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Allopathic vs Holistic 2
Part 2 of Allopathic vs Holisitc
Date: 6/25/2005 4:03:44 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 16042 times Part 1 here
Allopathic vs Holsitic continued
Tim O Shea
UNSCIENTIFIC? GET SOME NEW MATERIAL!
Allopathic medicine has always criticized holistic medicine with the same complaint down through the years, persisting intact to the present time: the same thing over and over - alternative medicine is unscientific, unproven, not supported by controlled clinical trials, undocumented in peer-reviewed journals, and anecdotal. They don't really say Alternative doesn't work; just that it's unproven. What this implies of course is that mainstream allopathy is objectively scientific and proven by clinical research.
There are two big problems with such claims:
1. it's apples and oranges
2. "science" is really not that scientific
Apples and oranges. Two different things, totally different paradigms. Alternative medicine is not just a different way to cure the diseases we might get. It is not competing with anyone in the Disease Care market. Holistic medicine doesn't cure diseases. It promotes a healthy condition which is not conducive to disease, by purifying the biological terrain, to allow the body to express its natural potential. All the time.
Healthy people don't get sick. No colds, no headaches, no arthritis, no diabetes, no heart disease, no cancer they don't get sick. Holistic medicine doesn't wait around for some disease or other to show up. Holistic medicine is something you do every day whether you feel good or bad. It's not a cure - it's a lifestyle. Improved quality of life.
Dean Black talks about empirical data being just as valid as controlled studies. Empirical means that what is commonly apparent and successful over a number of years does not need to be "proven."
Here's an example: For centuries, horse owners have customarily put goldfish in their horses' watering troughs in order to keep algae from forming. Now, no one may have ever conducted formal studies to prove it works, but anyone with a brain in his head knows empirically that the water stays cleaner and has to be changed less often if goldfish are kept in the troughs.
Much of allopathy is also empirical. Aspirin, for example. Probably the most common drug in the world, but it has never been proven in scientific trials. Controlled tests for aspirin's effectiveness have never been done. But it's a drug, with very consistent results: 20,000 tons of aspirin are consumed every year.
For that matter, surgery itself has never been subjected to clinical trials! It's just a tradition ・empirical. And with modern elective, exploratory surgeries and the latest 'prophylactic' surgeries (not the Trojan kind; the just-in-case kind), the mood seems now to be frivolous, cavalier about whacking off this or that body part.
In a different way, the strength of holistic methods often lies in their empirically demonstrable value. Chiropractic, for one, has been around for over 100 years, with millions of people being cared for. The benefits of spinal correction are easily shown and easily understood. Chiropractic doesn't have to be "proven" except to a defense lawyer or someone with a political agenda to attack it. Same way with acupuncture. The 12 meridians and the thousands of herbs employed by acupuncturists - none of this has been "proven" by strict "scientific" studies. After 4000 years, acupuncture is still around, and people still choose it as a helpful treatment. Also for the minute dilutions employed by homeopathic medicine - these have never been written up in NEJM after double blind studies showed their effectiveness.
Allopathic posturing pretends that all drugs and procedures have been thoroughly tested in objective scientific research studies, which guarantees both safety and effectiveness. There are some basic problems with such a wish.
First of all, in the "controlled" study, scientists pretend they are testing some drug by isolating just one single variable, and holding all other factors the same, in order to prove the effectiveness of the drug. The only way to do this is to place the subjects in a position of uncertainty and helplessness: the "double-blind" study. That means that supposedly neither the researchers nor the subjects know who's getting the drug and who's getting the placebo sugar pill. The point is, the whole structure of such a design is flawed. Why? Because we're dealing with the innate healing systems of the human body. It doesn't respond normally in a situation of helplessness and uncertainty. That's not its normal condition. That's not how people live their lives. So the outcomes of such artificial situations as the sacred double blind study are going to be essentially meaningless when applied to the normal everyday physiology of a healthy human.
Rene' Dubos saw through this mirage back in 1957:
"Ideally, the experimenter works in a closed system, affected only by the determinants that he has introduced, under the conditions he has selected. Naturally, however, events never occur in a closed system. They are determined and modified by circumstances and forces that cannot be foreseen, let alone controlled."
- The Mirage of Health
That's the first problem.
