We all hate pharmaceutical corporations. We can all easily agree on that. Including the author of this gloss. But what do we really blame them for?
a) Driving the prices of their drugs to absurd levels. Preventing others from producing cheaper drugs. They plunder health budgets and prevent poor people and poor countries from accessing the medicines they need.
b) They force unnecessary drugs on people, thereby damaging their health, and then those people take more drugs, thereby damaging their health even more….
But can both statements be true at the same time? It depends on what lens you look at it through. If we use the logic of emotion, then it’s no problem. Both of those claims evoke negative emotions in us, both hostile to pharmaceutical corporations. If we use rational logic, then the two statements are incompatible. We cannot believe that a pharmaceutical corporation is producing poisoned drugs to destroy people’s health on purpose, and that the same pharmaceutical corporation is preventing poor people from accessing those drugs. By the way, it would also imply that the rich are sicker and die sooner, which is not true.
We keep coming back to the same thing. Opposition is no excuse for stupidity and laziness of thought.