Erasing Bad Memories Pill—Recycling Bad Drugs for Worse Uses

by Heidi Stevenson

You have a bad memory. Would you trade it for the risk of chronic heart failure or sexual dysfunction? That's the truth behind the headlines of a new wonder drug that might be able to erase bad memories. This is what our drug manufacturers and medical system have come to: hiding the truth behind drugs while pushing them on an unsuspecting populace that has been conditioned to look in awe at doctors and scientists as demigods.

Propranolol...Let's just call it porn, for short...is a beta-blocker drug that has been used for a wide range of problems, including angina, essential tremor, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, migraine, and many others. It is one of those drugs, like steroids, that doctors often drag out when they really aren't sure what to do. Like steroids, there are a host of nasty effects, including:

• abnormal sexual function (common)
• drowsiness (common)
• fatigue (common)
• general weakness (common)
• insomnia (common)
• abdominal pain with cramps (less common)
• anxiety (less common) Gee! I wonder why.
• bronchospastic pulmonary disease
• chronic heart failure (less common)
• constipation (less common)
• depression (less common) Who wouldn't be?
• diarrhea (less common)
• dizziness (less common)
• nasal congestion (less common)
• nausea (less common)
• nervousness (less common)
• sensation of cold (less common)
• vomiting (less common)
• The following are defined as rare: agranulocytosis, allergic reactions, alopecia, anaphylaxis, arthralgia, back pain, bradycardia, cardiac arrest, chest pain, conduction disorder of the heart, dry eye, dysgeusia, dyspnea, erythema, erythema multiforme, exfoliative dermatitis, hallucinations, heart block, hypotension, Peyronie's disease, pharyngitis, pruritis of skin, psoriasiform eruption, severe dyspnea, skin ulcer, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, Thrombocytopenic disorder, toxic epidermal necrolysis.

Scary, isn't it? This is a list of the acknowledged effects of porn. If you knew of these risks—especially the acknowledged nonrare chronic heart failure—would you choose to take this drug to erase bad memories?

To get people to buy these poisons, the public needs to be excited by "new" drugs and "promising" research. It doesn't matter if there really are any good studies supporting what's being promoted. It doesn't even matter if the concept being suggested makes sense.

What are we, if not a conglomeration of our memories? Would you be you if you didn't remember the loss of your spouse or parent or even your child? Who would you be without those remembrances? How can we possibly learn to stop doing harmful things if we have no recollection of what's happened as a result? Isn't the most horrible of diseases, Alzheimer's, defined by loss of memory?

Is the image above of a man suffering a heart attack, or perhaps a man who has lost who he is? Either one of these potentials—the hidden harm or the intended result—is the reality of the research into using porn to eliminate bad memories. I'd suggest taking your pick, but you don't even get that if you are fool enough to partake in such a study. You get whatever happens, while the people who profess to be scientists sit back and watch and take notes and crunch data until they can produce something that makes it look saleable.

Then, once the public has been convinced that a drug is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's released. As often as not, the pharmaceutical company has created a huge stir by financing support groups for the particular ailment in question, creating pressure to give the impression that there's a huge demand, even if the particular illness was only recently invented, as has been the case with menopause and a host of so-called mental illnesses. There's huge fanfare.

People clamour for the drug, self-diagnosing and demanding that their doctors prescribe it. Of course, the doctors do. Why be concerned with whether they're pushing things that will harm? It's been approved, hasn't it? And why should they take responsibility for it? Or take the time to find out what ill effects they might see in those people later on? Besides, there's so much easy money to be made in people rushing to your door for something that takes so little time and effort to prescribe—just a moment with a pen on a pad of paper. Then on to the next customer.

What a system.

References: