Polar bears are back in Britain. But should they really be living here?

Patrick Barkham
Mon 28 October 2024 
THE GUARDIAN

Flocke and her daughter Tala, who were relocated to Jimmy’s Farm in Suffolk from Yorkshire Wildlife Park.Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian


A small boy calls out the sights as the train speeds through the Suffolk countryside from London Liverpool Street.

“Tractor. Church. Pigs. Polar bear! Dad! A polar bear!”

The dad doesn’t glance up. “We don’t have polar bears in this country.”

But the boy isn’t dreaming. There they are: four polar bears lumbering across a big green meadow beside a pond, a few miles outside Ipswich.

The arrival of the bears beside the railway line is causing plenty of double-takes from passengers. Sometimes, the bears are announced by the conductor. Occasionally, the driver appears to slow down. It’s only a matter of time before this train is renamed the Polar Express.

Polar bears belong in the frozen Arctic, above 70 degrees north. And yet these magnificent carnivores, one of the largest surviving land mammals on Earth, have been kept in captivity at much hotter latitudes since Egyptian times. King Henry III housed one in the Tower of London. In the 20th century, they became the charismatic inmates of concrete enclosures in flourishing urban zoos. Screaming crowds loved them.

Sailors visit the polar bear enclosure at London zoo in 1930. Below: a bear at Dudley Zoo in Worcestershire, 1937 (left), and Brumas, the first baby polar bear to be successfully reared in the UK, at London Zoo in 1950. Photographs: Fox/Getty Images; Mirrorpix/Getty Images

By the 1990s though, polar bears had become the focus of campaigns to end the caging of big, intelligent, far-roaming animals. British zoos seemed to accept the argument that these carnivores, whose wild home range could be as vast as 135,000 square miles, could not flourish in a zoo enclosure less than a millionth of that size. By the turn of the century, just one polar bear remained in Britain.

Now, however, the polar bears are back. In the last year, Jimmy’s Farm, the farm and wildlife park run by farmer, conservationist and TV presenter Jimmy Doherty, has taken in four. A further 12 bears live in three other British parks. Are these captive animals the best hope for a climate-challenged species whose wild population has dwindled to 26,000? Or should they not be here at all?

Ewa at Jimmy’s Farm, unperturbed by a passing Ipswich-London train. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

The fact that a 49-year-old pig farmer owns four polar bears could be the most bizarre farm diversification ever. “Owner of polar bears. It makes me sound like I’m a Nordic god,” muses Doherty, resplendent in double denim. How about the British Tiger King? “Jimmy Exotic. That would be something. I haven’t got the outfits he’s got,” says Doherty of the eccentric Joe Exotic from the Netflix series. “And I won’t be ringing up Trump to get me out of jail.”

The story of how Doherty built the largest polar bear enclosure in Europe stretches back to his childhood, when he was school friends with Jamie Oliver. The young Doherty was mad-keen on nature, worked at a wildlife park and spent his earnings (he still remembers his wage: £1.12 an hour) on his own menagerie: polecats, terrapins, stick insects. “In my bedroom were loads of snakes. I kept my pocket money in a glass jar inside a snake tank so no one would nick it.”

Later, Doherty studied zoology before dropping out of an entomology PhD to rear pigs. He’d been inspired by John Seymour’s self-sufficiency books, and with his entrepreneurial instincts he realised he could sell rare-breed pork and bacon directly to new farmers’ markets. He rented 40.4 hectares (100 acres) of derelict ground and lived in a caravan; he was assisted by the Jimmy’s Farm documentary series and a £55,000 loan from Oliver. When he opened a farm shop he saw that visitors were fascinated by the animals. “So I put a sow and a litter out, and then a trail, and it became a farm park,” he says.

‘It’s a massive commitment – like getting married again.’ Jimmy Doherty stands just outside the five acres of woodland at the polar bears’ disposal. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Then the phone calls began. The RSPCA asked him to take emus found in a shed in Ipswich. A snapping turtle was discovered by a local garage. “She’s called Peaches,” he says. “More and more exotic stuff.” When Doherty opened a butterfly house, his farm became a registered zoo.

Doherty sees nothing odd about the pigs and polar bears combo – it’s all part of his mission to champion global and local conservation, farming and rewilding, and reconnect children with nature and local food production, as he explains when we walk through his park.

