In Reply to: Re: For Gawds sake people lets get some perspective posted by AND on February 16, 2006 at 19:06:52:

I would certainly question a culture where we have become both 'body fascists' and obese, obsessed with access to prescribed medicine but huge consumers of alcohol and illegal drugs (cocaine is now the drug of choice at the dinner parties of middle class socialites), two-car two-job creche-consuming families and high users of various therapeutic drugs such as ritilin, prozac, a culture where the television is on all the time and fast-food sales outstip those for fresh fruit and vegetables, where litigation is on the increse but self-responsibility is unfashionable. to be completely honest, i don't think that science can tell us much about these issues which are all interconnected. Of course I am not advocating a return to some rustic idyll where herbal cures were all the rage. I am not saying lets get rid of drugs, or even pharmaceutical companies. What i am saying is that we need to analyse the society and the culture in which we live in all its aspects and ask why is it the way it is? what do certain trends tell us? In this kind of analysis the scientific trials you are speaking about - fetal oxygen deprivataion - are besides the point, or indeed miss the point. A simple question I would ask is why is there an explosion of new terminology to describe behaviours such as those which characterise ADHD, depression, dyslexia, ADD (and the list can go on and on)? Is this simply because science has suddenly been able to answer questions we have been asking for a long time (doubtful)? Or is it due to some changes that have been occuring socially? Recognising a need for an antibiotic to combat a virus attacking your system is completely different from a company pushing a drug to either inhibit or produce certain hormones or chemicals which may or may not have a link to certain kinds of behaviour.