Returning to the United States after having lived in Australia for 32 years, I am overwhelmed by the number of advertisements for prescription medicines that I see in newspapers and magazines, and on television.
It seems as if everybody in America is taking something. Every man and his dog.
I already knew Bao would need a rabies innoculation. (They don't have rabies in Australia. Or in Ireland. Bet you didn't know that, did you?) But is all this other stuff really necessary?
When I was a girl (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) you took your dog for shots when it was a puppy, and for a rabies shot every few years, and -- unless it got bit by a snake or run over by a car -- that was it.
Now there's heart worm, hepatitis, parainfluenxa, bordatella, giardia and the list just keeps growing.
Where have all these diseases come from?
I remember the Eisenhower years. The dogs were healthier back then, and so were the people. The only pills we took were vitamins. Asthma was unusual, and nobody had even heard of attention deficit disorder. Most people weren't overweight. Half of America wasn't depressed, and the other half didn't suffer from erectile dysfunction. And for some reason, we all stayed hydrated without having to carry plastic bottles of water everywhere we went.
I hate watching them inject all those chemicals into Bao.
They're protecting him, I know. But what else are they doing to him?
And what are we doing to ourselves?