The Business of Medicine

One excerpt written by Barbara Kingsolver's daughter alludes to the business of medicine, or what we business majors call the drug industry. For many, the drug industry is the their means of staying healthy. For some, the drug industry provides the pills that keep them alive. For others, the drug industry is the root of all evil.

And for some, the drug industry is a great thing but needs to be altered or regulated differently. This is the stance that Kingsolver's daughter seems to support in her excerpt:

"Our bodies aren't adapted to absorb big loads of nutrients all at once (many supplements surpass RDA values by 200 percent or more), but tiny quantities of them in combinations -- exactly as they occur in plants" (Kingsolver 59). 

While her statement is directed partially at telling you that you should have listened to your mother when she said, "eat your fruits and veggies," the underlying question evoked by the quote above is: If we can't actually absorb the nutrients in certain supplements, why do they exist, why bother to manufacture them? Who is actually benefitting from the creation of the product?

Kingsolver's daughter additionally makes the statement, "I've grown up in a world that seems to have a pill for almost everything. College kids pop caffeine pills to stay up all night writing papers, while our parents are at home popping sleeping pills to prevent unwelcome all-nighters" (Kingsolver 59). 

While both humorous and ironic, her statement is implying that pills are a "quick fix" to a problem that could possibly be solved by diet and behavioral changes as opposed to drugs that could have unknown longterm side effects.

If that is the case, why do people voluntarily choose the option that could have side effects, costs them money, and may not have the nutritional value that it claims to have?

There could be many reasons.

It could be that busy people value their time more than their actual health, so a "quick fix" is the best option for their lifestyle. Or it could be a sort of placebo effect where they think it's helping them when in reality they're not receiving the total value that they payed for. And the industry allows that.

I personally do not know enough about this and would love to do more research on the topic...I know there are certain regulations in other countries where marketing drugs directly to consumers is illegal...

People do have a choice of whether or not to buy the product, the question remains of if they are educated enough to make the right choice, though.