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I snapped this picture on the way to the grocery store the other day, and was struck by how perfectly the 'thousand words' it spoke matched up with my opinion on what people should do if ever they are tempted to visit a pharmacy for anything other than necessary items, such as a nail file or diapers, namely: STOP!
Why am I so repugnant to the concept of frequenting these dispensary institutions? The fact that they not only sell cigarettes, but feature them at the front counter, forcing those who may actually need a pill or two to hobble all the way to the back to fetch them, figures somewhere into my sentiment. The fact that they are proliferating like metastatic nodules in any area with a population sufficiently sick and/or over-medicated enough to support one (and sometimes two!) on each and every block, has something to do with the way I feel as well.
But are the pharmacies really to blame? They largely fill orders placed by...
The Modern Day Physician: A Glorified, Applied Pharmacologist
Ok, so we have billions of pounds of synthetic chemicals consumed every year as patented drugs, with an army of degreed, licensed and doctored foot soldiers prescribing them recklessly under the once great banner of "medicine," in an ongoing war against the body's virtually infinite capability to generate symptoms, most of which are – ironically – attempts to heal from acute or chronic exposure to synthetic chemicals.
This situation didn't happen overnight, mind you. Over 250 years ago, Voltaire penned these words, which still ring so true today:
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. — Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1760)
Really, the modern day physician has transmogrified into a technician of the body-as-machine (a 500 year old, dead "Cartesian" concept, mind you), and is practicing what can best be described as a glorified form of applied pharmacology.
While administering xenobiotic chemicals to people is a valid discipline, with life-saving potential in extreme cases where a poison is needed to whack an over-stimulated system back away from the edge of self-destruction (which is why mercury and lead were used as medicines in ancient times, as well), applied pharmacology is not medicine, which is to say a discipline concerned with the healing of the body, or better yet, facilitating bodily self-healing; nor is the doctor any longer an educator, rather, more a well-paid appendage of the global fine chemicals, biologics and pharmaceuticals industries, directing the secretion of their product in such a way as to maximize profit, limit liability, and suppress the patient symptoms without (hopefully) killing them in the process.
So, where does that leave us? The amorphous, unlicensed, non-expert, mass of lay-persons, who by virtue of bodily incarnation will at some point or another need to address and/or resolve a symptom of disease, but who do not have the wherewithal, or even a legal right to make treatment decisions for themselves, (e.g. medical marijuana) or their loved ones (e.g. mandatory vaccines & chemotherapy).
The Physician As The Priest of the Body
Most of us, either from the moment of birth (usually in a hospital, and not the ideal way: at home with a midwife), or from infanthood onward, are enculturated to perceive the medical doctor as the "priest of the body," solely capable and legally empowered to determine the course of life and death, both in times of health and mortal illness. Indeed, the original meaning of the word doctor comes from "Church father" (medieval French) or "religious teacher" (Latin), and still today, they elicit an unquestioning faith in their authority that defies reason, especially considering how many patients they kill from correctly prescribed medicine each year -- 106,000 a year, according to a 1998 meta-analysis published in JAMA.
The modern-day drug-based medical dictatorship and its overarching power structure has a cult-like hold on those who take its two most lauded sacraments: the pharmakeia (Greek word behind pharmaceutical meaning "pill, potion, charm, sorcery, sacrifice, poison"), and ritual vaccinations.