Then there's the problem of the politics of reporting data. Fraud in reporting of data used in medical journal articles is rampant. John Braithwaite, MD, a UN researcher and the author of a study entitled "Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry" has meticulously documented the indigenous type of phony data associated with "studies" in many countries, even those that are reported in the "peer-reviewed" journals:
"Data fabrication is so widespread, that it is called 'making' in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, and 'graphiting' or 'dry labeling' in the United States Pharmaceutical companies face great temptations to mislead health authorities about the safety of their products .Inquiries into scientific fraud in the US have shown that there is a substantial problem of safety testing of drugs in the US, just as has been documented in Japan."
You don't even have to think about it to realize why. A drug company may spend $100 million and five years doing testing to try and get a drug approved by the FDA. Since they are paying for the "research" themselves, guess what happens to data that is coming out unfavorable to their expectations? Often the study is cancelled. With the researchers trying to get funding for the next phase of research - are they going to be rewarded for positive or negative data about the drug being studied? Which one?
CLINICAL EXPERIENCE IS ANECDOTAL
Anecdotal is another favorite word used to slam holistic medicine. Allopaths say that holistic methods are unscientific because results are simply anecdotal, meaning case by case. The real meaning of anecdotal, however, is case history. In actuality, in the practice of medicine nothing is more important than the case history. That's how people's lives really are affected by illness and by health; case history is what really happens to people, real people - the patients who really walk in the door. The point here is that actual case histories cannot be controlled by studies bought and paid for by those whose interests are best served by a certain outcome. "Scientific" studies and reporting can be controlled by political and economic consideration - unwanted research topics never get funding; unwanted data often is ignored or not reported. By contrast, patients who actually walk in the door are not subjects in a research project.
Hundreds of case histories, anecdotal individual cases, year after year accumulate to give a doctor the most valuable source of information possible: clinical observation. The years of experience and clinical observation - these are not to be trivialized as something intrinsically inferior to the "real science" that gets published in medical journals.
Mainstream medicine may use this "anecdotal" ploy not only against holistic ideas, but also against any medical ideas or research that is beginning to stray outside the fold of Pharmaceutical Economics. New ideas are not welcome until the Angle has been figured out. For now, just remember this - the word "anecdotal" is a red flag that means "probable snowjob ahead."
SCIENTIFIC?
At least 100,000 deaths a year from prescription drugs that were correctly prescribed and administered - wait a minute. All these drugs are tested by randomized, double blind controlled clinical trials, right? So they're all "scientifically proven" to work, right? Employing the most rigorous of scientific testing procedures, only the drugs that have made it through all that are allowed to be put on the market, right? So what's all this posturing about, that alternative medicine isn't reproducible in clinical trials, LIKE REAL MEDICINE IS. Here we have the finished products of their own scientific processes, so I want to know, why are 160 of them taken off the market every year only to be replaced by about the same number? And why are they killing all these people? Many are starting to notice this!
Here's a recent example. The FDA recently approved a new vaccine for Lyme Disease. (M2 Presswire 12/23/98) Only problem is, they're admitting it's only 50% effective. Now think about that! This is a new drug that has successfully passed through the whole ritual of tests and approval, and now doctors are allowed to prescribe it and sell it. At 50% efficacy! What about the other 50%? But this vaccine is now "scientifically" tested! No wonder side effects of correctly prescribed prescription drugs is now the FOURTH leading cause of death.
Here's another example of science. Ciba-Geigy, the Swiss drug giant who brought Ritalin to the world, was ordered by a Tokyo court to pay $17 million in damages when it was proven that their drug Oxychinol had caused at least 100 deaths and 30,000 cases of blindness or paralysis. (Ruesch, p 18) What was the drug for? Indigestion when travelling! The drug was sold under 168 different names in Japan alone. After they were fined, Ciba-Geigy continued to market the drug all over the world! (Geneva Press Conference on SMON)
It comes down to this: if allopathic medicine is so scientific and meticulously proven, why does it have such a deplorable showing when it comes to effectiveness? How are we doing with disease? Are we getting healthier or sicker year by year? If it's working so well why are people spending now $30 billion dollars out of their own pockets for alternatives (JAMA, Apr 98) many of which are really shaky.