There’s a rescued South American ring-tailed coati and racoons saved from a shed in Felixstowe. You may say Doherty’s a rescuer. He also can’t resist a big idea. “There’s always another one around the corner,” he says. “Someone says ‘we need your help’ and it somehow gives you permission.” Doherty once said that he never wanted his park to be one of those places with polar bears and tigers. But that changed in 2022 when he heard that Orsa Predator Park in Sweden was closing and needed to rehome two polar bears.

“Ewa had a tough life – alopecia, a broken claw. She couldn’t go back to the wild and they were going to put her down,” says Doherty. “Time was of the essence.” He borrowed money from the bank and, using donated telegraph poles, built 15km of 4m-high fencing around a 6.5-hectare (16-acre) enclosure, which includes a 16m-deep purpose-built pool, two dens, a state-of-the-art ventilated house, a saltwater dipping pool and a large natural woodland area. This facility cost £1m. “It’s a massive commitment. It’s like getting married again,” he says. Was it a big risk? “Was? Still is.”

Two bears, Ewa and her adult cub Miki, were shipped from Sweden to Suffolk last autumn. Within days of arriving, Miki was dead. “That was horrific,” says Doherty. Miki had an undiagnosed heart condition. “She was a ticking timebomb. She could’ve gone at any time. It was really sad.”

Tala cools off in Jimmy’s pond. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Since then, Ewa has been joined by fellow females Hope (a former companion from Sweden), and Flocke and Tala from Yorkshire Wildlife Park. These two are part of the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP) for polar bears, an official zoo breeding programme which aims to safeguard healthy populations of threatened species in captivity.

On a bright autumn day, Tala is playing in a lake, while Flocke and Hope are quickly drawn to a keeper arriving with melons, which they love. Ewa is ambling alone – it’s important they can find private space, explains park director Stevie Sheppard. “There’s two big things we try to do with all our animals. One is to give them space. And the second is choice. If they want to walk in the woods because it’s cooler, they can walk in the woods. They can dive in the deep lakes, bathe in the shallow pool or roll around in the grass or go in a den – it’s their choice.”



You see them sliding down the hill in the woodland. They pile up the mud and roll about

How an Arctic species copes with sunny Suffolk at 52 degrees north may be the most-asked question. Doherty points out that mean high summer temperatures in Hudson Bay – polar bear country – are higher than Suffolk’s 22C. “Our worry was the high temperatures – that’s when they get heat stress,” says Doherty. “If they want to regulate their temperature they can go in the woodland, which is about 4C cooler. Having that woodland and the deep pool has really helped.”

Enrichment includes a varied, seasonal diet, whole-carcass feeding (a dead horse or cow), food in blocks of ice, foraging for blackberries, watching the small fish in the ponds and plenty of toys. Doherty particularly enjoys letting them into the woods. “You see them sliding down the hill in the woodland. They pile up the mud and roll about,” he says.

The enclosures at Jimmy’s Farm are a far cry from traditional zoo pens. For critics, however, they are still a much, much smaller space than the wild species enjoys. “We acknowledge that the facilities in the UK are some of the larger facilities in Europe,” says Chris Lewis of the Born Free Foundation. Ultimately, the charity believes that no polar bears should be kept in captivity. They point to evidence of stress in captivity: shortened lifespans, a high level of stress-related fatalities, high infant mortality (a 2003 study put it at 65%), and a high risk of captivity-induced diseases. “Our short-term asks of the zoo industry would be to stop breeding polar bears and then look to phase out the existing population,” says Lewis, “because there’s no meaningful or direct conservation benefit to keeping polar bears in captivity.”

Lewis says it is “hard to understand” why polar bears have returned to British zoos. Are they irresistible? Back in 2007, one bear powerfully demonstrated their box-office status to the rest of the European zoo community. Knut, a cub rejected by his mother at Berlin zoo, was hand-reared by a devoted keeper and became a global media sensation. Knutmania saw Berlin zoo enjoy the most profitable year in its 163-year history, with 30% more visitors and €5m in revenue. Merchandise, books and films followed – and tragedy. Knut’s keeper died, and so did Knut, aged just four, of a seizure triggered by encephalitis.

