company that marketed the drug donated bone density testing equipment to hospitals and clinics. Many millions of American women were prescribed a blockbuster drug against osteoporosis. And it turns out that that drug, when taken over several years, “actually makes people’s bones more brittle, more prone to breaking,” he says.

I think marijuana is the most insidious of drugs. It is legal in many states, is socially acceptable to many and is relatively easy for kids to hide, access and consume (vape, gummies etc). But the science is beginning to tell a very ugly story. We should have never legalized it. But now that it is, I hope we do something to mandate standard toxicity and concentration labeling at a minimum. This stuff is turning a plurality of our kids into zombies. scientificamerican.com/artic…