Especially now, with the Internet in operation, it is getting much harder to cover up the inability of allopathic medicine to deliver the goods:
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Continual increase in degenerative diseases
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1 in 12 babies born in America with birth defects
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U.S is #22 in infant mortality compared with other nations (UNICEF)
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largest health budget in history - $1.2 trillion
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Increased numbers of deaths from cancer and heart disease every year (Vital Statistics 1950-1994)
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Access to non-mainstream uncontrolled media sources like the Internet
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Increase in iatrogenic disease and deaths (caused by hospitals)
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Increase in deaths and complications from standard childhood vaccinations (Sanctity of Human Blood
THEIR TROUGH RUNNETH OVER
Now I don't want to belabor the idea, but it's fundamental in any discussion of modern American health care not to get too warm and fuzzy about philosophical issues without acknowledging what really determines the direction of mainstream medical policy: profit. The Coin, not the Quonh. Today's HMOs are no longer run by doctors; they're run by corporate execs. As you try to understand how things could have gotten this out of hand, try and keep the following in mind:
between 1959 and 1979 the consumer price index rose by 74%. In that same period, the cost of medical care went up by 330%
- Limits to Medicine,
- in 1939, the medical budget was $3.5 billion
- In 1985,the medical budget was at $360 billion per year (Alan Levin)
- In 1991, the medical budget was at $750 billion per year (Alan Levin)
- In 1999, the medical budget was over $1.2 trillion per year
Ideas that get in the way of this Machine get opposed by any and every means.
WHAT DO AMERICANS DIE FROM?
Every year 2.3 million Americans cash in their chips, buy the ranch, go to meet Elvis... (Vital Statistics, 1999) Here's why:
TOP 10 CAUSES OF DEATH IN THE U.S.
1. heart disease 720,000
2. cancer 539,000
3. stroke 159,000
4 pulmonary disease 109,000
5. accidents- 95,000
6. pneumonia/influenza 84,000
7. diabetes 62,000
8. suicide 30,000
9. kidney disease 25,000
10. liver disease 25,000
Adding up these top ten causes comes to about 1.8 million. According to Vital Statistics, the standard publication of the National Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control, the other half million deaths come from miscellaneous causes like homicide, AIDS, snakebites, and less common diseases.
But watch how statistics are twisted. From the following sources, we now know that at least 400,000 deaths are caused by prescription drugs and medical error.
"150,000 to 300,000 Americans are injured or killed each year because of medical negligence (i.e., mistreated diseases, surgeries, drug reactions, misprescribed drugs.)" -- Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13, 1993.
Right up there with deaths from medications come deaths from medical error. Besides the 100,000 people dying from drugs every year an additional 180,000 patients die each year from medical mistakes, being injured while in the hospital, and another 1 million are injured. This is from Journal of the American Medical Association, July 5, 1995, 274:29-34.
A more recent source is the startling admission of David Lawrence, MD, the Chief Executive of the nation's largest HMO ・Kaiser Permanente. In the 15 July 1999 issue of the Oakland Tribune, Dr. Lawrence states that medical mistakes now kill some 400,000 Americans every year, more than all the deaths from alcohol, firearms and tobacco combined. (Rosenblatt)
Different sources different figures - Ralph Nader, JAMA Apr 98, JAMA, July 5, 1995, Wall St. Journal, Oakland Tribune Jul 99. But all agree on one idea: more Americans are dying of prescription drugs every year than died in the entire Vietnam War (55,000) and the Battle of Gettysburg (50,000) put together. Probably way more. Where is the objection? Where is the outcry?
Anybody clocking this? The most conservative medical estimates put the total deaths per year from prescription drugs and hospital errors together at 300,000 per year. It's probably 10 times more, as the editor of the Apr 98 JAMA stated in his editorial on p 1216. If the number of deaths from these two causes combined is only twice as many as these lowest conservative figures, that puts medical error and drug side effect deaths as the Number One cause of death in the U.S. today, which is more than likely.
Now going back to the top ten causes of death above, see the overlap? Medical error is not even listed by Vital Statistics as a cause of death. How many of these medical mistakes and drug effects caused the heart attacks or strokes, which are listed? Nobody knows ・they don't track it. But again, it's very possible that medical error and prescription drugs are the number one cause of death in the U.S. today, especially considering the estimate of the JAMA editor that only 10% get reported.
No wonder your grandfather doesn't want to go to the hospital. That's called the Survival Instinct.
A DOUBLE STANDARD
Allopaths want holistic cures to be subject to the same "rigors" of scientific testing as "real drugs" must go through.
