Value of an education
As a mature student I returned to school (Biological Sciences, PreMed). I noticed right off the mercenary tone to the intellectual activities.
The below document is my answer to 
I, __________________________, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it, or lawyers/ doctors interested in simply running up the bills. If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to ask for at least one of the following:
______ Glass of wine ______ Margarita ______ Martini ______ Cold Beer______ Chicken fried steak and cream gravy ______ Mexican food ______French fries ______ Pizza ______ Bowl of ice cream ______ a cup of coffee ______ Chocolate ______ Sex_______,
....it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
Signed, 
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- 15 points
Survey shows some (medical and pharmacy) students only get 1-2 hours education about drug promotion during professional training.
Education of medical and pharmacy students plays a crucial role in preparing future practitioners to respond appropriately to drug promotion. But a survey of medical and pharmacy schools, conducted by HAI and WHO in 2005, found that while most respondents included education on promotion in the required curriculum, a half a day or less was devoted to this important issue during the students’ professional training. In nearly one-third of cases, medical schools devoted only 1-2 hours often within a broader course on pharmacology, clinical pharmacology or therapeutics. 
Few students are taught how to respond to patient requests for advertised drugs despite direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and other promotional techniques targeting the public becoming more prevalent.
These are some of the key findings in the survey report Educational initiatives for medical and pharmacy students about drug promotion: an international cross-sectional survey by Barbara Mintzes. http://www.haiweb.org/26012006/MRhaipromosurveyFINAL06.pdf
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A Student Essay - Nutrition, Life Style v Drugs
What is the basis of the Natural Hygiene Opposition to Drugs? By Dana Clare (1996)
The basis of the Natural Hygiene opposition to drugs is the Hygiene understanding of disease.
Hygienic Understanding of Disease
• Hygiene views disease as a remedial, reparative, defensive and adaptive process which enables the body to repair damaged tissues, eliminate accumulated toxic waste via an acute disease process.
• In the case of chronic disease, the body is seeking to manage, the toxic accumulations which it has not been able to eliminate, within the body in a way that is the least harmful to the organism although degenerative changes in the tissues do occur over time.
• We need to understand that disease processes are body-initiated and conducted. The body resorts to these disease processes in order to restore normality to its internal environment. Once we understand this then we can see the fallacy of seeking to interfere with the body's intelligence in producing symptoms by using toxic substances such as drugs to counteract these symptoms.
Drugs have no normal relationship to the body
• They cannot be transformed into cellular constituents or be used in the body's performance of its functions.
• Drugs cannot be transformed into blood and tissue.
• They cannot invigorate the immune system or impart energy.
• They cannot remove causes of disease or restore health.
• Drugs cannot cure disease, as disease being the body's corrective mechanism is not a process that is amenable to cure.
• Drugs appear to cure because they have the effect of suppressing symptoms.
• There is no relationship between suppressing symptoms and healing because the body needs the symptoms to deal with the harmful influences.
• Healing is a process which the body accomplishes for itself when the causes of disease are removed, the conditions of health are supplied and when the remedial disease processes are left intelligently alone.
Drugs Add to the Causes of Disease
• When the body is prevented from eliminating toxic waste through disease symptoms, then the toxic waste is retained within the body where it remains to accumulate and provide the conditions for a more serious or chronic disease to develop.
• The taking of drugs to treat disease adds to the causes of disease within the body as the medications are themselves toxic and interfere with normal chemical and physiological processes.
• It is energy expensive for the body to have to metabolise and eliminate drug toxins. If the toxins cannot all be eliminated, then they are stored within body tissues, where they interfere with normal metabolism
Tolerance & Withdrawal
• Another problem with drug use is tolerance. The body adapts to the chemical substances in the drugs and then a higher dose is required to maintain the same effect.
• When the drug is withdrawn the person experiences withdrawal symptoms and the original disease symptoms which the drug suppressed tend to be exaggerated.
• With long term use drugs tend to have contradictory effects such that the very symptoms that the drug was supposed to alleviate are exacerbated.
Collective Self-Deception
• The therapeutic, physiological effects attributed to drugs are not produced by drugs, as drugs being lifeless substances have no power of intelligence to initiate physiological actions.
• The effects attributed to drugs are actually a manifestation of the body's effort to eliminate them, or to counteract their chemical impact. The use of drugs thus impairs the body's vitality.
• The whole drug-taking enterprise is based on a collective self-deception because people take drugs believing that drugs will make them better or cure them. There is a widespread belief that symptoms need to be managed or controlled with drugs. This goes counter to the body's healing intelligence
• Natural Hygienists do not seek to treat, cure or control disease symptoms.
• They endeavour to understand and remove the causes of disease and provide the body with the conditions of health so that health is improved rather than the disease process itself being conquered.
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Recently I tutored a high school freshman in Algebra. He said he only wanted to learn enough to get into medical school so that he could become an anesthesiologist. I asked how he decided on that specific goal. His answer was "Because I want to make a lot of money and have a good-looking wife, just like my dad."
I've also tutored college students who were pre-med, and when there was public debate about universal health care, socialized medicine, or anything that might take money out of doctors pockets, they usually considered changing majors.
Education isn't just about making money. It's about developing yourself as a human being. Studying math might get you a degree, but it also develops analytical and reasoning skills. Also, many kids take "blow off" electives like History or English Composition. These classes should be viewed as opportunities to expand your awareness of other people and society.
The educational system hypes a college degree as a money-making tool. In reality, it's a tool for life. Some of the best professionals I've known constantly build on the base they got in college. That's why it's important to choose a degree in something that interests you AND you think you need improvement in.
Most people don't use the degree they earned. Most engineers do little design work and focus on the business end of the company, for instance.