Bringing polar bears to Jimmy’s Farm was clearly a decision of the heart for Doherty – but he had his financial head on too. “The sums have to add up, otherwise you’re being foolish. You make sure you repay the loans,” he says. They had a 50% increase in visitors over summer half-term and are aiming for 300,000 this year.

A polar bear in its cage at London Zoo, 1960. Photograph: Frederick Wilfred/Getty Images

Another reason for British zoos bringing back polar bears is the innovative work of Douglas Richardson. At Highland Wildlife Park in 2009, he oversaw the creation of a new polar bear enclosure, so Britain’s ageing last polar bear, Mercedes, could be relocated from Edinburgh. Bear enclosures were once expensively made from concrete and steel, which necessarily made them small. Richardson deployed much more cost-effective deer fencing, reinforced with electric fencing, which was cheap enough to build a four-hectare (10-acre) enclosure.

“Using what one colleague called ‘chicken wire and harsh language’ to contain polar bears allowed you to enclose very large areas very economically,” says Richardson, who has since advised all three British zoos that keep them. Yorkshire Wildlife Park set up a new four-hectare (10-acre) enclosure in 2014; they now have six bears. Staffordshire’s Peak Wildlife Park keeps two bears in two hectares (five acres). Under Richardson’s guidance, the first British polar bear cub for 25 years, Hamish, was born at Highland Wildlife Park in 2017.

Hamish as a cub and just three years later, at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster. Photographs: Royal Zoological Society of Scotland/PA; Danny Lawson/PA

“The way polar bears were kept in zoos historically was, to be frank, nothing short of appalling,” says Richardson. But he argues the new enclosures are a different world. He didn’t recognise Ewa when he checked on her at Jimmy’s Farm in September: her alopecia has vanished, she’s off medication and has returned to her natural cycle. Of Doherty’s woodland, Richardson says: “It’s not exactly polar bear habitat but there’s lots of shade and lots of interesting smells. And it turns out polar bears like mushrooms.”

The idea of zoos being arks for imperilled wild populations remains a popular one. But a zoo-kept polar bear has never been successfully returned to the wild. “Common zoo reintroduction successes are usually invertebrates they’ve been able to breed in large numbers,” says Lewis. “Other examples that the zoo industry uses are always the same because there’s so few – the Arabian oryx, the California condor. There’s not enough space to keep [polar bears] in enough numbers to have a genetically diverse population that is healthy enough to release into the wild. Zoos are almost a distraction. Conservation action needs to be taken to address the threats facing these species in the wild – the climate crisis, pollution, human encroachment.”

Richardson, who advises the European captive-breeding programme for polar bears, admits that “reintroducing polar bears from a captive population would be hugely, hugely difficult” but argues that at least a captive population retains that option. He says the European population of 120 animals, based on 60 founder animals, is genetically viable because there has been a steady addition of new wild individuals via Russia. “If you have a regular infusion of new founders your actual population need not be enormous,” he says.

In the near future, Richardson predicts that global heating will lead to more climate change refugee polar bears requiring rescue from the wild. He hopes that new, massive fenced reserves more reflective of the polar bears’ natural range may be established, mimicking how many African safari animals live in fenced reserves.

Ewa enjoying a carrot in the autumn sunshine. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Back at Jimmy’s Farm, Doherty is not ruling out breeding polar bears. “Maybe one day, if we were called upon, and there was good reason to do it, and it was that we need more paws on the ground,” he says.

Meanwhile, there’s another big idea – or animal rescue – to attend to. Despite being “skint”, Doherty crowdfunded to save the last brown bear, Diego, from Orsa Predator Park, and is now importing another brown bear from a Romanian sanctuary. I can imagine Michaela, Doherty’s wife, rolling her eyes at his latest rescue. Does he get told off for all the new burdens he acquires? “Quite a lot. There’s always someone that needs help. That’s the problem.”

Israeli weapons of mass destruction are a real-life Frankenstein

Israel's dystopian weapons industry poses a threat to humanity, with the Hezbollah pager attacks setting a dangerous precedent, says Richard Silverstein.

Perspectives
NEW ARAB
Richard Silverstein
14 Oct, 2024



Like a spoiled child, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets,

 writes Richard Silverstein [photo credit: Getty Images]

Israel specialises in weapons of mass destruction.

