Beware Saboteurs Posing as Experts

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Beware Saboteurs Posing as Experts

 

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For the discriminating reader, Dr. Rosenfeld's performance in this book

suggests another definition of quackery: The physician who poses as an

expert when he really knows nothing about the subject and nonetheless

attempts to discredit it.

 

Watch out for conventional doctors posing as experts in the field of

alternative medicine-they may be the proverbial wolf in sheep's

clothing.

 

 

Now that alternative medicine is entering the financial mainstream of

North American medical life, there is a new danger that could imperil

the progress we've made. Watch out for conventional doctors who cozy up

to alternative medicine as impartial experts-the " friendly " doctors with

the warm bedside manner. They may be saboteurs in disguise.

 

This is the newest way in which conventional doctors, filled with deep

criticism, skepticism, and distrust of the emerging alternatives in

Western medicine, will try to sabotage the truth from within our field.

When someone openly criticizes alternative medicine, you note their

comments with this in mind; but when somebody pretends to be an expert

in alternative medicine and tells you he's here to offer you judicious

recommendations, you may miss the mental sleight of hand as he slyly

sours and corrupts your view of the field.

 

Consumers must now be on guard to not be duped by biased and

ill-informed conventional doctors posing as experts in alternative

medicine. Their goal is to co-opt alternative medicine into conventional

medicine. In so doing, they adulterate and emasculate it to such an

extent that it no longer holds any therapeutic challenge to

establishment medicine or money.

 

This sounds good, but if readers are not exceptionally wary in reading

this book, they may conclude as I did (midway across Dr. Rosenfeld's

bridge) that, like the British soldiers in the film The Bridge On the

River Kwai, Dr. Rosenfeld built the bridge only for the purposes of

blowing it up to prevent passage across it.

 

In this bridge-bombing book, we have a friendly-faced, " distinguished "

physician passing himself off as an " unbiased " clinician who with an

" open mind " diligently evaluates the field of alternative medicine

" unencumbered " by biases or " preconceptions. " This is what Dr. Rosenfeld

wants the reader to presume; I'm arguing that the reality and intent of

this book are far different.

 

The discerning reader will appreciate that what Dr. Rosenfeld is in

truth unencumbered by is any knowledge of U.S. medical history and the

mighty struggle between conventional and alternative medicine that has

been waged for 150 years. In fact, this schism has existed for about

2,000 years, according to medical historian Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D.,

beginning in classical Greece, then playing out in Europe, and now the

U.S.

 

One group of doctors has considered the whole human being, the root

cause of illness, and precise observation of symptoms and results. We

call these the alternative medicine doctors. The other group (what we

now call conventional doctors) has fragmented the body into parts and

isolated systems, sought single molecular causes of illness, and often

ignored the actual patient in their prevailing theory about illness.

 

Reading Dr. Rosenfeld's book critically, with U.S. medical history and

medical politics in mind, you soon suspect he is encumbered with the

veiled mission of sabotaging any alternative modality that is a

financial or therapeutic threat to conventional medicine. The modalities

he focuses on in particular are the ones that work the best-chelation,

homeopathy, chiropractic, diet therapy for cancer, oxygen therapy, among

others-and stand to disenfranchise the conventional medicine

establishment of their $1 trillion market monopoly on U.S. health care.

 

First, Dr. Rosenfeld distorts U.S. medical history by implying that the

spurt in popularity of alternative medicine in recent decades is a new,

upstart phenomenon flying in the face of the " accomplishments " of

established conventional medicine.

 

The " accomplishments " of conventional medicine, which incidentally has

existed in its present form for barely a century, have been meticulously

documented in their many guises in the Digest. In Digest #17, for

example, I explained how, according to the Journal of the American

Medical Association(JAMA), conventional medicine's mouthpiece,

prescription errors and side effects for conventional drugs cost $76

billion a year. Evidence was presented showing that the true cost of

prescription drugs is really double the sticker price.

 

InDigest #17, we cited another JAMA report that chronic illness now

affects 100 million Americans, costing about $659 billion in total

yearly costs. Any crowing about the accomplishments of conventional

medicine must be tempered (and deflated) by these sobering failures.

 

Second, Dr. Rosenfeld ignores the intense 150-year struggle between

conventional and alternative medicines. He offers the following advice

to consumers: " Look very carefully " into each alternative modality, he

says, and check to see if the American Medical Association (AMA) has

" approved " it before you use it.