Allopaths hope to give the impression that mainstream pharmacology and standard hospital procedures are "backed by scientific research" and are therefore not only safe, but superior to any procedures of Alternative Medicine. In this way, with the help of the legislature and the twin Doberman FDA and FTC, natural cures will be forced out of the market. $5.8 billion every year is spent reinforcing the inaccurate notion of the "scientific validity" of mainstream medicine into the public awareness: in commercials, medical publications and general media. (CLA, Jan 99)
Scientific? Fully 80% of surgical procedures have never been tested for safety or efficacy in clinical trials. As for The Machines glittering all throughout the hospital, there are no standards of efficacy for an instrument to be introduced into practice, except incorporation into the insurance billing codes. No machine ever has to be proven to be of any value whatsoever. The patient's long-term welfare is not an issue. In addition, it is an
" amazing fact that physicians are not required to be certified by any independent professional organization to show they know the proper use of the medical devices they operate "
Did I mention that drugs are now the leading cause of death in the U.S.?
Science stopped being scientific when the legislature started being controlled by the drug and oil lobbies. And that was a while ago. Why then does the public instinctively regard alternative methods as less scientific than drugs and surgery, even though paradoxically, holistic methods are being chosen more and more?
It's a one-word answer:
CONDITIONING
First of all, commercials. Drug advertising is the largest single source of revenue to TV, most medical journals, and many nonmedical publications. How long can you watch TV without seeing a drug ad? Five minutes? Ten? Whose commercials do you see at the breaks in the "expose｢s" on some natural health technique? Three guesses. Only logical - the drug advertisers are TV's bread and butter. Do you think the drug companies want to see shows that illustrate the value of some holistic natural cure?
Second, medical publications. This is becoming a really embarrassing. The two most respected medical journals in the U.S. are Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. Get any issue of either of these and start leafing through it. You will notice that the full color drug ads literally crowd out the articles. So what point of view do you think is going to be supported in the few articles that actually get printed in between all these centerfolds? It's not uncommon even to see full-page ads for MacDonald's in these top two medical journals! Talking about nutrition! Peer-reviewed? What good is that when all the "peers" are fighting for crumbs off the same plate?
The third area we see the Drug Cartel's advertising millions is in the popular press: newspapers, magazines, books. Anyone who thinks a newspaper exists to report the news has not been paying attention. All this First Amendment stuff is phony posturing - the printed media is the only business that tries to pretend that it's not a business. Newspapers exist to make money. They make money by selling newspapers, by advertising, and by presenting favorable images for those in power. Ever notice how at least once a week, there is a feature story about the latest "breakthrough" drug or procedure? It may be real general, or might even be a teaser, like it's 'coming soon,' often with very tentative or shaky research. But these articles, even though they look like reporting, are not reporting. They are advertising, and are paid for. Dictated by the press releases of the AMA. Check out the credentials of the "Health Science" editor. His last assignment was probably movie reviews.
More than a century ago, Leo Tolstoy put it like this:
"All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat." - Letter to Prince V. 1871
No different in Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, or any of the giant glossy magazine conglomerates like Conde' Nast - look at the big ads. These ads are an indicator of the point of view you'll see represented in the "objective" reporting in the articles. It's all there, just below the surface.
In the past couple of years, a bold step was taken in magazine advertising: marketing new drugs directly to the consumer, so they'll know which drugs to ask the doctor for. Ads that formerly only appeared in medical journals are now popping up in magazines found at any newsstand. (Life, June 1999, pp 13, 60, 117) Take a step back from this brazen commercialism and see what the industry is actually doing. They're cutting out the middleman. Now we have lay people with no medical training or credentials whatsoever who think they are informed enough to self-prescribe a drug just because they saw a two-page ad in Life or Newsweek. What about case history, side effects, drug interactions, or the opinion of an experienced physician in deciding the appropriateness of a medication for a given patient? What's wrong with this picture? Any doubts about who's really running the show?