In the 1990s, Israel pioneered the use of armed drones in warfare and was the first to use exploding cell phones in assassinations. Thirty years later, Israel was among the first to use satellite-operated, AI-guided, autonomous weapons, to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist.

Israel has also spearheaded various forms of mass surveillance, including facial recognition and social media data mining. It does so via search algorithms targeting keywords which psychologists and intelligence agents have identified as indicators of radical inclination or concrete plans.

More recently, Israeli agents established an elaborate plan to sabotage a shipment of electronic pagers purchased by Hezbollah.

Thousands of the devices were distributed to their members. When they received a text message generated by the Mossad, they all exploded within an hour of each other. The next day they did the same thing with cell phones. They killed 40 Lebanese including three children. Nearly 4,000 were severely injured, many blinded as a result of eye injuries, as they looked at the messages on the screen.

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Israel's brazen attack represents the first mass sabotage of everyday communication devices, used by much of the world. It sets an unimaginably dangerous precedent.

Imagine if, in the future, Israel or other states devise ways not just to hack, but to explode all communications devices of major companies such as Google or Apple in a specific country. The result could not only damage overall communications infrastructure but also cost the lives of massive numbers of users.

Israel also has mass cyberwarfare capabilities. It used some of them to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and hack the communication devices of targeted Palestinians.

It has developed facial recognition technology, compiling databases to collect and analyse images of every Palestinian living in the West Bank.

In doing so, it can track their location, identifying who they meet, where, and when. The foremost military SIGINT entity among global armies, Unit 8200 intercepts every form of communication among Palestinians including email, telephone, texts and phone calls. They are used to recruit Shin Bet informants who spy on their families, neighbours and communities. Israeli intelligence uses such information to assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders.

While Israel gains a momentary advantage or degrades the capability of an enemy — these are tactics, not strategy. They attain a short-term gain instead of a long-term interest.

And to obtain even that small advantage, the costs keep rising. The weapons have to get more powerful, the risks increase, and the death count rises. Meanwhile, Israel grows uglier and more hated.

Israel also relies on old-fashioned military operations. In the past few days, it began what Biden national security officials have falsely labelled a “ground operation” or “limited incursion” into southern Lebanon.

Global media have followed suit. Some are calling it a “targeted operation”. The alleged military goal is the return of 70,000 northern Israeli residents to their homes.

In reality, the invasion will fail to achieve this objective. Despite absorbing blows, Hezbollah still retains 150,000 missiles, some among the most advanced in Iran’s arsenal. They are resisting the military assault on their country and will continue to do so, likely intensifying their resistance.

Israel's 'battle-tested' weapons industry

Israel field tests its weapons against enemies in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. They provide proof of concept persuading armies, weapons engineers and intelligence agencies throughout the world to purchase them.

In turn, they impose precisely the same regime both inside and outside the country. This in turn fuels a lucrative weapons export market. Israel is ranked 10th in the world regarding the value of such products.

Its innovation in the development of such weapons systems is followed closely by the world’s weapons buyers. The former become products exported to failed states and repressive regimes like Myanmar, South Sudan, UAE, Philippines, etc. which use them to suppress dissent and settle scores with their enemies, just as Israeli does.

Whatever weapons Israel wants, but does not have it obtains from the US.

In the case of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, US-made F35 warplanes, carried US-made bunker-buster bombs, while there are unconfirmed reports of AWAC planes monitoring the assassination in real-time. All were instrumental in the murder plot.

All the while, the Biden administration uses plausible deniability to excuse it all by claiming Israel didn’t warn the US before it acted.

Either the Pentagon is lying to avoid outrage at its role, or it is telling the truth. The latter would indicate that the US is providing its most lethal munitions without any control or restraints.

This violates US law which calls for using exported weapons under international law. The Leahy Law requires the government to end weapons shipments to regimes found to have violated human rights.

The State Department, tasked with such oversight, has deliberately ignored the findings of multiple agencies that Israel was violating both standards, issuing its statement that Israel is not in violation.

