Information Overload

It’s wonderful! It’s marvelous! It’s really confusing….

There are the morning shows on the major networks, there are CNN, MSNBC and Fox, there’s Comedy Central news, there are paper newspapers (remember them?), and there are on line newspapers from ALL the major cities not just the ones in my neck of the woods, paper and on-line versions of monthly magazines and weekly magazines, and there are blogs, thousands of them. With all these resources, all this information, where does a weary reader begin each day?

So last week, in a response to my entry What Are They Thinking? a friend refers me to Paul Krugman’s series of editorials on Medicare issues which, of course, got me even more fired up about my mother’s situation and the elderly healthcare situation in general. Incensed and muttering to myself around mid-morning on Friday, I flipped on the TV as I prepared to go the gym. I happen on an author interview. Two men are sitting at a table discussing how the FDA being a bedfellow with the pharmaceutical, food and insurance industries, is stifling natural remedy manufacturers from adequately marketing and distributing their products. They talked in great detail about FDA restrictions on labels, the $840 million it costs to get a drug approved in the U.S., how hospitals would never administer a natural cure to a patient in place of a more expensive drug. Then they went on to discuss how FDA officials have left their posts to become leaders of pharmaceutical industry lobby groups (a point Krugman alluded to in his May 6 op-ed piece). I was totally absorbed, taking notes, waiting anxiously to hear the title of this book and then it happened. A flash across the screen….”This is a paid commercial. To get your copy of The Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About call 1-800-……”

Now I’m an information junkie, I admit it. But I am proud to say, I do draw the line (albeit sometimes a bit late, sometimes struggling against the temptation) at info-mercials. So far I have maintained the ability to weed out THAT particular source of information. I guess maybe I do know my limits….