When someone tries to end an argument by insisting they’re on “the right side of history,” remind them how often history has proved such confidence wrong.
This is especially true in the realm of health care.
Not long ago, Purdue Pharmaceuticals pushed OxyContin as an answer to ordinary pain. Yet Oxy not only created a wave of addiction; it helped launch a public-health catastrophe. Aggressive 1990s and 2000s prescribing fueled the first overdose wave, wrecking families and communities while pushing many patients from pills to heroin and later fentanyl. The toll shows up in deaths, broken homes, strained hospitals, lost workers, and hollowed-out towns. But Oxy generated $35 billion for Purdue. (RELATED: The OxyContin Story)
Thalidomide followed a similar arc. Marketed in the 1950s for anxiety, insomnia, “tension,” and morning sickness, it was once treated as “safe” for pregnant women. By 1961, after it was linked to severe birth defects, it was pulled from European markets. More than 10,000 infants — possibly twice that — were seriously harmed in utero, and about 40 percent died at or shortly after birth.
That is a pattern worth remembering when we look today at hormone replacement therapy and puberty-suppressing drugs. These are often framed as the compassionate answer for children with gender dysphoria. The first — and often the only — steps taken to purportedly change a kid’s gender nonetheless permanently ruin their health.
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