Violence and aggression, hatred and abuse, surrounds us, and it seems to be getting worse. But usually we do not get close to identifying the cause.
Has there ever been a time when hatred, violence, aggression, abusive behaviour, et al, has been more rife in society? I would not argue the case either way! There has always been violence. But whether this is so or not we are certainly not adept at deciding what is the cause of violent and abusive behaviour.
Guns kill; but someone has to pull the trigger.
Knives kill; but someone has to thrust them into a victim.
Social media might carry threats and abuse; but someone has to write it.
Sometimes human intelligence is really not that smart; and even when smart it is not always honest. Guns, knives, social media, et al, are not a cause of violence; they are merely vehicles. Too often what we believe depends too much on what we want to believe. Or what we are led to believe by vested interests. Our ‘intelligence’ is selective, gathering together the information that supports our prejudices, and ignoring what does not.
I am as guilty of this as anyone. For instance, I believe that pharmaceutical drugs are an important cause of many serious illnesses and diseases that abound in our modern world. Too often I see descriptions of disease paraded as causes of disease. Too often the adverse effects (serious illness and disease) of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines as known - but ignored when it comes to considering disease causation.
It is surely too much of a coincidence that most chronic disease, all of which have grown explosively in recent decades, have done so alongside the bonanza of pharmaceutical drug-taking during the same period. And this applies to the worrying level of violence we are now seeing in our social life.
My perception is that modern society is undoubtedly becoming progressively more violent.
Violence appears to be more concerned with our everyday life. It is no longer criminal violence, or abusive politics and politicians, or warfare and war crimes between people’s and nations. It is violence at a more personal level - domestic abuse, sexual crime, social media abuse, communal division, mass shootings, knife stabbings, road rage, and the like.
Sexual crime has recently been brought to the fore in the UK. The UK Home Secretary has described violence against women as “a national emergency”. Statistics supporting this abound. The Rape Crisis Centre says that 1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16; that 1 in 6 children have been sexually abused; and that there were 71,227 rapes recorded by the police in 2024.
And around the world there is concern about the amount of aggression and abuse that abounds on social media, and the impact this is having on children.
My prejudice, I believe supported by strong and convincing circumstantial evidence, is that increased violence and aggression at this personal/social level is, in large part, caused by the ‘side effects’ of pharmaceutical drugs.
I have written about this before, many times, for example in “Mass Killings in the USA: what is the cause?”
So what role do pharmaceutical drugs play in causing aggression and violence? The link is most certainly in the public domain, we should be fully aware that drugs and vaccines play a role. This is admitted within conventional medical literature when known adverse drug reactions are reported by drug regulators. And it is written clearly on the (seldom-read) Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come in each drug packet.
And this information is now being confirmed on AI forums. I asked the AI package linked to my Firefox browser “What pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause violence and aggression?” and it came up with this:
“Pharmaceutical drugs that can cause violence and aggression include stimulants like amphetamines and certain antidepressants, as well as benzodiazepines, which may lead to aggressive behavior in some individuals. Alcohol, while not a pharmaceutical drug, is also commonly linked to increased aggression due to its effects on judgment and impulse control”.
Unfortunately this is an incomplete summary of the association. This can be seen on my ‘Iatrogenic Disease’ website which shows that aggression and violence is linked to many other drugs, including painkilling drugs such as paracetamol (tylenol), antiviral drugs, ADHD drugs, antipsychotic drugs, and many others.
Yet so often, when discussing the cause of any serious illness or disease, the role of pharmaceutical drugs (however well documented) is discounted or ignored completely. So I asked my AI platform a further question - “what are the main causes of violence and aggression? and this was the response.
“The main causes of violence and aggression include frustration, exposure to violent media, environmental factors like heat and overcrowding, and personal issues such as mental instability or substance abuse. Additionally, experiences of abuse, neglect, and social rejection can significantly increase the likelihood of violent behaviour”.
As usual, with routine conventional medical explanations of the cause of aggression and violence, the information is correct - but partial, incomplete, and therefore inadequate. It fails to mention the pharmaceutical drugs our doctors have been prescribing in ever-larger amounts for the last 70-80 years.
Why this omission? Why does the much heralded ‘Artificial Intelligence’ neglect the role of pharmaceutical drugs when it is clearly aware of the link? It suggests that AI is as prejudiced as our human intelligence. It has been programmed to tell us about only a limited view of the causation of violence.
Pharmaceutical drugs are clearly known to be an important cause of and violence. It is in the medical literature. It is alluded to, but heavily discounted by the new “AI” intelligence.
What this suggests is that AI platforms, just like our governments, our mainstream media, and conventional health services and providers, are heavily compromised by the lobbying and the largesse of the rich and powerful pharmaceutical companies. It also suggests that we have the intelligence to know about an important cause of social violence (and much more). But we do not all have the honesty or integrity to resist the financial incentives offered to us to ignore it!
When we ignore, or neglect any possible cause of violence and aggression, or any illness or disease, we will inevitably fail as a society to identify important, and perhaps blindingly obvious ‘treatments’ for it!