WHITE PUNKS ON DOPE
With some 12,000 drugs remaining on the market at any one time (Gorman), almost 100 new drugs are approved every two years. (FDA Medical Officer's Report, 1998) Let's see - why would that be? Why after all those millions and all those years of scientific testing would a company not be absolutely certain that a drug would be safe and effective? Why? Why are there always new drugs? They're not getting better and better every year; our health is not improving because of the increased quality of our drugs. Here's why: the real testing is done on human patients, after the drug hits the market. When enough people die or get major side effects, as with DES, chloramphenicol, thalidomide, fen-phen, Seldane, rotavirus vaccine, and dozens of others, AND a drug gets bad press, only then will the FDA pull it off the market. Even then the drug often continues to be sold in Europe, Asia, or South America!
Take a guess how many drugs are found to have major side effects after they are placed on the market:
"Overall, 51 percent of approved drugs have serious adverse effects which are not detected prior to approval." - JAMA 1998; 279:1571-1573
Who are the lab rats here? Is this the high standard to which allopaths would hold holistic cures? The point is, they demand that the scientific proof they pretend to have for pharmaceuticals should be required for alternative therapies as well, but without all the false reporting and manipulation of data. Standards, anyone? Make mine a Double.
HERE'S HOW WE'RE REALLY DOING:
The following tables document the increase in several leading killer diseases, and tell the story about infant mortality as well:
Cancer continues on the rise.
Mortality from Cancer in the U.S. year --- deaths/ 100,000
1967 157.2
1970 162.9
1982 187.3
1987 198.2
1988 198.4
1989 201.0
1990 203.2
1991 204.1
1992 204.1
source: Vital Statistics of the United States vol.II 1967-1992 In 1994, mortality went to 220 per 100,000. (CA Journal for Cancer Clinicians Jan 97)
Seen these figures in Newsweek lately? How about the Chronicle?
Heart disease, of course, is the #1 killer of Americans. The most common kind is called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Look at these death rates:
COPD YEAR--- DEATHS per 100,000
1970 15
1980 24
1900 34
1993 39
1994 39
source: Statistical Abstracts of the U.S. p. 94
Let's see how we're doing with diabetes, the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.
DIABETES
YEAR DEATHS PER 100,000
1900 11
1940 26
1970 18
1992 19.8
1994 21.2
SOURCE: Historical Abstracts of the U.S. p58
How about asthma incidence? Are all those kids walking around with inhalators getting better?
Here is a graph from the National Health Interview Survey, ADR 277 NIH. Top line shows asthma prevalence. Bottom line shows office visits for asthma
Think asthma has declined since 1994? Check out the headline story on the front page of the San Jose Mercury on 4 Sep 99: "Asthma at Epidemic Levels." This article quotes CDC figures stating that asthma incidence has risen from 6.7 million cases in 1980 to 17.3 million cases in 1999. Every year, 5000 of these cases are fatal, despite over $14 billion per year currently spent on treatment. (Borenstein)
Septicemia, or blood infection, is also moving up the ladder:
SEPTICEMIA
YEAR DEATHS per 100,000
1970 1.7
1980 4.2
1990 7.7
1993 8.0
source: Statistical Abstracts of the U.S.
I don't think Semmelweis, Pasteur, or Alexander Fleming would be too impressed by these modern figures of Americans dying from blood infections every year in the 1990s.
Our babies aren't doing that great either:
INFANT MORTALITY RATES AND RANKS:
Slovenia? We're behind them? And Italy? Half of Italy is Third World. And Greece spends one tenth of our medical budget PER CAPITA!
Now we could go on and on with this, but I think you may be getting the idea. People are getting tired of watching their grandparents die, and then a generation later, watching their parents die of the same diseases. It's only fancy dancing and playing with statistics that is vainly trying to keep up the illusion that everything's fine. You can spin it any way you want, but one immutable fact is just sitting there like the elephant in the living room: we don't have health care in this country; we have Disease Care, and it's NOT WORKING.
The above charts are the unadorned figures, kept well hidden by confusing analyses of dozens of other factors. Age, race, sex, and geographic area data can easily obscure the bottom line: that as a nation we're getting sicker, not healthier.
"The true miracle of modern medicine is diabolical. It consists in making not only individuals but whole populations survive on inhumanly low levels of personal health."
- Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis
Medical researcher John Lesso also is less than taken by the effectiveness of the mainstream approach:
"Allopathic medicine, also known as 'modern medicine,' has unfortunately been largely ineffective in dealing with most diseases, and more than often it introduces further problems. Ironically, most of our present-day afflictions are the direct result of inappropriate lifestyle and environment, and therefore can usually be prevented."
