BreakPoint
Savior in a Bottle
On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued guidelines, urging its members to “aggressively screen and medicate for high cholesterol in children.”
If the prospect of commercials featuring child actors hawking cholesterol-reducing drugs seems outlandish, it should not come as a surprise—not in a culture that looks to pills as saviors.
Citing “growing evidence that the first signs of heart disease show up in childhood,” the AAP recommended cholesterol screening in children as young as two. And it called for the use of cholesterol-reducing drugs, known as “statins,” for children as young as eight!
A member of the AAP’s guideline committee says “we are in an epidemic.” Since I have not heard about 8-year-olds keeling over from heart attacks, presumably the “epidemic” he is referring to is the fact that 30 percent of American children are overweight or obese.
Whatever the “epidemic” may be, the guidelines prompted an immediate and critical response from doctors. One pediatric cardiologist drily noted that there is no data that show statins will help kids prevent heart attacks later in life, nor is there any “on the possible side effects of taking statins for 40 or 50 years.”
Other doctors worried that the emphasis on medications would draw attention away from “common-sense changes in diet and exercise.” As one doctor told the New York Times, “To be frank, I’m embarrassed for the A.A.P. today.” He predicted that the recommendations would prompt a “backlash.”
Let me be among the first to lash back. While the guidelines do acknowledge the importance of diet and exercise, what most people will take away from the AAP recommendations is the fact that we now have another pill to fix our kids. Instead of telling Johnny to put down the Twinkie, or back away from the Xbox and go out and play, all mom or dad has to do is hand him a pill.
Political scientist Peter Augustine Lawler has written about the way we increasingly turn to biotechnology—including medication—to shield ourselves from the human condition and, I might add, from the consequences of our own actions.
For example, if a boy acts up in school or has trouble focusing, our first instinct is to medicate him. Is it any wonder, then, that instead of examining the cultural habits that contribute to the rise in childhood obesity, we propose to put our kids on statins?
Our growing dependence on pills reminds me of the use of soma, the mood-altering anesthetic in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which satisfied every human need and kept people quiet while the all-powerful government took over. Just look at the enormous popularity of antidepressants. While many people genuinely need these drugs, for many others they are a shield against ordinary sadness and unhappiness—the very things that make us examine and change our lives. As Lawler wrote, “common sense and studies show” that “bad moods” are “indispensable for our species real perpetuation and flourishing.”
Of course, as Lawler points out, all biotechnological efforts to “eradicate human misery” must fail.
Eventually, we have to come to face-to-face with our true condition—and the kind of Savior you do not find at a pharmacy.
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Charles Colson on Politics and the Christian Faith—call 1-877-322-5527 to learn more about this four-part DVD curriculum.
For Further Reading and Information
Tara Parker-Pope, “Cholesterol Screening Is Urged for Young,” New York Times, 7 July 2008.
Tara Parker-Pope, “8-Year-Olds on Statins? A New Plan Quickly Bites Back,” New York Times, 8 July 2008.
Tara Parker-Pope, “Cholesterol Drugs for Kids,” Well Blog, New York Times, 7 July 2008.
“Obesity in Children and Teens,” American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, May 2008.
“Panel Backs Cholesterol Drugs for Children,” NPR, 7 July 2008.
Libby Cluett, “Study Finds Growing Diabetes Epidemic among Children,” Mineral Wells Index, 9 July 2008.
Sylvia Booth Hubbard, “Alternative Treatments Reduce Cholesterol Better than Statins,” Newsmax.com, 9 July 2008.
Christopher Beiting, “Human Alienation and Our Biotech Future,” New Oxford Review, October 2007.
David Tuller, “Seeking a Fuller Picture of Statins,” New York Times, 20 July 2004.
Paige Comstock Cunningham, “Popping Pills: Redesigning Humans through Drugs,” BreakPoint WorldView, January/February 2005.
BreakPoint Commentary No. 050215, “Escape from Memory: Would the Cost Be Too Great?”
Gina Dalfonzo, “Re: No Country for Sad Men,” The Point, 12 February 2008.
Catherine Claire, “When Having Everything Just Isn’t Enough,” The Point, 27 March 2007.
On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued guidelines, urging its members to “aggressively screen and medicate for high cholesterol in children.”
If the prospect of commercials featuring child actors hawking cholesterol-reducing drugs seems outlandish, it should not come as a surprise—not in a culture that looks to pills as saviors.
Citing “growing evidence that the first signs of heart disease show up in childhood,” the AAP recommended cholesterol screening in children as young as two. And it called for the use of cholesterol-reducing drugs, known as “statins,” for children as young as eight!
A member of the AAP’s guideline committee says “we are in an epidemic.” Since I have not heard about 8-year-olds keeling over from heart attacks, presumably the “epidemic” he is referring to is the fact that 30 percent of American children are overweight or obese.
Whatever the “epidemic” may be, the guidelines prompted an immediate and critical response from doctors. One pediatric cardiologist drily noted that there is no data that show statins will help kids prevent heart attacks later in life, nor is there any “on the possible side effects of taking statins for 40 or 50 years.”
Other doctors worried that the emphasis on medications would draw attention away from “common-sense changes in diet and exercise.” As one doctor told the New York Times, “To be frank, I’m embarrassed for the A.A.P. today.” He predicted that the recommendations would prompt a “backlash.”
Let me be among the first to lash back. While the guidelines do acknowledge the importance of diet and exercise, what most people will take away from the AAP recommendations is the fact that we now have another pill to fix our kids. Instead of telling Johnny to put down the Twinkie, or back away from the Xbox and go out and play, all mom or dad has to do is hand him a pill.
Political scientist Peter Augustine Lawler has written about the way we increasingly turn to biotechnology—including medication—to shield ourselves from the human condition and, I might add, from the consequences of our own actions.
For example, if a boy acts up in school or has trouble focusing, our first instinct is to medicate him. Is it any wonder, then, that instead of examining the cultural habits that contribute to the rise in childhood obesity, we propose to put our kids on statins?
Our growing dependence on pills reminds me of the use of soma, the mood-altering anesthetic in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which satisfied every human need and kept people quiet while the all-powerful government took over. Just look at the enormous popularity of antidepressants. While many people genuinely need these drugs, for many others they are a shield against ordinary sadness and unhappiness—the very things that make us examine and change our lives. As Lawler wrote, “common sense and studies show” that “bad moods” are “indispensable for our species real perpetuation and flourishing.”
Of course, as Lawler points out, all biotechnological efforts to “eradicate human misery” must fail.
Eventually, we have to come to face-to-face with our true condition—and the kind of Savior you do not find at a pharmacy.
| Today's BreakPoint Offer |
| For Further Reading and Information |
07/10/08
