Monday, May 19, 2008  Sex and drugs and pharmacies  Over at
Junkfood Science, Sandy Szwarc had an excellent post today on
the rather incredible prevalence of prescription drugs in
America today and the financial motives behind such large-scale
prescribing.  Full disclosure: I'm in favor of meds for those
who need them. Actually, I often wish SSRIs had been around when
I was a teenager. I often wonder who I might have become had I
not had to deal with the continuous panic attacks that started
around age 11. Living in constant terror shaped me, body and
soul. For better or worse.  Still. Some of the statistics Szwarc
quotes are staggering: More than half of all insured Americans
take some kind of prescription for a chronic condition. (Note
that it's 50 percent plus of insured Americans.) Nearly half of
all young women in this country now take ongoing meds. Likewise
one in three children.  As Szwarc points out, pharmacy benefit
managers stand to gain big bucks from the rise in chronic
prescriptions. But most doc