Article: Big Pharma - Big Evil

Pharmaceutical companies are the most evil organisations on the planet. What Roche are doing with Xenical (fat absorbtion prevention drug) is abhorrent.

To Strike a Balance

I believe in a free and open market, but we must also balance and precede the liberties we afford ourselves with awareness and effective education. We’re now in a situation where the exploitation of people’s ignorance and weakness means that on one hand they’re gorging themselves on processed animal fat and on the other hand are being sold Xenical. Exploitation goes with exploitation.

Does this mean we should ban junk food advertising or stop Roche from marketing to teens? No. Definitely not (but it doesn’t make them ethical either). Censorship, over-regulation and molly-coddling serve only to keep the masses blinded and dependant on exterior forces to guide them. What we need is education, public awareness, lateral thinking. We need a society full of informed, intelligent, independent and mature humans.

Education before Censorship

Instead of censoring what people can watch, there should be fundamental changes to our education system, media laws and public services. Imagine if lateral thinking was a subject in primary school. Imagine if every paper, television station and radio station had to make room for antithesis views to their editorial from public submissions. Imagine if children weren’t allowed to ascend to the next grade until they ACTUALLY understood the curriculum. Imagine if instead of banning junk food or drugs, we educated people about a fantastic new diet craze: eat well and run around a bit.

The invisible hand of capitalism should not be allowed to push the weak and vulnerable around, but we should not handcuff it either. Freedom is the right direction, we just need to be more intelligent about how we educate people and how we govern our societies. As long as there’s wide-eyed idiots watching Today Tonight with hamburgers in one hand and Xenical in the other, our freedoms will not be well spent, but this is no good reason to take freedom away altogether.

It’s time for our societies to grow up, not time for them to be put back into nappies. - Jesse