Imagine during WWII, if instead of sending thousands of ships filled with food and weapons to Britain to resist the Nazis, the US decided it was in its interest to send an armada to support Hitler’s invasion of the island and the Holocaust. This is akin to what Biden has done, sending a carrier battle group to the region along with 50,000 troops.

Israel's mad march to war

Biden seems to think this threat will cow Iran from attacking Israel. Apparently, it hasn’t worked. After Israel sent its troops into Lebanon, Iran launched 200 missiles targeting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Though Iron Dome intercepted most of them, there are not yet reports concerning any that struck their targets.

Israel has vowed retaliation. We are now in a state of calibrated escalation. Iran could have fired salvos of thousands of missiles. Then Israel would have been justified in a massive response, provoking all-out war. Instead, it fired a smaller number knowing Israel would retaliate in kind.

Though neither side wants to be blamed for starting such a war, Netanyahu has numerous reasons to want one. He is doing everything in his power — from the assassinations of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif to the assassination of Nasrallah — to incite such a catastrophic conflict.

He needs these wars to distract from his unpopularity at home and to delay his corruption trial. He also seeks the distinction of being the only prime minister to launch direct attacks on Israel’s foremost regional enemy, Iran and its nuclear program. Netanyahu’s march toward mayhem continues unobstructed.

How can President Biden believe the US can play any role in such a process? We have no relations with Iran. We have refused to engage in talks with even Iran’s moderate leaders. We have proven instrumental in murdering the leader of its primary regional ally.
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The Biden administration seems either oblivious or uncaring regarding the impact this will have on the country’s status in the Arab and Muslim world.

It is implicated in the genocide in Gaza, which some public health experts estimate to be over 300,000 dead from combat and related causes.

It is an accessory to the assassination of one of the most admired leaders in the Muslim world. There is nothing we would not do for Israel. Why would the Arab world not hate America? Even more than it hated this country before these events.

Returning to Israeli cyberwarfare, regulation of these weapons lags far behind their development and use on the battlefield. Neither the UN nor any country regulates their use, permitting Israel to wreak havoc without any restraint from global regulatory authorities. It can develop and manufacture ever more lethal weapons with neither ethical nor legal limits.

Further, international bodies established to prosecute war crimes such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice seem powerless to hold Israel accountable for the use of these weapons of mass mayhem. In the former case, its judges failed to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Despite findings by the ICJ that Israel was committing genocide, it has no enforcement mechanism and Israel has ignored the findings.

The story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley mirrors the medieval Jewish golem myth. The latter recounted a pogrom in Prague in which the Jews were attacked by their Christian neighbours. The city’s rabbi created a huge creature out of clay to protect the Jews. He succeeded and the violence stopped. But in doing so the rabbi lost control of the protector of the Jews. He ran amok causing even more danger for them.

To end it, the rabbi destroyed him by turning him back into clay. Israel is a golem wreaking havoc in the Middle East and beyond. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one who can control it or turn it back into clay.

Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog and is a freelance journalist specialising in exposing secrets of the Israeli national security state. He campaigns against opacity and the negative impact of Israeli military censorship.
Follow him on Twitter: @richards1052

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Nightmare: An Interview with Martha Rosenberg

BY HUGH IGLARSH

 JULY 12, 2024
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Eli Lilly HQ, Indianapolis. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The title of Martha Rosenberg’s book – Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies – goes right to the heart of her project. The Evanston, Illinois-based Rosenberg – a researcher, journalist, cartoonist and longtime CounterPunch contributor – is taking on more than just the (considerable) damage the drug and agribusiness and food processing companies have wreaked on human and non-human organisms over the last couple of generations. She also delves deeply into the question of how these global corporate leviathans have tried to shape the world to their benefit, doing their utmost to create a culture of complicit doctors, lax regulators and propagandized consumers. All of these actors play a part in sustaining the illusions that keep the big hustle going: e.g., that drug companies and food producers are on our side, that technology is synonymous with progress, that more and newer pills necessarily translates into better health, that what we don’t know about the food we eat and the medications we take won’t hurt us, and that mass advertising of brand-name drugs means a better-informed public.

Big Food is an augmented second edition of Rosenberg’s Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, which came out in 2012. That eye-opening exposé was widely (and mostly favorably) reviewed at the time, including by this writer, who described it in NewCity as “an essential reminder that unless the humane and life-affirming ‘genes’ of accountability, integrity, solidarity, humility and compassion are re-inserted into our society and institutions, the prognosis for our collective well-being is grim.”

Things have only gotten worse in the 12 years since the original edition came out – yet one hears less criticism than in the past, perhaps because, in the post-pandemic era, criticism of the ways of Big Pharma could be misinterpreted as an attack on science. In any event, the flow of new, heavily publicized “diseases” – many of which in the past would have been thought of as minor nuisances – continues unabated, as drug company returns grow while American life expectancy and quality of life decline. Healthcare remains a system in which risks are systematically minimized, non-generic drug prices are grotesquely inflated, and patients are reduced to guinea pigs in the product development and marketing process. From a sociological perspective, Rosenberg’s book is a depiction of the inevitable consequences of a profit-driven medical complex, notably the manufacture of factitious ailments and the over-prescribing of under-tested and potentially dangerous drugs. And on the food side of the equation, we get what Rosenberg aptly terms “the drugstore in your meat” – meat that, at this point, many other countries will not touch.

Well-researched and cogently argued, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies should be on the reading list of every health-conscious person. Penned by an independent reporter with no ties to industry, the book details how corporate wealth – in the form of saturation advertising, MD junkets and honoraria, squadrons of lobbyists and the legalized bribery known as campaign contributions – has corrupted the institutions ostensibly intended to inform and protect us, from the federal regulatory agencies to the universities to the media to the medical profession itself. In the grand old muckraking tradition, Rosenberg reveals to us the underhanded tactics and revolving-door arrangements behind the facade of the so-called “ethical” [i.e., prescription] drug makers, as well as agribusiness. The point is to wake readers from their media-induced trance regarding the vast power and abusive behavior of the industries associated with our two most fundamental needs: health and nourishment.

I communicated with Rosenberg by e-mail about her reissued book and the changes she has witnessed over the dozen years since the first edition came out. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our Q&A.

What got you interested in this field – i.e., Big Pharma and Big Food – in the first place? Your own encounters with the healthcare system, perhaps?

I probably trace my antipathy toward drug makers to the Pill, which came out in the early 1960s. Some feminists noted that the Pill caused 51 biochemical changes in women–including increased risk of stroke–all because men wouldn’t put on a rubber. Later I worked at Louisiana State University medical school, and I noted more duplicity – including a refusal to call out the carcinogenic nitrites and nitrates in processed meat and water – likely for political and financial reasons.

Your book is about how Big Food and Big Pharma collude with each other to produce a nation of highly medicated but less than thriving people. How does this process work?

As I write in the book, bad food leads people to seek prescriptions for conditions ranging from acid reflux, obesity and diabetes to cardiovascular problems and cancer. Drug makers clean up when people are obese.

However, we may be witnessing a change in the interplay between Big Food and Big Pharma. The advent of GLP agonists like Ozempic and Wegovy has changed the way many people eat. So many people (I should say “rich people,” since the drugs are so expensive) have lost their appetite for fattening junk food that American grocery-buying habits have changed, according to published news reports. Restaurants too have reported a change in patrons’ appetites and preferences.

The GLP agonists have benefited from reports that they reduce addictions and even stroke risks. The cynic in me says they are the new statins. You’ll remember when the statin Lipitor was the bestselling drug in the world and statins were such a medical and Wall Street home run that some people said that the drugs should be added to drinking water. After the statin “gold rush,” when the drugs went off-patent, dangerous side effects were revealed, and medical reports began linking GLP agonists to dangerous gastroenterological effects, which should serve as red flags to anyone paying attention. Surgeons I’ve interviewed, for example, have shared grave concerns about the drugs’ ability to cause delayed gastric emptying.

As you note, disease is now frequently treated as a symptom of drug deficiency, and many doctors are no longer health and lifestyle consultants, but rather harried, over-scheduled drug peddlers. Unless I’m mistaken, it hasn’t always been thus. When and why did things change?

Once upon a time, we had a “concierge” medical business model in which patients paid their doctors directly, and neither insurance companies nor drug makers shaped the economic landscape. Back then, doctors also made house calls.