- "Health In Crisis," intro
People are beginning to spend several billion dollars per year out of their own pockets for simple, natural healing methods not covered by their "health plans." Each year, it's more. The dwarfing of natural medicine by mainstream medicine is becoming less apparent year by year as the failures of drugs and surgery become more difficult to hide. A study that appeared in JAMA, Nov 1998, showed that the American people now make 629 million visits to alternative practitioners every year, compared with 386 million visits to their primary doctors! (Eisenman) The entire budget for alternative care is between $21 and $32 billion. And 46% of the population are going to alternative medicine practitioners these days. A fundamental shift has started.
Doesn't really sound like "alternative" is quite the right word any more, does it?
ALLOPATHIC SUPERIORITY
In fairness, the allopathic approach does have its areas of supremacy and brilliance, however. If I am in a motorcycle accident on the freeway and get opened up or broken up, don't take me to a holistic healer. Allopathic mainstream medicine has evolved the most advanced emergency trauma procedures in history. For truly life-threatening situations, as long as they don't get carried away when they see four-star coverage, the mainstream approach should be chosen. Other areas of advanced and valuable technology include eye surgery, wart removal, teflon joint replacements, and arthroscopic procedures, after holistic supports and nutritional approaches have failed.
CHRONICS
Almost 80% of medical treatment in this country however is for chronic conditions: in 1995, the number or people with 1 or more chronic illnesses was estimated to be almost 100 million. (JAMA, November 13, 1996) The authors of this study concluded that medical treatments are often not effective for chronic conditions, which is obvious when looking at the above statistical charts. So we're talking about $800 billion out of the $1.2 trillion medical budget that isn't really doing its job. Some re-vamping may be in order. That was your money!
Q & A
With just a faint glimmer of doubt cast upon any given medical situation and diagnosis, perhaps now the reader will be motivated to get a second opinion, not a second medical opinion, but a second health opinion, a holistic one - an opinion based not on what is good for the doctor or the hospital or the insurance company, but what is best for the patient's long term health. Apply the following simple principles to any medical decision that must be made:
THE ILLUSION OF MEDICAL FREEDOM
Medical freedom is the idea that the individual should have a choice of any therapeutic system he feels will restore health. Unfortunately this freedom was left out of the Constitution. The father of American psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had wanted to include it, realizing the problems its omission might spawn. Rush said that if medical freedom were not guaranteed and specified, it was likely that one group of doctors would monopolize health care by passing legislation to outlaw their competition - other types of health care.
He sure called that one.
Dr. Schulze points out: "Over the past 80 years, organized medical groups and pharmaceutical companies, using lawyers, bribes, lobbies, insurance companies, and the strong arm of the FDA, have been very busy. They have corrupted elected officials to pass laws to remove any competition. They have crushed Natural Doctors, Natural Medicine, and Self-Care. Their goal is to monopolize health care and make us dependent on medical doctors and drugs. They have made many healing herbs, foods, and even nutrients illegal Organized medicine has outlawed words for other health professionals to use, such as Diagnose and Cure. Just by using these words you can be arrested for "Practicing Medicine Without a License."
Examples are endless. Under the guise of "protecting the public" laws are passed and the twin Dobermans of the AMA - the FDA and the FTC - may be commanded to attack any natural healing method that doesn't promote drugs and surgery. To cite just a few:
- The 150-year war against homeopathy, the AMA's first rival, whose destruction was targeted in the AMA's founding charter.
- The 11-year antitrust suit against the AMA won by chiropractors in 1989 proved a short-lived victory. Since then, DCs have been systematically pushed out of a large portion of insurance coverage in the country. (Lisa)
-The FTC's recent attack on a definition of chiropractic that has been in effect for over 100 years
- The recent attack by the FDA on holistic nutrition companies which claim specific health benefits
- Systematic persecution of doctors who have had extensive clinical success treating cancer with natural, non-drug medicines: Burzynski, Donsbach, Kelley, Anderson, Schulze, Hoxsey, Naessens (Options)
PRACTICING SANITY WITHOUT A LICENSE
To question a system of disease care that is too market-driven to be interested in health - that's a sane course. Step back from the whole picture a moment and look what has happened here: the triumvirate of Disease Care that rules America today - the AMA, the FDA, and FTC - have been empowered by the legislature to make it a capital crime to "practice medicine without a license" or to claim to cure disease without a medical license. OK. So tell me, where did they derive that power from? Who gave them the right to determine what constitutes "medicine" and what doesn't? Where were we when we gave them permission to determine what branches of the healing arts should be available to us any time we wish? How is science able to be legislated? How can any real scientific progress take place?
