Did you know that the discovery of Pfizer’s erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra was an accident? While testing a drug that expanded blood cells in the chest to relieve chest pain back in 1991, some patients reported getting erections as a side effect — enough of them that clinical researcher Ian Osterloh decided that this intriguing result merited more study, despite opposition from Pfizer’s staunchly conservative upper management, legislators, the medical establishment, and even the Catholic Church.
As David Kushner reports at Esquire, after getting approval from the FDA, the team wooed urologists to get the little blue pill into the hands of men the world over, making Pfizer a potent profit along the way.
In fact, it’s a miracle that it ever came to be at all. In addition to the people within Pfizer who were in an uproar over the “dick pill,” four major groups began rallying against…
View original post 380 more words
Cultural Genocide: Canada’s Indigenous “Boarding Schools” – commentary
Canada’s Darkest Secret
Al Jazeera (2017)
Film Review
This documentary concerns Canada’s infamous “boarding schools,” a program for indigenous Canadian children started in 1876 by Canada’s first prime minister John McDonald. Under this system, native children were forcibly removed (and in some cases kidnapped) from their families to attend religious boarding schools. The goal was to forcibly totally separate the children’s from their families’ native language and culture.
The government wanted access to mineral deposits on treaty lands. Rather than going to war with their indigenous population, they stole their children to extinguish them as communities and nations.
The last boarding school closed in 1996.
Most of the film consists of interviews with boarding school survivors. They talk of being forbidden to speak their native language, harsh beatings for minor infractions, a continuous diet of mushy oatmeal, lack of heating in winter and frequent sexual abuse. The death rate for…
View original post 62 more words
Share this:
Like this: