RSS
Home
Why does medicine's lack of integrity kill 750,000 people a year?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Most doctors are bought-off
before they graduate as an M.D.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com
Times are changing, and nowadays I am reading more and more doctors publically question medicine's lack of integrity, and science's limits.
Medicine, science, and your health - what you should know.
Doctors work hard, medical school is a slog, and their jobs are getting increasingly harder because of the constrictions imposed by the insurance companies. The latter do as much as they can to wriggle out of paying doctors for their time, and your healthcare.
The whole medical system in the United States lacks integrity and is crumbling. Pharmaceutical companies court medical students, enticing them into lucrative salary deals in exchange for writing prescriptions or performing research. Almost all of our medical doctors are bought and paid for before they graduate. I say that because there have been several medical scandals during the past six months where doctors, university professors, and researchers have taken kick-backs or falsified research for cash.
Over the years, these individuals' actions have influenced the doctors they've trained and the doctors who have believed their research; doctors who are giving people like you and I advice. Yet it's advice based on false research and greed.
As more and more doctors act on this misinformation, more of us die, approximately 750,000 a year because of medical mistakes according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Okay, death is inevitable, however premature death, financial ruin, and a low-quality of life preceding it is unnecessary. This is not a healthcare system - it's a disease-care system that makes billions of dollars a year in profits for the pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies. Doctors and hospital staff are the pawns caught between the patients and the profiteers.
Citizens of the United States, why do you put up with a system that trains doctors to prescribe pills to suppress symptoms because it generates profits? Why do we accept a system that cuts out body parts that don't work, or uses chemotherapy agents to disrupt the body's natural healing ability? Hypocrates, medicine's founding father would turn in his grave out of disgust.
Why prevention isn't prevention.
Nowadays, medical prevention is about having scans to detect abnormalities earlier and injecting us with "dead" bacteria so our immune system can "fight" the "live" version. I thought that prevention was about taking natural action to prevent a disease occurring - not searching for it before it produces symptoms, or injecting alien substances into the body. The very idea of prevention has been bastardized.
Why research won't necessarily save your life
Scientific research works on the reductionism principle where the effect of one thing on another is measured. This means that science always tries to explain how one thing can cause a change in another, or show that the two are somehow related (correlated) and that a third factor is involved.
Let me give you an example of how limiting this is: A recent study in the Middle East said that people who drink very hot tea are more likely to get oesophageal cancer. There are several other factors that can also cause the same cancer according to other scientists, yet nobody is putting a list of all these factors together. Each study is looking at a tiny piece of the puzzle of what causes oesophageal cancer, yet scientists aren't putting the puzzle together to complete the big picture.
Worse still, nobody is telling doctors to make simple lifestyle recommendations to their patients i.e. make time to let your tea cool before drinking it. Doctors are instead told by their medical schools, state boards, and insurance companies to give out pills, cut out what's damaged, or burn the body with radiation or chemotherapy. Common sense goes out of the window because profit is king.
We also read about scientists getting conflicting results, with one study reporting that a specific vitamin helps to heal a disease, whereas another study says that it doesn't. The results disagree because humans have genetic and physiologic differences and so what will help one person, will make little difference to another. It takes a lot more than just a vitamin pill or a therapy or a procedure to help someone re-experience health - healing from disease requires several things for a change to occur.
Which leads me on to science primary handicap: statistics. Researchers heavily rely on being able to statistically show that a change occurred not because of chance. However statistics in their present form can't measure the effect of changing more than 5 things simultaneously because the results are virtually impossible to interpret.
Therefore we won't be able to measure the influence of all the factors involved in diseases such as oesophageal cancer because there are more than science can measure. This is science's fatal flaw. If you can't measure how all the different factors in a person's life caused a disease, how will you ever know what preventative action to recommend to future generations? It'll also make it impossible to design an effective treatment plan because the plan will miss out some of the factors that need help. When that happens, and it's very common, people experience a lower quality of life, or they die.
Doctors are only telling you what they know from the tiny slice of research they get to read, and from their experiences with patients who are different from you. This is why it's essential to get multiple opinions.
A real-life story
My 66-year old friend who lives in Atlanta has terminal cancer. The doctors have told her that there is nothing more they can do for her and in January she was given 6-months to live. She cannot afford health insurance and is living on the poverty line. What's wrong with this picture folks? Why should people like her be denied access to medical care because she can't pay for it? Her life is at stake. Why should she be another victim of a corrupt, greed-driven disease-care system that does its best to put down alternative medicine and deny her its possible benefits?
Why should we study the effects of alternative medicine using the same flawed scientific method that has been used to create a failing healthcare system?
If something doesn't work, such as this countries healthcare system, then why keep using it? A change is needed, and it starts with you, the person who give their money to the insurance companies.
What you can do to avoid being one of the 750,000 people who die every year.
1) Ask a doctor what they would do in your circumstances. You'll hear a very different answer to what they're meant to tell you.
2) Get a second or third opinion on any procedure that involves surgery - get your insurance dollars to work for you. If the insurance company refuses to pay for subsequent opinions then do some quick Internet research and write a polite letter to the chief executive asking for their help.
3) Do online research and try natural alternatives before electing surgery, unless its life threatening. Exhaust all of the natural alternatives first.
4) Read and understand the research yourself. Look for its limits and ask your doctor questions about what those limits mean for your health. The difference could affect your quality of life.
5) Stop giving doctors god-like status to decide what's right for you. Take back your power as healthcare consumers to decide what's right for you. Your body knows best.
6) Start taking responsibility for your own health - don't abdicate it to the doctor. The recipe for health is simply:
- Eat healthy and tasty foods. Drink half your body weight in ounches of clean water daily,
- Exercise in a way that matches your energy level,
- Sleep at least 8 hours daily,
- Contribute positively and meaningfully to other people's lives,
- Take time to play,
- Make your passion your work,
- and love everything in your life by connecting with your heart - just like you did when you were in first love.
For more info: James is a fitness, nutrition, and healing coach at www.TotalFitness.net who will guide you to the very best in health and wellness. He's a world-class professional and creator of the Holistic Weight Loss For Life groups. Send James a note.
Related Articles:
Comments
