ok, this totally killed my jesse jackson buzz

[text]
so i'm rockin along today, reasonably not-unhappy--and then i come across this.

the goddam fucking american academy of pediatrics, that august body of pharmaceutical-company-subsidized whores--no longer content to merely ruin the developing brains of our youth with psychotropic and other mind-altering drugs such as ritalin, prozac and zoloft--is now going after the destruction of their bodies as well.

yeah, you read right: now they wanna hook eight-year-olds on cholesterol-lowering drugs--for life.

a choice quote:

Children between the ages of 2 and 10 with a family history of high cholesterol or with parents or grandparents who got heart disease at an early age should be screened, the academy said. Children who are overweight or have other heart disease risk factors, and those with an unknown family history, also should be tested.

yeah, absolutely--to be safe, let's pre-emptively get our kids on maintenance doses of prescription drugs--hell, from birth, if possible--whether there's anything presently wrong with 'em or not.

and the side-effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs? fuck side-effects--even if they include liver impairment, possible muscle degeneration, weakness, immune system suppression--the bottom line is: you give your kids a statin drug, you can then negligently feed 'em all the big macs and other crap they want (since the actual parenting involved in serving kids real, healthy food seems to be too much for the average adult to handle these days). yeah, they'll still be fat, miserable and unhealthy (don't worry--we're working on drugs for that, too), but at least their cholesterol numbers'll look good.

but to be fair, can we really blame the drug companies and doctors here for trying to open up new markets? because profitably fucking with peoples' health when they're young just so that when they're old they'll really need doctors and drugs--that's just good business practice, right?

jesus god, people--when will you wake up and see what's happening to our country?

see, i grew up in an america--and the sad thing is, it wasn't that long ago--where kids ran and played and breathed fresh air and ate food that came from their mothers' kitchens, there were maybe three fat kids in every school (if that many), and if drug prescriptions were rare for adults, they were virtually unheard-of for children.

there was no ritalin or prozac--and no columbines or virginia techs, either (ok, fine--there was whitman in the ut tower in '66, but at least his derangement came from an honest-to-god brain tumor and not some psychotropic medication to which no young, still-developing brain should ever be subjected).

and somehow we--and not only we, but countless humans before us from time immemorial--managed to make it through infancy, youth, middle age and beyond without ever once filling a goddam prescription.

and then--seemingly faster than i could blink--everything's changed.

today? thanks to, among other things, the fact that our idiotic, corrupt congress granted drug companies the power to slickly advertise their poisons on television to a gullible public (something that would have been unthinkable when i was a kid), we now routinely medicate ourselves with promiscuous abandon, as if it was a perfectly normal way to live--you know, "ask your doctor if [insert name of trendy, high-profit-margin poison here] is right for you."

and, this being a free country and all, i guess if today's adults are stupid enough to fall for the notion that they can somehow avoid the consequences of their sloppy, hedonistic, undisciplined lifestyles by taking toxic, liver-destroying prescription drugs foisted on them by unscrupulous drug companies in collusion with the doctors they subsidize, then to hell with 'em--they get what they deserve.

but the kids? are you really willing to sacrifice your children on the altar of big pharma, america?

is no one gonna stand up and righteously denounce these evil white-coated, stethoscoped, eminently respectable paid whores who are willing to sell our kids' long-term health down the river for the sake of present and future profits?

because if not, then all the socialists, robber-baron capitalists and one-world-government types who are individually and collectively out to destroy the sovereignty of america can sit back, have a cocktail and relax--it really is all over but the shouting.

[so there you have it--just one more rant from one of those goddamned homosexuals who's hell-bent on destroying the american way of life]