Scientology versus the Drug Companies
In 1955 Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine. He decided not to patent his invention knowing that by not doing so, he would receive no profits from it. Polio has now been eradicated from most countries of the world.
If only we could all show the selflessness of Dr. Salk.
It is certainly not reflected in the actions of the people who run modern drug companies. They, like other large corporations, are interested in profits for their stockholders. Too often they have turned up on the short side of moral issues.
They are perceived as not having disclosed side effects of drugs, having aggressively marketed useless or near useless drugs, having promoted drugs to those who don't need them, having spent unconscionable amounts of money courting doctors for marketing, and cherry picking the studies which make their drugs look good while concealing the rest.
When this is factored in with the cost of medicines and the necessity for using them it is easy to see why they are trusted no more than oil and tobacco companies.
What I am saying is not at all radical but a reflection of news items from recent years.
There are radical drug company haters. Some of them believe that the drug companies have a cure for all cancers and are withholding it from us. The drug company motive is said to be that treating people is far more profitable than curing people. I ask these people, where are the wikileaks on the cancer cure? Where are the whistle blowers? Where are the intercepted phone calls, memos and emails? Why did Sheila Basrur, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer, die of cancer at age 51? Did she take one for the team? Why do the mothers of pharmaceutical executives die of cancer? I put these critics on par with those who say there is a pill that added to water will turn it into gasoline and those who say the Jews planned 9/11.
Still, I will further appeal to their sense of logic. After this cure for cancer is found, another disease will take cancers place as a primary instrument of human death. This has happened for tuberculosis, polio, diabetes, smallpox, the plague, typhus and diarrhea. Treatments are usually expensive in the final years of life. The drug companies will continue to turn a profit.
Moderating this problem are the American Surgeon-General, his counterparts in the various countries of the world, various government medical organizations, various organizations of doctor's, nurses and pharmacists, legislators who look for honesty in advertising, the press, concerned internet sites like quackwatch and James Randi and all thinking people. There is also a tiny organization called the Citizens Commission on Human Rights or the CCHR. The Church of Scientology established it in 1969. The title seems disingenuous in many ways.
Citizens—Almost all of the members are Scientologists
Commission—This is not "a special group delegated to consider some matter" as is a good definition of Commission. The matter has been considered. They exist to carry out the plans of Scientology founder L.Ron Hubbard.
Human Rights—They are primarily concerned with criticizing health fields while presenting Scientology therapies as the reasonable alternative.
Not surprisingly there is never a critical word from CCHR about the actions of Scientology. Nor is there ever a word about the Marcabs from outer space that according to Scientology are responsible for much of the misery on Planet Earth. If they brought the Marcabs into it even fewer people would pay attention to the CCHR.
The CCHR attacks on the drug companies are in the spirit of political attack ads. They point out real or imagined faults of the drug companies, hoping that the public will turn to Scientology's solutions after suspicion of the opponent is created. I believe that many of things the drug companies do are self-serving rather than in the service of humanity. But I also believe that Scientology does not work in the service of humanity and is a complicated scheme, calculated to gain power and money.
To take a closer look at just of few of Hubbard's medical claims—in Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, best-seller of the early 1950's which was presented to me as the first book of Scientology. Hubbard claimed that through his methods vision would be restored to optimum. Yet past president of the church Heber Jentszch wears glasses. Even Hubbard, himself, can be seen wearing glasses in photos taken later in his life. Hubbard claimed that asthma would be cured; yet chairman of the board David Miscavige is asthmatic. Hubbard claimed that allergies would be cured yet he died with Vistaril in his veins. His critics claimed it was used to reduce anxiety after his stroke; his followers said that he died on a farm where many allergens were in the air. Vistaril is also a treatment for allergies.
What pharmaceuticals have given us is longer life and cures for diseases that now seem so far in the past that few people in the Western world even remember them. Scientology has given humanity little. It has given its followers hope and with it occasional piece of mind, but again, it has given little that can't be found elsewhere, for less money and without a delusional view of the universe attached.
Scientology is most critical of drugs used in psychiatry. Scientology has told us that psychiatrists are responsible for the holocaust and for the events of 9-11 and that intergalactic psychiatrists paved the way for the Marcab invasion of 75 million years ago. They have a travelling exhibit called, Psychiatry, an Industry of Death. This, of course, ties in with their belief that mental health problems are cured with their own brand of spiritual counselling. To quote their current leader David Miscavige, they want to "replace psychiatry in all its forms".
The situation is bizarre. A psychiatrist might say the Scientologists are fixated on them. Scientologists don't seem to be dealing with available evidence but instead seem to believe everything they have been told by L.Ron Hubbard about the field of mental health. Initially, Hubbard gave credit to early psychiatrists in influencing his "research". Some speculate that after psychologists and psychiatrists rebuffed his "science of the mind," Dianetics, he turned on them.
For me, on the one hand there are drugs dispensed by knowledgeable supervised professionals though often driven by the profit motive. On the other hand there are untested, unproven, unsupervised therapies from a group that calls itself a religion when it is convenient and a science when it suits them. The people who take the medical drugs usually, but not always, need a great deal of support in their lives. The Scientology therapies are there, in Hubbard's own words, to make the able more able. Scientologists are unable and unwilling to treat the horrible, debilitating disorders.
Neither answer is ideal but the medical and/or pharmaceutical answer is far superior. Ultimately it means finding a doctor you trust while personally researching the disorder and its treatment. A person must be aware that many of the treatments provided by medical science and the pharmaceutical industry won't work well at all. But each day, more answers are available and some of the treatments and cures available today would look like magic to earlier generations. On the other side is a philosophy designed to gain power and riches for its founder, whose members are severely deluded and whose results don't even vaguely approach their claims.