 

The AMA is about as likely to " approve " alternative medicine as the

Pentagon is to reveal the truth about germ warfare in the Gulf War.

After all, the AMA was one of the key players in the move to run the

homeopaths and herbalists out of the American medical scene.

 

Third, Dr. Rosenfeld clearly does not understand the first thing about

alternative medicine-that it reverses illness by addressing the root

cause. Dr. Rosenfeld sees the field as a sometimes useful adjunct to

conventional treatments of symptoms, but almost never as a first-line

approach. Generally, he advises patients to always try all conventional

approaches first, then, if all else fails, to consider an alternative

but only in consultation with a conventional doctor. He couldn't qualify

his support for alternative medicine any more without it becoming an

outright dismissal.

 

Dr. Rosenfeld seems unaware of the fact that, increasingly, patients are

taking their own medical decisions in hand, ignoring their conventional

doctors. Dr. Rosenfeld's recommendation to always use conventional

medicine first also seems destined to prevent healing. That's because,

on the one hand, conventional medicine never looks for root causes and

treats only body parts, isolated symptoms, and increasingly microscopic

aspects of physiology. On the other hand, the major modalities in

alternative medicine need an open playing field: that is, a patient

whose body is unencumbered by conventional drugs and approaches which

ruin the immune system and deeply suppress the body's highly vital

self-healing capacity.

 

Let's focus on how Dr. Rosenfeld assesses certain alternative

modalities. Dr. Rosenfeld criticizes homeopathy because it does not

reliably reduce dental pain or allegedly work as well as antibiotics

against infections. He conveniently ignores-more likely, he does not

understand-that homeopathy addresses deep-set illness dispositions and

tendencies in the whole and unique patient and was never meant to be

exclusively a first-aid modality.

 

Reducing dental pain was never put forward by practicing homeopaths as

homeopathy's chief virtue. However, if Dr. Rosenfeld had done his

homework-even a little of it-he would find many reports from

practitioners on how to successfully use certain homeopathic remedies to

reduce tooth and gum pain, swelling, infection, and other dental

problems.

 

Regarding chelation therapy, Dr. Rosenfeld asserts there is " no real

proof " that it works against heart disease and he advises patients to

" go the conventional route first. " He would rather you spend the $72,000

for a bypass (probably followed by more bypasses within a few years)

than the $3,000 that chelation costs to reliably and safely clean out

your arteries.

 

Unilaterally ignoring volumes of research, Dr. Rosenfeld next

erroneously asserts that the theory of chiropractic is " disjointed, "

that hyperbaric oxygen therapy is ineffective against stroke, and that

enzyme therapy is incapable of producing benefits in cases of

infections, arthritis, or cancer. The Digest has amply documented

successes in all these fields.

 

Dr. Rosenfeld dismisses the Gerson Diet therapy for cancer (despite its

clinically proven efficacy for skin cancer) because it's too much work

for cancer patients. That's true: it requires much less effort to lay

back and be systematically poisoned by chemotherapy or radiation, but

the cancer reversal rate is far lower for this approach.

 

Similarly ignoring the medical facts, Dr. Rosenfeld tells readers that

high doses of vitamin C have no benefit in cancer treatment and that a

daily intake exceeding 1000 mg can produce unpleasant side effects.

Here, his appalling lack of actual medical knowledge coupled with truly

bad advice puts the gullible reader at risk.

 

Among the vast body of evidence supporting the benefits of vitamin C,

consider the fact that Nobel laureate and chemist Linus Pauling, Ph.D.,

who died at age 93, attributed his longevity in part to the long-term

consumption of high doses of vitamin C, which for him was 18,000 mg (18

g) daily, in divided doses.

 

Dr. Rosenfeld thinks he is aiding the consumer new to the complex field

of alternative medicine by outlining criteria by which a " quack " may be

recognized. For the discriminating reader, Dr. Rosenfeld's performance

in this book suggests another definition of quackery: The physician who

poses as an expert when he really knows nothing about the subject and

nonetheless attempts to discredit it. " There's a sucker born every

minute, " Dr. Rosenfeld warns. Unless you read his book with extreme care

and vigilance, it may be you.

_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

DietaryTi-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Diets.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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