The illusion the allopaths have sold the people is that such legislation is "for the protection" of the people, to protect them from fraud, and that people might be distracted by wacky unscientific quacks who will deter them from getting the real "scientific" medicine they need. But which is the more sacred trust - medical freedom of choice or protecting the people from fraud? The people can protect themselves from fraud. In fact that's exactly what medical freedom is: to have the right to decide for oneself what is fraud and what is useful. Otherwise it's the Fox guarding the Chicken Coop.
For true medical freedom to exist, a wide range of health options must be available at all times, even wacky ones. The effective ones will survive. The choice should not be subject to legislation for the obvious reason that politics and big money control the legislators. That's what we've seen all through history - people dying by being forced to take medications that were deemed the most scientific at the time, which coincidentally meant the ones researched and paid for the powers who controlled both the medical research facilities AND the legislature that enforces the findings of that research.
In America today, there is only the most grudging type of medical freedom in effect. Peripheral alternative therapies are allowed to flit around the perimeter, subject to being targeted and attacked any time the Triumvirate gets a notion to make an example of somebody. Control of the media, "science," and the court system can put a stop to practically any holistic practitioner or company, as evidenced in Walters' book of vanished, suppressed technologies (Options).
Illegal for anyone but an MD to claim to cure disease? Who are the quacks? Look at allopathic cure rates for degenerative disease, cited above, in the past 75 years. Their primary "cure" - prescription drugs - is now the fourth leading cause of death, by their own statistics! Who's making false medical claims here? Are they pretending nobody notices this? Ever notice the only types of "fraud" charges ever levied by the Triumvirate are against natural non-drug non-surgical cures? The true fraud runs rampant.
But today with the online flow of information as yet ungoverned in this country, allopathy is looking around for something to change into. And it's coming soon to your town: Alternative Lite. Refer to that chapter.
BOTTOM LINE?
Just remember this: holistic medicine says the body can usually heal itself. Allopathic medicine says it can't, and requires powerful interventions. Allopathic is constantly posturing that it "understands" the body well enough to chemically take control "for its own good." Unfortunately our disease statistics prove otherwise.
QUICK CURE VS. LIFESTYLE CHANGE
The illusion of allopathy is that diseases are just drug deficiencies: menopause is an estrogen deficiency, headache is an aspirin deficiency, diabetes is a fake insulin deficiency, thyroid disease is a fake thyroid hormone deficiency, depression is a Zoloft deficiency We'll diagnose your disease and give you the drug that cures it. Many people want an immediate cure, and they'd rather not participate in the process if at all possible, thank you. What they really want is something to stop the annoying symptoms - the cough, the joint pain, the fatigue, the bloating, the cancer - that at the same time will allow them to continue their present course of self-abuse.
Allopathic medicine has no problem with such a mindset.
Allopathic medicine is more than happy to reinforce the notion of Don't Worry About It, We'll Take Care of Everything. Allopathy wants people to abdicate responsibility for their own health. More compliant drug customers. How many times have you heard your doctor tell one of your family not to worry about a serious side effect of some drug or procedure, with the reasoning that our "cure rates" for that side effect are "very good." Go ahead and eat whatever you want; diet has nothing to do with this disease Uninformed people buy this sales pitch every day.
The holistic cure is slower, less dramatic, and unfortunately requires some effort on the part of the patient. Since the holistic cure doesn't chase symptoms, it's really not over when the patient "feels better." Since the holistic cure is from the inside out - from the nervous system and the blood on out - symptoms come and go day by day as the body retraces its steps back to health. Some days the patient feels fine, other days he may feel like hell - doesn't really matter if it's part of the healing process. The difference is that it's a lifestyle change. A mental paradigm shift opens up the world of a hundred possible daily boosts to overall health, always asking - how can I support the immune system, how can I reduce fatigue, how can I maximize nerve flow, how can I build up my nutrient reserves, how can I improve detoxification, how can I improve stamina... Everything the patient puts in his mouth, everything he does is a health decision that takes these questions into consideration. Finally the patient can say - OK, I've got it from here, and takes back the wheel of the Bus. Until that line is crossed, the patient will always be playing catch-up, by pretending to think that someone else can know his own body better than he does.
