JOSH'S CONDITIONS & TREATMENTS BLOG

All Hail The First Born!

First-born children are the most loved. (If love = time) In your faces second and third born! A new study out of Utah shows that parents tend to spend more time with their oldest children.

The second born, known as the already-been-there-and-done-that child and third born, known as the who-is-that-oh-yeah-I-forgot-about-that-one-child get about 22 fewer minutes with dad and a whopping 27 minutes fewer with mom. Smooth move moms!

Researchers believe that this extra parent-time explains why first-born children have higher IQs, are less likely to engage in risky behavior, have a higher level of achievement, don't get teenage pregnant as often and land in juvie less.

Then the researchers got all preachy. "Blah, Blah Blah," they said. "Don't watch as much TV. Instead read to your offspring and lovingly stroke your child's corn-silk hair. Use travel time to talk instead of listening to Howard Stern. This will make up for the inherent injustices of life."

"Blah," they added.

On the flip side, younger siblings usually have more money spent on them, because their parents are usually in a better economic situation by the time those younger, lesser siblings are born.

Basically, first-born children are like a fun project and the rest of the siblings are like a leaky pipe that money needs to be thrown at.

Anyways, a good way to get back at your parents is by putting them in a home. Talk to a geriatrician or a doctor who specializes in palliative and hospice medicine.

Find a local doctor near you.

Let Them Buy Pills

The supermarket is a model of a modern utopia. An aged crone often dotes over a plate of cut-up hot dogs. Each sausage has a toothpick plunged into its meaty depths. And every man, woman and child regardless of race, creed, color or taste in popular music can have a piece of those, the hottest of dogs without paying for them. Because, LO! They are samples, and yes, they are free.

The doctor's office is the opposite of the supermarket. Doctors, like supermarkets, also have free samples, but instead of samples of processed meats, they have free samples of medicine. Medicine which can save a life or make acne go away or teach an old man to love again.  But there is a terrible difference between supermarkets and doctors besides the obvious.

It seems that doctors have been favoring the wealthy with their gifts of free medicine and forcing poor people to buy medicine! With Money! At Stores!

These doctors, these plutocrats, they smoke thick wooden pipes.

"What flavor of tobacco is in that pipe, fair chirurgeon?" I asked, holding my pauper's hat in my calloused and dirty hands. My lungs ached. I worked in a coal mine as a shovel. 

The doctor gazed at me. His lie-filled maw opened. "I smoke only the finest orphan's bones," he said.

So, why would doctors encourage disparity between the socio-economic classes?  Haven't they pledged to do no harm?

Fear not, consumers! Doctors aren't to blame. Society, the easiest thing to blame, is to blame. The studiers of this study found that most poor, uninsured people can't even afford to see a doctor in a private practice let alone get some free samples from him/her.

Many believe that the pharmaceutical companies are giving doctors the free samples in order to market them to the well-to-do, and that is why free clinics and other medically underserved populations are going without.

The drug companies have to compete in order to survive and in order to compete they need to market. They can't market to people with no money, because that's not good business.

There is nothing we can do outside of radical social change, but even if society was radically changed, life would still be inherently unfair and probably cruel.

I love happy endings!

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