Podcasting since 2004; Conversations, conflicts, adventures and monologues from around the world.
I’m tending to some family business and quality time in Portugal.? Ill be right back with a fun podcast featuring my good friend Pauline who came to Amsterdam last week.? Sit tight til then; it’s a good time to catch up with my recent posts.. people always tell me they can’t keep up… now is a good time to do so.
No this is not a spam post.
While in the United States I usually watch a bit of television and I definitely spend time listening to the radio.? One thing you’ll have no problem encountering on both of these mediums: ads that include the phrase “ASk Your Doctor About…” and then some perscription drug to help some ailment.? Apparently the public should then go to their doctors and tell THEM what drugs they want.
In the European Union this practice has long been banned. No ads with senior citizens strolling on the beach recommending that you ask your doctor about some brilliant new drug.
However, this October the EU will roll out new pharmaceutical policies that are intended to, in their words, “Modernize” the rules for the pharma industry.? One of the provisions they’re putting forward will allow the pharma industry to provide “additional information” to the public via the media.? Which of course would make it possible for some sort of television ad within Europe that presents viewers with what the industry seems additional info, whatever that means in the end.
Various medical organizations throughout Europe as well as Ministries of Health, are sounding the alarms, concerned that this is one step towards the US style onsluaght of ads suggestion you need to ask your doctor about this and that drug in order to happily walk through the forest.? The industry, meanwhile, insists that they would have no interest in that type of information campaign, and would instead want this to free them up for internet based info that people can request, rather than have it pushed on them.? Meanwhile, advocates of the changes insist that there are many other useful policies included in the package, and that there would be some oversight as to what would be deemed suitable additional information.
This change sounds like the first of many on the road towards a US style system where pharmaceutical companies treat people more like customers than patients. Beyond that, makes medicine ever more like a business than a service. Is it too late to stop them? I will try to find out.
Vermont Soy is the topic today.
Mental Hospitals are always an issue of great concern and sometimes fascination (in terms of those that have been closed down under odd circumstances) for me.? In the past on this blog I’ve made reference to an abandoned hospital in my home state of new jersey, Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Opened in the late 1800’s and closed in 2000, it suffered from extreme overcrowding for many of its last decades, not to mention the number of escapees, patient abuse, and sexual assault cases that came to light in the 80’s.? I have a faint memory of some of that in the newspaper when I was a kid, probably some cases being settled after the fact.
This topic is fresh in my mind as I recently subscribed to my old public radio station in Newark- WBGO’s Journal podcast. One of the segments, which you can subscribe to seperately, is called Lost Jersey.? The host, in a very TV anchorperson type voice, visits mysterious or forgotten NJ places each week. Giving the history as well as the cause of the eventual demise of these sites. And sure enough, one of their visits was to Greystone, just as several of the old hospital buildings were being torn down.
One thing I’m reminded of, as I look through photos of the eerie boarded up hospital buildings, is that when I was a kid I believe my mom – as a college student in social work, had some type of internship that required her to visit Greystone on occasion.? But I don’t remember her descriptions of the place.
Next week I will join her in Portugal, so I’m thinking Greystone Park and Mental Patient Care in New Jersey might be a good topic for us to explore together. In the meantime, highly recmmended – Lost Jersey podcast.
Eating green bean soup (made my mom’s style) and discussing Barcamp Munich in October, VlogEurope Budapest in November, and the larger issue of California’s Agriculture ceasing to produce significantly in the coming decades. That according to several reports about the environmental impacts of the large scale farming going on in certain regions of CA, as well as the global food market which will leave the state an unviable place in terms of costs and profit.? But this is just the initial glance, more research and reporting to come…
More talk of soy and the soy industry.