E-drug: Medicilisation - A way of life
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Medicalisation - a way of life. Hepatitis B vaccine as example.
There seems to be increasing tendency of taking every opportunity
to medicalise even normal variations in life, as diseases that need
medical intervention. The "medicalisation of life", helps big
companies sell more drugs. It is generally women and children, who
become victims of this, as most often women are the "pathway"
for medicines within the family and make decisions with regarding
children health. At times these medicines are introduced in the
market by industry even when they do more harm than good. A
good example for such an abuse is the Hepatitis B vaccine, as there
are several facts unknown about Hepatitis B disease and even more
on the safety of Hepatitis B vaccination. Although there seems to
be some justification that Hepatitis B vaccine is needed for a small
proportion of population who are at risk, it has also been advocated
for mass scale use in children and adolescents.
Almost 95% of those infected with Hepatitis B virus will recover
with no symptoms at all, and with life-long immunity to the virus.
Fewer than 5% will live essentially symptom free but with on and
off infectiousness.Of the latter, only one fourth will face liver
complications later in life and about two tenths of 1% of all infected
will die soon after becoming infected (Ref 1).
At the same time the risks of adverse reactions of the Hepatitis B
vaccine are believed to be high. There are inferences that in order
to prevent six cases of hepatitis B illness, one person suffered
serious neurological effects (if these were truly vaccine reactions
and not coincidental) (Ref 2).
Hepatitis B vaccination is only one example of medicalisation, but
we believe that there are several others. We would like to invite
people to share such examples that they come across and also if
any about hepatitis B vaccine.
References
1) Bonnie S Dunbar, Department of Cell Biology, Baylor College of
Medicine, Texas, Hepatitis B vaccine.
http://www.ias.org.nz/dunbar.htm
2) The vaccine machine, civil defense perspectives, September
1998, vol 14,#6 1601. Physicians for Civil Defense, N Tucson
Blvd#9, Tucson AZ 85716. http://www.oism.org/cdp/sept98.html
BUKO Pharma-Kampagne
August Bebel Strasse 62
D-33602 Bielefeld
Germany
e-mail: bukopharma@compuserve.com
Webpage www.bukopharma.de
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