Repost #8943: free book by Bill Sardi

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Gettingwell , Frank <califpacific> wrote:

 

Red Flags Over Health Care

Is There A Choice for Health Care Consumers Other Than Conventional

or Alternative Medicine?

 

by Bill Sardi

 

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It's difficult to wave a red flag these days and hope someone

notices. For one thing, there are so many red flags being waved. For

another, unless you have a story that captures another's attention or

sways the heart in some way, you have difficulty even making any

impact at all. But everyone is affected by health problems, theirs or

those of loved ones. So health issues relate to most people.

 

In attempting to communicate with others, whatever my " hot button "

is, I can't let my feelings or experiences get in front of the

issues, otherwise people will believe the problem may be mine and not

theirs. Yes, I've felt the pain of seeing a friend die of cancer at a

relatively young age, but I also observed how modern cancer therapy

hastened my friend's demise. I've seen close family members suffer

with the irreversible side effects of medications that should never

have been prescribed. But so have others and how do I convince anyone

that these experiences are common?

 

So in my line of work as a journalist on health issues I conduct

daily research and keep vast files on topics, close to 200 files

drawers full in my garage on everything from AIDS to zinc. In recent

months there have been an alarming number of scientific reports that

will forever change modern medicine. Evidence-based medicine is

coming to your doctor's office and hospital. It means that long-

practiced therapies which cost billions of dollars may be cast into

the trash can.

 

In the past few months studies have determined that hormone

replacement therapy prescribed for 6 million American women may

slightly increase health risks and should probably be abandoned.

Arthroscopic knee surgery and radical mastectomy (breast removal)

surgery were also found to yield no health benefits. To say nothing

of the millions of patients whose lives have been affected by these

worthless medical therapies, how did the doctors start practicing

unproven medicine? And why has this gone on for so long?

 

Responding to criticism that much of what is done in modern medicine

is not substantiated by science, some time ago a clinic took the

records of over 100 consecutive patients and examined their

treatment. Less than a third of the treatments rendered were backed

by a consensus of doctors or scientific studies.

 

More Failings of Modern Medicine

 

When you look at the recent history of modern medicine you see a

picture where there are more side effects generated by prescription

drugs than the disorders these medications intended to treat.

Iatrogenic disease (doctor induced) is now the third leading cause of

death in the U.S. According to a report published in the Journal of

the American Medical Association, about 274 people die daily of

properly-used prescription drugs, administered by a nurse in a

hospital, amounting to over 100,000 needless deaths a year.

 

Hospitals are where the most antibiotics are used and the germs in

hospitals have become particularly resistant to modern drug therapy

to the point where 14,000 people now die annually of drug-resistant

infections in hospitals. The more antibiotics doctors prescribe the

sooner the day will come when these drugs no longer work and mankind

will be faced with no remedies to quell the germs that once caused

ancient plagues.

 

War on Cancer Fails

 

The war on cancer has failed. For the most part, cancer mortality

rates are higher today than they were over three decades ago. This is

after spending more than $30 billion to research cancer therapies.

 

A few years back the Agency for Healthcare Policy Research conducted

a review of the benefits derived from prostate cancer surgery.

Patients who underwent surgery were found to live, on average, about

14 years after removal of their prostate gland. Surgeons were

pleased. But when surgical patients were compared to men who did

nothing, that is they did not undergo surgery, they also lived about

14 years beyond their year of diagnosis. There was no benefit to

having the prostate gland removed. But the surgery wasn't abandoned.

Today urological surgeons ask the patients to choose between surgery

and " watchful waiting. " But most patients aren't told, straight out,

there is little or no benefit to surgery in regards to increased

survivability.

Thousands of men still elect to undergo surgery out of fear.

 

So how do you tell people that modern medicine is failing? Oh, I

don't mean your doctor's office or the hospital won't be there

tomorrow, I mean, the scientific foundations of modern medicine are

disintegrating.

 

So what do I want people to do, stop running to the doctor's office?

Where else is there to go?

 

Alternative Medicine: Another grab-bag

 

Some of these drawbacks of modern medicine have already been

recognized by a significant segment of the population and in 1993 the

New England Journal of Medicine published a landmark report which

revealed more primary care patients had visited alternative medical

practitioners, homeopathists, acupuncturists, chiropractors and

massage therapists, than medical doctors. Modern medicine had lost

half of its potential customers. Actually, about 8 in 10 patients

seeing alternative doctors were attended by conventional health care

practitioners as well. Some patients were playing both sides of the

fence.

 

But surveys conducted by American Demographics Magazine indicate two

thirds of the public still is wary of alternative medicine and would

only elect to go to alternative practitioners if they had a disease

that modern medicine couldn't treat. Furthermore, recent studies also

indicate alternative medicine has some marginal practices of its own,

like homeopathy, iridology, applied kinesiology and therapeutic

touch, to name a few. So the scientific underpinnings of alternative

medicine may also be lacking.

 

So which way should the public turn?

 

It's been said that beyond mending broken bones, fixing teeth and

replacing cloudy cataracts, modern medicine can't substantiate much

else of what it does. The high-tech medical care system is good at

acute and trauma care, but poor at handling chronic disease. When you

take a long look at diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure,

mental depression, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, kidney

and gall bladder stones, and many other maladies, you realize they

can all be treated with diet and nutritional supplements (vitamins,

minerals, amino acids, herbs) at far less cost and side effect than

with prescription drugs.

 

The biological action of most prescription drugs can be duplicated

with food supplements, a fact hidden from the public. In an about

turn, the American Medical Association, recognizing only one in five

Americans eat the recommended five servings of fresh plant foods

daily, finally came out this year and recommended multivitamins for

everybody. But in the year 2000, among 823 million visits to doctor's

offices only about 1.5 percent of the time did doctors even mention

vitamins. So doctor's still have a long way to go.

 

Patient driven change and nutritional medicine

 

So many millions of Americans can no longer afford health insurance,

and modern health care continues to price itself out of the market.

Health care consumers are being forced to look elsewhere.

 

Change in modern medicine isn't going to come by way of doctors but

rather by way of the patients. If both conventional and alternative

medicine are flawed then is there another choice? The other option

for healthcare consumers is self-care, practiced in the home, using

diet and food supplements to retain a state of health and even treat

disease. Yes, most Americans already take vitamins. What I'm talking

about is replacing all those problematic drugs with safe herbs,

vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Patients are going to have to

learn about diet and food supplements on their own since doctors are

poorly prepared to answer questions on these topics. Many patients

know more about nutrition than their doctors. Dietitians are biased

towards dietary-based solutions rather than vitamin and herbal

supplements.

 

Much of what I have said here is described in more detail in my new

ebook The Collapse of Conventional Medicine. For interested parties,

they may wish to go to www.hereandnowbooks.com and print out a free

copy.

 

 

 

November 11, 2002

 

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a consumer advocate and health

journalist writing from San Dimas, California. His website is

www.askbillsardi.com.

 

2002 Bill Sardi Word of Knowledge Agency, San Dimas,

California. Not for commercial reproduction without permission of the

author.

 

 

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