The economic middlemen have warped the entire purpose of medical care, changing it into a money-making proposition, rather than a way to alleviate disease and pain. As I point out in Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies, one of the most dramatic results of this economic takeover is the overriding message that you probably are sick or could be sick and therefore need to “ask your doctor.” Few remember the comforting message that doctors used to intone to nervous patients: “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning” … the point being that you were probably not seriously ill and whatever symptom you had was fairly likely to go away by itself. Now there is money to be made in convincing everybody that they’re ill.

There’s a chapter in the book about the history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), whose potential side effects – including significantly higher risk of breast cancer, stroke, blood clots, dementia, etc. – have been shown to be much more serious than the menopausal symptoms it treats. Yet on a regular basis, the mainstream media publishes articles extolling the virtues of HRT, as though these large-scale studies about its hazards had never happened. Why does this risky treatment for a non-disease keep rising from the grave, so to speak?

Drug makers seek medications that millions will take most of their lives. They do not make money on short-term prescription like antibiotics (unless they’re used in livestock, which the book addresses). Almost no woman was immune to the drug maker message that aging and menopause were diseases, a message that also played into the sexist premise that an older or less physically attractive woman is worthless. HRT was a cash cow for drug makers who invented the term “perimenopause” so they could start women on the drugs sooner.

When the wheels fell off HRT, drug makers marketed bone drugs to zero in on the one real benefit that HRT could deliver – it strengthened women’s bones. But the bone drugs, called bisphosphonates, were even more pernicious than HRT: by stopping bone turnover, they caused fractures and some women even lost their jaw bones. There are natural and safe treatment for sleep problems, hot flashes and other symptoms of the menopause transition, but drug makers make no money off them.

The book talks about how potent psychoactive drugs are prescribed more and more to the very young, the very old, traumatized returning vets and other captive consumers. What harm does this produce? And is there any trend in the other direction, away from seeing every deviation from a narrowly defined norm as a medicable ailment?

It is estimated that as a much as a quarter of the US population is on antidepressants, which are often prescribed along with other psychoactive drugs. The aggressive marketing of antidepressants has succeeded in redefining what “depression” is and just how “happy” people are supposed to be. If a person isn’t exuberant all the time, there are many possible reasons other than clinical depression, such as a bad job, precarious financial condition, family problems, health status, and certainly social and political issues. The marketing of add-on drugs for “treatment-resistant depression,” which doubles and quadruples profits, can be seen as an admission that the condition was likely not clinical depression to begin with. In fact, about two years ago, definitive research came out of the UK debunking the entire “chemical imbalance” theory on which most psych drugs are marketed.

There’s another downside to the promiscuous marketing of antidepressants, the taking of which now seems almost a rite of passage for young people. Reports now correlate use of SSRI [i.e., selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] antidepressants with bipolar disorder. It’s only recently that bipolar disorder has become epidemic, a phenomenon that opens up other lucrative prescription avenues. Drug makers prowl social media to make mental illness not just common and acceptable but also cool, and I have personally interviewed young people who are perversely proud of a bipolar diagnosis.

In my opinion, many of the emotional and suicidal problems we now see in young people emanate from the psych drug cocktails they are so routinely given. Young people used to be able to work out their identity questions by themselves. But the process of growing up and finding a solid adult identity is now delayed and sometimes made a permanent challenge by the plethora of psych drugs now being prescribed.

With regard to veterans and active duty service people, I was astounded when I wrote the book to discover how many DOD and VA administrators also served as Pharma consultants, with no firewall at all. Drug makers gravitate toward government entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the military because they are an easier sell than to private interests. Taxpayers should be furious.

A major part of your book is about agribusiness, with one chapter titled “The Drugstore in Your Meat.” What are some of those drugs, and what do they do to us?

Few Americans realize that the food sold to us – especially meat – is often banned in other countries. For example, the European Union will not import our hormone-saturated meat, which EU medical officials link to breast and prostate cancer. Asian countries reject the growth drug ractopamine, which is endemic in US agriculture because it produces more weight on animals and thus more profit for meat raisers. To retard bacterial growth, chickens here are dipped in chlorine, which has caused other countries to reject our poultry exports. The notorious “pink slime” – which caused an uproar in US ag markets but is still legal – is made by treating ground beef with ammonia puffs to retard the growth of E. Coli. But ammonia is not allowed in many other countries’ food chains. And vaccines – used to prevent a host of diseases that livestock are susceptible to – are a huge, under-reported part of American meat production. Food animals get dozens of inoculations, and they also ingest heavy metals from other farm medications.

