“Pharmageddon” (pharmaceutical + Armageddon) has had two different meanings. “Pharmageddon” was used by those critical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). A book by Brewster Kneen was titled Farmageddon: Food and the Culture of Biotechnology (1999); “pharmegeddon” was used by at least 2000.
An August 2007 article in The Independent (UK), “Pharmageddon: The Prescription Pill Epidemic,” and a June 2011 article in The Guardian (UK), “Pharmageddon: How America Got Hooked on Killer Prescription Drugs,” show a different meaning for “Pharmageddon”—an overuse of prescription drugs.
Wiktionary: Pharmageddon
Etymology
Blend of pharmaceutical and Armageddon; dates from the late 1990s
Proper noun
Pharmageddon
1.A dystopian scenario wherein medicine and the pharmaceuticals industry have a net detrimental effect on human health and medical progress does more harm than good.
Urban Dictionary
pharmageddon
the over-indulgence of pharmacueticals leading to the state of complete annihilation
ted’s friends realised he’d reached pharmageddon, when they found him tits up in the gutter
by ed reese Sep 30, 2006
OCLC WorldCat record
Farmageddon : food and the culture of biotechnology
Author: Brewster Kneen
Publisher: Gabriola Island, BC, Canada : New Society Publishers, ©1999.
Edition/Format: Book : English
OCLC WorldCat record
A REPORTER AT LARGE - The Pharmageddon Riddle - Monsanto’s food fight
Author: Michael Specter
Publisher: New York : F-R Pub. Corp., 1925-
Edition/Format: Article : English
Publication: The New Yorker. (April 10, 2000): 58
Database: ArticleFirst
Google Groups: alt.food.safety
Newsgroups: alt.food.safety
From: Jane Zahra
Date: 2000/06/16
Subject: Frankenfoods
Pharmageddon Strikes Back: Disinformation, TV Ads, Regulatory Reforms
Fearful that the global backlash against gene-foods is spreading to the U.S., Monsanto, Aventis, Novartis, Dow, BASF, Zeneca, DuPont, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization have launched a $50 million a year public relations campaign to confuse and mislead the American public.
Google Groups: flora.mai-not
Newsgroups: flora.mai-not
From: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (Christoph Reuss)
Date: 2000/07/17
Subject: Re: “Children healthy as never before”
The number of vaccinations is NOT an indicator of health (rather the opposite, considering that vaccines contain mercury as a preservative and have been linked to allergies etc.), just an indicator of the extent of pharmageddon in the “health”-care system.
OCLC WorldCat record
Pharmageddon: is it too late to tackle growing resistance to anti-infectives?
Author: H Adcock
Edition/Format: Article : English
Publication: PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL, 269, no. 7221, (October 26, 2002): 599-600
Database: British Library Serials
Time magazine
Cures On the Cob
By Margot Roosevelt/San Diego
Monday, May 19, 2003
They call this biopharming.
Critics — and there are many — have another name for it. They call it Pharmageddon. Environmentalists are worried that the unnaturally combined genes, when loosed upon the ecosphere, will spread like genetic kudzu.
The Independent (UK)
Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic
Our increasing reliance on pills has resulted in a 27 per cent rise in prescriptions written by doctors in just five years. It’s costing the NHS £10bn a year, £200m of which is wasted on drugs that are never used. Nina Lakhani reports on a dangerous addiction
Sunday, 26 August 2007
Britain is in the grip of a prescription drug-taking epidemic, with unprecedented numbers of medicines being handed out by GPs, costing billions of pounds and stretching already tight NHS resources to breaking point.
OCLC WorldCat record
Pharmageddon The Limits of Pharmacutical Medicine - and What Lies Beyond.
Author: Clayton, Paul R.
Publisher: Royal Society of Medicine Pr Ltd 2009.
Edition/Format: Book : English
Summary: Pharmageddon is the first textbook in the emerging science of pharmaco-nutrition. It takes the small step from nutritional biochemistry to the pharmacological and therapeutic application of nutritional programmes, and does so in an accessible and intensively referenced format.
CBS News
September 4, 2010 11:01 PM
“Pharmageddon”: America’s New Drug Crisis
(CBS) A new drug problem is emerging in the United States: an alarming national epidemic of pill popping and prescription drug abuse so bad it’s being called “Pharmageddon.”
The latest issue of Time magazine has numbers painting a disturbing picture: Over the last two decades, deaths from accidental drug overdoses have increased five-fold. And, for the first time, unintentional overdoses have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of accidental death in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Guardian (UK)
Pharmageddon: how America got hooked on killer prescription drugs
White House declares prescription drug abuse in US ‘alarming’ as thousands flock to Florida – the home of oxycodone pill mills
Ed Pilkington in Palm Beach
Thursday 9 June 2011 15.03 EDT
(...)
Every day in Florida seven people die having overdosed on prescription drugs – 2,531 died in 2009 alone. That statistic is replicated across the US, where almost 30,000 people died last year from abusing pharmaceutical pills.
It’s an American catastrophe that has been dubbed pharmageddon, though it rarely pierces the public consciousness.