Sustainability Means More Than Cleantech
As we scour our civilization in an effort to identify and rid ourselves of all things unsustainable, perhaps we should look past cleantech for a moment and examine a wider circles of our lives – perhaps including our involvement with medicine. Rightfully, we’re all very grateful for the advancements in medical technology that are enabling us to live longer and healthier lives. But don’t we have an inkling that, just as we look back on the standards of medical practice 100 years ago with a mixture of pity and horror, the world even a few decades hence will regard what we’re doing here and now in the same way?
In particular, posterity will remember our generation for its fanaticism with the diagnosis of “disease” and the over-prescription of drugs for an enormous and ever-growing set of physical and mental conditions. This morning, 8 million school children in the U.S. alone received a dose of Ritalin, an extremely powerful psycho-active drug given to quiet the child’s mind – and thus his body, creating greater docility in an effort to address the effects of an ostensible disease, ADHD. Elsewhere today, tens of millions of adults will pop pills to deal with a wider range of other “diseases” — from restless leg syndrome to sexual dysfunction. For more on this, Google “pharmaceutical companies invent diseases” and check out some of the 1,120,000 sites that offer additional detail.