Death by Medicine - 5

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Death by Medicine - 5

Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD

Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD

October 2003

 

Note: The information on this website is not a substitute for

diagnosis and treatment by a qualified, licensed professional.

 

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WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE IN MEDICINE

 

Briefly, we will look at the medical iatrogenesis of women in particular. Dr.

Martin Charcot (1825-1893) was world-renowned, the most celebrated doctor of his

time. He practiced in the Paris hospital La Salpetriere. He became an expert in

hysteria diagnosing an average of ten hysterical women each day, transforming

them into… “iatrogenic monsters,” turning simple ‘neurosis’ into hysteria.96 The

number of women diagnosed with hysteria and hospitalized rose from 1% in 1841 to

17% in 1883. Hysteria is derived from the Latin “hystera” meaning uterus. Dr.

Adriane Fugh-Berman stated very clearly in her paper that there is a tradition

in U.S. medicine of excessive medical and surgical interventions on women. Only

one hundred years ago male doctors decided that female psychological imbalance

originated in the uterus. When surgery to remove the uterus was perfected it

became the “cure” for mental instability, effecting a physical and psychological

castration. Dr. Fugh-Berman noted that U.S.

doctors eventually disabused themselves of that notion but have continued to

treat women very differently than they treat men.97 She cites the following:

 

 

Thousands of prophylactic mastectomies are performed annually.

 

 

One-third of U.S. women have had a hysterectomy before menopause.

 

 

Women are prescribed drugs more frequently than are men.

 

 

Women are given potent drugs for disease prevention, which results in disease

substitution due to side effects.

 

 

Fetal monitoring is unsupported by studies and not recommended by the CDC.98 It

confines women to a hospital bed and may result in higher incidence of Cesarean

section.99

 

 

Normal processes such as menopause and childbirth have been heavily medicalized.

 

 

Synthetic hormone replacement therapy (HRT) does not prevent heart disease or

dementia. It does increase the risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and

gall bladder attack.100

 

 

We would add that as many as one-third of postmenopausal women use HRT.101,102

These numbers are important in light of the much-publicized Women’s Health

Initiative Study, which was forced to stop before its completion because of a

higher death rate in the synthetic estrogen-progestin (HRT) group.103

 

Cesarean Section

 

In 1983, 809,000 Cesarean sections (21% of live births) were performed, making

it the most common obstetric and gynecologic (OB/GYN) surgical procedure. The

second most common OB/GYN operation was hysterectomy (673,000), and diagnostic

dilation and curettage of the uterus (632,000) was third. In 1983, OB/GYN

operations represented 23% of all surgery completed in this country.104

 

In 2001, Cesarean section is still the most common OB/GYN surgical procedure.

Approximately 4 million births occur annually, with a 24% C-Section rate, i.e.,

960,000 operations. In the Netherlands only 8% of babies are delivered by

Cesarean section. Assuming human babies are similar in the U.S. and in the

Netherlands, we are performing 640,000 unnecessary C-Sections in the U.S. with

its three to four times higher mortality and 20 times greater morbidity than

vaginal delivery.105

 

The Cesarean section rate was only 4.5% in the U.S. in 1965. By 1986 it had

climbed to 24.1%. The author states that obviously an “uncontrolled pandemic of

medically unnecessary Cesarean births is occurring.”106 VanHam reported a

Cesarean section postpartum hemorrhage rate of 7%, a hematoma formation rate of

3.5%, a urinary tract infection rate of 3%, and a combined postoperative

morbidity rate of 35.7% in a high-risk population undergoing Cesarean

section.107

 

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© 2003 Gary Null & Associates, Inc. (GNA)

 

 

 

 

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