From bird flu to mad cow disease to porcine diarrhea virus to herpes, the diseases that haunt US farms and their treatments would turn any stomach. But news outlets – whose main advertisers are, after all, food companies – seldom report them. Meat producers –especially those who sell “bob” veal [i.e., from newborn calves] – often violate regulations on antibiotics residues. But again, news reports rarely expose these health hazards to consumers, and the information is often available only on little-read government sites.

Why do the regulatory agencies – such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) – do so little regulating and so much kowtowing to corporate power? Would you describe the FDA as a captive agency? Has the drug-testing process been corrupted?

While the FDA has definitely been captured – the Commissioner admitted to 51 financial links to drug makers a few years ago and has gone on record lauding the symbiosis between FDA and Pharma – the USDA was intended to be captured. It was designed to help the agricultural sector and does not presume to serve the public as the FDA is supposed to. Both agencies serve industry over consumers and Congress will do little to help. Why? Because drug makers are among lawmakers’ biggest funders, and lawmakers from ag states are loath to attack the food processors dear to their constituents. There are pure food and drug movements out there, but they are up against tremendous financial forces and need to convince people to vote with their pocketbooks.

Drug testing has become a farce thanks to drug maker machinations. Clinical trials to test if a drug is safe and effective are now run by corporations called contract research organizations (CROs), which are hired by drug companies. CROs design the drug trials, recruit the subjects and help prepare final “submission-for-approval” packages to the FDA. CROs even market new drugs. A few years ago, the largest US-based CRO – Quintiles Transnational – boasted 23,000 employees in 60 countries!

Drug makers often test new products in poor countries, where participants often think they are receiving real medical care and do not realize they are taking a risk. It should also be noted that much, maybe most, drug manufacturing these days is done overseas, where quality issues can and do surface, but production costs are lower.

Your book is about not just bad drugs and bad foods, but also direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. This form of attitude-shaping pharmaceutical propaganda, allowed almost nowhere else, permeates TV here. Why is DTC advertising so popular? How does it affect our notions of sickness and health, and the relationship between doctor and patient?

While some medical voices have called for DTC advertising to be made illegal, it’s unlikely to happen, because DTC is probably the most successful marketing vehicle the drug makers have. First of all, advertising works. Second, news outlets and shows are captured by the outrageous revenue these seemingly wall-to-wall DTC ads represent. Third, drug makers no longer have to hire sales reps – who are not always welcomed by doctors – because DTC ads turn viewers into de facto reps, who corner their doctor with the disease they know they have and the drug they know they need thanks to DTC advertising. Ad viewers can be so insistent and adamant in requesting advertised drugs that some medical schools have had to teach doctors what they call “refusal skills.”

Many have pointed out the discrepancy between the laughing, happy models in these ads and the litany of horrific potential side effects – coma, paralysis, brain bleeds, stroke – intoned in the background. It’s been suggested that the “scare track” could somehow perversely sell the drug, in the same way that people are drawn to grisly news stories or murder mysteries.

The original edition of this book came out in 2012. What prompted the update? Have things gotten worse in the last dozen years or so?

Since the first edition of this book, the opioid scandal has erupted, underscoring the corruption and conflicts of interest that characterize the pharmaceutical industry. “Forever chemicals” have become more prominent in food and the environment, with little apparent appetite on the part of regulators to do anything about it. DTC advertising has become so ubiquitous, it sometimes feels like the TV set has turned into one big Pharma Channel. All these trends have gotten worse in the last decade, necessitating a new edition of the book, which I now call Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies.

In light of the vast power of the corporate drug and agribusiness industries within a pay-to-play “democracy,” what advice would you give people about protecting their own health?

I recommend that before taking a new drug, do some research on sites such as Public Citizen, the People’s Pharmacy, PharmedOut and AskaPatient. Some well-researched information is available, but you have to dig for it.

Hugh Iglarsh is a Chicago-based writer, editor, critic and satirist. He can be reached at hiiglarsh@hotmail.com.