Many people are getting tired of seeing their parents die from the same diseases their grandparents died from.
They're turning in desperation to safer, more sensible, less insurance-driven methods, such as homeopathy, perfect diet, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, chelation, colonic therapy, whole food supplements, exercise, stress reduction, and blood detoxification. Many medical doctors are incorporating holistic methods into their practices, as they see the obvious failures of too many drugs.. The focus is on wellness, continually improving health. In Chapter 5, Alternative Lite, you will see how some medical doctors and the drug companies are trying to pretend like Alternative Medicine was their idea all along, instead of jumping off the pharmaceutical Titanic, like they're doing now.
LEt's GET REAL
It's amusing when super-optimistic holistic people think that General Enlightenment is coming, that soon everyone is going to be taking enzymes and antioxidants instead of Prozac and Synthroid, and that those evil allopaths are going to see the error of their ways and suddenly realize that health can only come from inside, not outside the body: wow, sorry, you guys were right all along! How obtuse of us! Here, you chiropractors and homeopaths, take charge of our hospitals!
And then will follow the great transformation to gentle, natural methods, supplements, and procedures, replacing the $1.2 trillion drugs-and-surgery show. And our health will skyrocket!
The truth is, allopaths will never get it. They can't get it. Why not? Simple: different objectives. The objective of allopathy is not, never has been, and cannot be the promotion of health as a normal condition. Allopathy cannot accept the idea that the universal intelligence inside the body, which evolved our species from the ocean, and developed every body system over countless millennia, that this intelligence is wiser and more powerful than manmade chemicals. Chemicals which are marketed by the merchants who control both law and medicine.
Allopathy needs the merchants, and the merchants need allopathy.
For a reality check, take a walk around your local hospital. Look at all that concrete, all that glass, all those floors, all the cars in the parking lot. Think how many hospitals are in your town. How many are in your state, in the U.S.? This is a system that has to be fed, that will defend itself. The financiers who run the whole allopathic setup are not predicting its demise any time soon, just because a few people are realizing it doesn't work. They've had bigger problems than that before. The $1.2 trillion budget of 2000 is projected to be $2 trillion by the year 2010. The 3 billion Rx's written this year will climb to 4 billion by 2004. (USA Today, 3 May 00)
Here's what's really going to happen, actually it's already happening: organized medicine must respond to the exploding popularity of Alternative therapies. They've already started, and the message is loud and clear: natural methods do work, we've always known that, and we have the best natural medicines, which won't interfere with your heart medication, your estrogen, your allergy shots, or your antidepressants. Feel good naturally, and safely! And consult your doctor.
Wow, I should write commercials! Point is, the push to subsume Alternative Medicine is already in full operation. Organized medicine will use the huge information machine at its disposal in order to confuse, dilute, and obscure the basic principles of natural healing methods, with the goal of trying to engulf Alternative Medicine into its own sphere. I have tried to put some perspective on this phenomenon in the chapter entitled Alternative Lite.
This is not to say that the holistic movement isn't growing. Of course it is. Chiropractic, the third largest health care service, behind dentistry, now cares for about 10% of the population, and shows consistent improvement in quality of life. Herb sales alone account for $4 billion. Acupuncture is being incorporated into many major medical plans. The real Alternative Medicine will do what it has always done: convert people to a more holistic lifestyle, one by one, by sheer attrition. Brick by brick.
Something founded on universal healing principles appeals to people on a level outside and above the influence exerted by loud, expensive, blatant advertising. People sense the truth of the holistic way: nurture the body, encourage it, support its own wisdom, remove interference and toxicity, and it will heal. Considering the comparative size and strength of the two opposing forces, expanded awareness will continue to be a slow, uphill progression, whose trajectory will depend on the ability of holistic teachers to demonstrate universal principles of healing, growth, and life.
Some 300 years ago, the German philosopher Wilhelm Leibniz predicted all this. He said there would be a scientific revolution, a long period of scientific analysis and overspecialization in which "science" would be worshipped over all else. No universal thinking would be considered. Then finally, Leibniz said, the wheel would turn and there would be an awakening to a holistic view, and many of the "scientific" approaches would be abandoned as barbaric and obsolete.
This chapter celebrates that new awakening.
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