Time for a 'regime change' in attitude about medicine

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/08/EDGNE95Q191.DTL

Donald E. Harte

Friday, October 8, 2004

Poof! Half of our flu vaccine is gone, because the British government suspended the license of a major manufacturer, Chiron, over a contamination problem. Is this a public health nightmare, as the "authorities" are crying, or an opportunity to stop and think?

The Chiron disaster comes as these authorities are now telling us that the flu vaccine is desperately needed not just for senior citizens, but also for infants and pregnant women. Besides the fact that the vaccine is not uniformly effective and often gives people the flu, it contains a witch's brew of toxic chemicals including mercury and aluminum. Is this something that a pregnant woman, and her baby, should be exposed to? This sudden shortage would seem more a blessing!

On another front, Vioxx, the much-advertised, much-prescribed arthritis "wonder drug" was pulled off the market last month because it doubles the risk of heart disease (including "sudden cardiac death") and stroke. It turns out that a good part of this knowledge about Vioxx's danger was suspected since 1999. It also turns out that Vioxx, despite the slick TV and magazine ads, has not been shown to be significantly more effective than the much cheaper nonprescription anti-inflammatories such as Tylenol and Advil.

The Chiron flu vaccine and Vioxx fiascos are not isolated incidents. Two years ago, after decades of doctors pushing hormone replacement therapy for virtually every menopausal woman (as if menopause was a disease), alleging side benefits of decreasing rates of heart disease, stroke and cancer, it became known that HRT actually causes these ailments. Anyone in the field should have realized that sex hormones (including estrogen) are, chemically, steroids, very powerful and usually dangerous when used as drugs.

The examples don't stop there: The diabetes drug Rezulin was pulled from the market because it was killing people by destroying their livers; a vaccine for infants to prevent diarrhea due to rotavirus was pulled because of deaths caused by the intestines folding up into themselves; and the anti-cholesterol drug, Baycol, was withdrawn due to deaths from a condition known as rhabdomyolysis, in which muscle tissue breaks down into the blood, after which it clogs the kidneys.

In the not too distant medical past (in the 20th century), we can look back on radium nasal suppositories for sinus infections, numerous mercury- based drugs commonly prescribed for a variety of diseases, tonsils yanked out of almost every child (forgetting that the tonsils are an important part of the immune system) and frontal lobotomies, insulin shock and electroshock for various mental disorders. All these catastrophes were once "state of the art."

Back in 1991, the British Medical Journal, one of the oldest and most respectable scientific journals in the world, published an editorial entitled "Where is the wisdom? The poverty of medical evidence." The author, Dr. Richard Smith, stated that "... only about 15 percent of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence. This is partly because only 1 percent of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound, and partly because many treatments have never been assessed at all."

These days, whatever has previously been somewhat scientific has been perverted for commercial gain by the pharmaceutical giants. DTC ("direct-to- consumer") drug ads have become ubiquitous on TV, radio and in magazines. Patients come in demanding a particular drug, and doctors usually prescribe it. Medical education itself, both pre- and post-graduate, is sponsored, to a great degree, by pharmaceutical companies, which get naming rights for their donations (e.g., Purdue Pharma Pain Center at Massachusetts General Hospital).

What should you do if you have been on drugs that have been pulled? Just go on to the next "wonder drug"? Some count on the "next wave," like gene therapy or stem-cell therapy. I assure you that, in these cases as well, the "wonder drug," or therapy, of today, will be the "blunder drug," or therapy, of tomorrow.

In the realm of health care, it is time for a mental "regime change." The modern obsession with high tech cannot, rationally, extend to health care in the form of trust in the next medical breakthrough.

There are two alternate choices for your health. One is to consider "alternative medicine," such as Chinese medicine and homeopathy, which are considered safer than establishment medicine. However, like traditional medicine, they still rely on diagnosis and treatment.

The other alternate road is totally different, philosophically as well as practically. It leads to the ultimate high tech, the wisdom within the body, its innate intelligence. The type of doctor who has respect for this intelligence -- making sure that it is expressed more fully, resulting in healing, resulting in health, resulting in wellness -- is the chiropractor. When people read books by Harvard-trained "alternative" doctors like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil, they think that it is so cool that they have discovered that the body can heal itself. Chiropractic has been saying this for more than 100 years.

Chiropractic has no contamination problems, no recalls, no death, no faked or commercialized research. And we don't care about any shortage of flu vaccine!

Donald E. Harte, a doctor of chiropractic in Corte Madera, is a governor of the World Chiropractic Alliance (www.worldchiropracticalliance.org).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/08/EDGNE95Q191.DTL

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