I’m not a psychiatrist, and I won’t guess what motivates someone like Doug Bremner. On his blog, he posted a picture showing the head of a cancer surgeon/researcher/blogger pasted onto a large beast. A little man is doing something to the beast.
An armchair psychiatrist might make silly suppositions based on the image of a little man bent over toward what looks like the genitalia of a large beast, but also like a little man eviscerating the beast with a big tool (which is not part of the little man…he’s just holding it). But images probably don’t mean anything anyway.
Bremner is a psychiatrist who on his blog takes the real problem of the corrupting influence of drug companies and elevates it to the One True Justification of all of his beliefs. Like many fanatics, he is always right, and anyone who dares to disagree with him is a murderous beast deserving of physical evisceration. I do wonder how someone becomes like Bremner. There is so much real corruption out there, and yet he is so angry, his thinking so muddled, that when someone presents evidence of his being wrong, he reacts as to an existential threat.
I’ve had plenty of people attack me on and off my blog. They’ve even been right from time to time. But I haven’t been tempted to connect their real name to various projects and accuse them being brainless shills of industry. Nor have I been tempted to post jejune but violent images of them on my blog. But Bremner does eventually use his words:
They start out by saying that I am against the drug industry, that there have been a lot of life saving drugs developed by the pharmaceutical industry, and that I am paranoidly positing a conspiracy amongst drug companies that does not exist. Well first of all as I have said many times before I don’t have anything against drug companies per se and I think there are a lot of medications that have benefits for certain people in certain situations. I am just advocating for the right of people to know the true risks and benefits of prescription medications and to be able to educate themselves and not just take the word of some “I am right” doctors. Which is what these guys look like. To me at least.
I would think that a psychiatrist could come up with a better construction than “paranoidly”, but anyway…
You see, Doug is just a poor, misunderstood guy trying to get the real scoop out to The People. He’s not “anti-drug company”, just pro truth. He even admits that some medications might be beneficial for some people sometimes (wow…that’s a lot of hedging). He accuses his detractors of being ignorant, with an immovable faith in their own opinions while demonstrating these very flaws.
It’s too bad, really. We need more voices speaking out against corporate abuses, people who can tell the difference between corruption and real science. Bremner just isn’t ready to play with the big kids.