Is one egg the same as another egg? The people who sell us organic farm-raised eggs would certainly beg to differ. Is a cow the same as another cow? Michael Pollen disagrees. Now, why is it that we don't ask the question of whether one pill is the same as another?

 

Just how different is one aspirin produced by one company from another aspirin produced by another company? Perhaps they are identical, but in this world, it hardly seems possible. And yet everyday millions of Americans subconsciously assume that one pill is as good (or as bad) as another. That a walmart heart pill will do the same thing as a Canadian mail-order heart pill. It occurs to me, as a medical student, that we scrupulize neither the pills we take nor the pills we prescribe. One pill is just the same as another, our actions suggest. Yet how odd that we are willing to pay so much more for an organic blueberry versus an industrial one.

 

Perhaps the world is a refreshing place where we can indeed take certain facts for granted -- for example, that the drugs we prescribe/consume are 100% pure products formed of the chemical compound illustrated in the textbooks. On the other hand, could there be a whole tangled web of "better" and "worse" within the category of things we wishingly lumped together into "pharmaceutical"? 

 

Either we are being deceived by the Whole Foods of the world that tout quality, health, and sustainability differences or we have been very naive about a class of products that most Americans consume everyday without a pang of questioning. This is a topic I intend to explore piecemeal over the coming months. Obviously, there will have to be a discussion of the placebo effect.