It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
 | Iraq War is to Terrorism as Prilosec is to Hip Fractures |
People have been urged to take drugs like Prilosec, Prevacid, Nexium and Protonix to help out with the discomfort of heartburn. The trouble is that new research suggests that these drugs put people at a significantly higher risk of hip fractures. A broken hip is much more dangerous than heartburn, so this research is bad news for people who have promoted the anti-heartburn drugs.
This unfortunate situation makes a sadly apt analogy for the Iraq War. The Iraq War was suggested as a way for America to deal with the relatively irritation of Saddam Hussein, but ended up causing the more serious condition of an increased risk of terrorist attack - as Pentagon reports have recently acknowledged.
The Iraq War is the Prilosec of American security.
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Sad news indeed for those of us with reflux; I’ll be watching for the bone density and calcium supplement studies. If you ask me whether I’d rather puke my guts out today or worry about a possible fracture next year, it’s an easy choice. Prilosec is easily the gold standard of stomach remedies.
There is another way Prilosec may be like Iraq that was not mentioned. Prilosec was just fine as long as I had good health insurance to pay the $230/month cost of the prescription, and an adequate job to meet the $11/month copayment. Now that Prilosec is over the counter, a one-week supply costs $24. A bottle of calcium-based antiacid tablets from the dollar store costs $2 and lasts a month. So I’m still queasy part of the time and fart unpredictably. I just can’t afford anything better right now.
Whether or not our continued presence in Iraq is the silver bullet that prevents another 9/11, we may have to decide as a nation that the benefits we are deriving from our presence there are not worth the continued expenditure.
Comment by Iroquois Honky — 12/28/2006 @ 2:41 pm
I am 60 and have taken these drugs off and on, more on, for 30 years. When you double over in pain from ulser attacks and end up in the hospital near a point of needing a blood transfusion, give me the pills. I take Previcid, one a day, and have no reflux, heart burn or ulsers. The insurance company forced me off them once, 6 weeks later I was in the hospital for a week. Ever so often I have to remind them of that when they let their Bean Counters, I too am a Bean Counter, practice medicine.
Comment by 60/30 — 12/29/2006 @ 12:32 pm