The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism Read online

medi­cine tells is that once a person starts taking alcohol, the level at which the desired euphoria is attained rapidly increases necessitating an increased intake. No person becomes an addict the day he or she smokes the first cigarette or takes the first sip of bear, whisky, rum or wine. All the present addicts had small beginnings and the ones who introduced it to them had convinced them that these were injurious only if taken in huge amounts and regularly. It is very well known that alcoholism may lead to fatal diseases like cirrhosis and korsakoff"s psychosis and has a damaging impact on almost all the organs of the body. It disturbs the power of reasoning, thus leading to crimes, accidents and suicides. Alcohol, directly or indirectly, kills millions of people every year, destroys innumerable families and leads to countless rapes. It causes severe financial losses to the well-established individuals who often get ruined on account of their intemperate drinking habits. Divorces are common outcome, and the wives and children of habitual drinkers have to pass their lives in an environment of extreme fear, insecurity and tension. Children too often start drinking in their teens. The party culture coupled with women’s propinquity to try their hands at whatever men do as manifestations of ‘equality’ and the encouragement by men for their own rejoicing have made alcohol popular among women too.

  As has already been discussed, the campaign for freedom of sex is a direct product of economic fundamentalism. The medical science has been a mute spectator to sexual waywardness despite the incontrovertible fact that it causes no less mor­tality and morbidity than do smoking and drinking. In many ways, its effects are even more dangerous. Time and again, the epidemics or endemics caused by promiscuity or sexual perversions have hit the mankind. Many of them have proved to be devastating killers. Syphilis was the first sex-produced disease that killed people in large numbers. The homosexuals and the promiscuous heterosexuals were the common victims. Syphilis is a bacterial infection that leads to severe cardiovascular and neurological complications; before the discovery of penicillin, death was not an uncommon end. Up till 1940, it was a major disease in Europe and the US. The incidence in 1943 in the US was about 4 per 1000 population. Despite the availability of highly efficacious antibiotics and tremendous fall in the number of cases in 1975, there were still more than 25,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis, and 26,000 cases of early latent syphilis were reported. The number of unreported cases was presumed to be several times greater. The gynaecologists and obstetricians in Indian subcontinent still regard syphilis as one of the major causes of repeated miscarriag­es and get VDRL test routinely done in all the females with a past history of abortion. Chancroid, Gonorrhoea, Lymphogranuloma venereum, Herpes and Reiter’s disease are other sexually transmit­ted diseases having varying severity and often, producing crip­pling complications.

  When the discovery of Penicillin was announced, the sex-merchants had heaved a sigh of relief. A new thrust to the sex market was then observed in the West. Thus the historical achievements of the medical experts were usurped by the tycoons to push their own stratagems, in spite of the unambiguous warning that uninhibited sex had, always, an inherent tendency to produce new infections. And when the sex-bazaar had touched new heights, it received another concussion in the form of AIDS. AIDS had the potential to paralyse the industry for ever. But within a short course of time, lines of the campaign were drawn. It was decided to emphasise the use of condoms (“safe sex”), so that the sex-industry remained intact, at the same time, expanding the market of condoms. What the world has witnessed in the last decade is the emergence of a condom culture; it has not remained incarcerated in the Western countries, and pervades every society of the world.

  Economic fundamentalism in the medical world has percolated right down to the lowest level. The pharmaceuticals thrive on the spread of diseases and so do the doctors, the owners of the nursing homes and hospitals and the paramedical personnel. Prevention has therefore been able to grasp much less attention than cure; for prevention, especially the primary prevention (that can be defined as avoidance of such activities and attempts to prevent such environmental conditions to emerge and grow as may be conducive to the development of diseases) is perilous for their commercial interests. Secondary prevention (that can be defined as prevention of diseases through the use of certain materials, medicines, vaccines, or equipments), on the other hand, has received greater attention because it may be benefi­cial for the industries. While the mouth hygiene and body hy­giene have been emphasised upon as these propel the sales of thousands of varieties of tooth-brushes, toothpastes, lotions, soap, sanitary pads etc., a term like 'sexual hygiene' has found no mention anywhere; for, if sexual hygiene (that means having sex only with one's spouse, avoiding rectal and oral sex, and sex during menses and immediate postnatal period) is popularised, the sex-market would crash. Hence, only the secondary preventive methods that invariably indicate use of condoms were chosen to allay the fears of the promiscuous and pervert men and women. The odour emanating from the mouth of a person not properly brushing his teeth gives sleepless nights to the industries but the foul smell from the mouth of smokers and drinkers have never caused any alarm. The health of mouth and skin (that is to be kept healthy through creams, lotions and powders) has always kept them worried but not that of liver, heart, brain and lungs. The death and destruction on a much greater scale due to alcoholism have never bothered them. Similarly, the problems due to the steady increase in human population has been a matter of huge importance necessitating world-wide campaign; but the much greater and severer problems owing to the rapid increase in the population of vehicles have not even come to their notice. Such indeed has been the perfection with which the economic fundamentalists have been promoting their plans that their interests may be easily visualised in almost all the campaigns being pushed by the government or international agen­cies.

  Few will disagree with the fact that the medical profession too has become totally commercialised. It has ceased to be a profession the primary objective of which was to alleviate the suffering of the sick without expecting money, power or fame in return. It is now only a business, pure business, which aims to exploit the sufferance of men, women and children. But doctors cannot be blamed for the ugliness of this situation because they are a part of society that admires only the wealthy and the famous. Most of the students, quite often following the persuasion by their parents and elders, choose their profession not to serve mankind nor for any spiritual elevation but only in the hope of pocketing easy money and high status in society. And the hard fact that it has no more remained easy to earn money as a medical professional, without first expending sizeable sums for completing the medical courses and then investing millions for establishing clinics and nursing homes, has metamorphosed the professionals and servers into merchants. To make up for their investments, they have no option but to charge high fees from the patients and to extract money from them by advising admission in the nursing homes and expensive tests even when they are not required.

  The pharmaceuticals have played a major role in the commercial turnaround of the medical profession. They misappropriate information collected by the dedicated pharmacologists for their own interests. The newer medicines are periodically added to the market, and such are their marketing skills that the doctors immediately start prescribing them without understanding their pharmaceutical details, even in those cases where the old, time-tested medicines can better serve the purpose and without caring for the pocket of the patient. The newer medicines are invariably costlier increasing the turnover of the manufacturers. Such injudicious use of drugs has reached extremely high level because the pharmaceuticals thrive on this. They have enough marketing acumen to divert petty shares of their huge income to the medical practitioners in the form of gifts, samples, commissions and cocktail parties. The man inside a doctor is weak enough to be pleased with these presents and offers. To enthral the practitioners, the pharmaceutical companies use their best-trained salesmen and marketing executives; no wonder then tha
t lately the charm of the fair sex is being recruited to successfully represent the companies.

  At the highest level, the expertise of the professors and scientists are misused to assist the government and the industrialists in making policies that more often than not are complimentary to one another. Thus, when the liberalisation of sex posed problems by way of unwanted pregnancies, the medical experts came to the rescue of concupiscent men and women providing them a number of effective contraceptive methods including abortion. Similarly, when the growth of population was sought to be controlled, the newer and more advanced contraceptive techniques were put into practice. Surgery was not only commissioned for abortions but also for tubectomies and vasectomies. The economic fundamentalists had enough cogency to entice the saviours into believing that the abortion did in no way tantamount to killing; for the sake of women’s reproductive rights and for the sake of mankind, it had become unavoidable. No doctors advanced the argument