Posted on 03/14/2005 3:25:09 AM PST by Humblebum
By Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD
ABSTRACT
A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million.1 Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.2, 2a
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million.3 The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million.4 The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.5
long article, click the link to read
"So what?" ditto
Could somone please tell me why it is required to have a license to practice medicine, if one chooses to make a living practicing medicine? Couldn't the free market handle the problems that would arise from unlicensed physicians?
I'm just wondering, I'm not sure why it's against the law to practice medicine without a license. And, for that matter, why are the requirements to practice law so stringent? Is this just a case of the government interfering with the free market for so long that it's all just taken for granted and this is the way it has to be?
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Smartaleck -- tell me specifically why so many OB/GYNs are refusing to handle births. Money-grubbing lawyers (including John Edwards and his buddies).
I can't. I'm merely trying to address the arguements against tort reform to wit, studies have shown that mal-practice suits aren't driving up cost....at least not dramatically.
I'm well aware of the experience you had but it doesn't address the question about the study. (The doc who delivered my kids was paying $250,000 a year twenty years ago.)
Such studies designed to generate headline-grabbing headlines are usually written along the same lines. When the party you want to bash shows up, everything in life must suddenly turn 100% risk-free.
If a man engages in high risk sexual behavior and contracts AIDS, then gets a pneumonia resistant to everything except the most high risk antibiotic treatment combination and then the toxicity of that high risk treatment kills the patient.............Then "Modern Medicine killed that patient" according to such a study.
Another example of such a study is the "100,000 Iraqi Civilians Died in the Iraq War" study that Left-wingers seem to quote in every Letter to the Editor that they write.
I wrote the following reply to one such Letter to the Editor in our local paper.
*****************************
Without taking into account the number of Iraqis no longer being put into mass graves by Saddam Hussein’s regime, Mr.XXXX stated that the Iraq War was “immoral” based on a claim of “the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.” killed by the Iraq War. The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health study that generated that number deserves scrutiny.
The Hopkins researchers did not see a single dead Iraqi. Instead, they interviewed 30 Iraqi households in 33 “clusters” in Iraq and asked about deaths in each household before and after the Iraq War. They then estimated a pre and post Iraq War death rate based on the answers, be they true or false, that they were given. The difference in the death rates, the Hopkins researchers claimed, was the number of so-called “excess deaths caused by the Iraq War”.
Two-thirds of all the violent deaths reported in the study took place in a single cluster: the Fallujah cluster that was the hotbed of Baathist Party. Yet, every so-called “excess death”, reported as caused by anything whatsoever from a lung cancer to getting struck by lightning , was automatically classified as an “excess death caused by the Iraq War” by the Hopkins researchers.
. Even worse, the “excess death” number was grossly inflated by using a falsely low pre-war death rate in the calculations. The pre 1991 Gulf War Iraqi death rate, according to the United Nations, was 6.8 per 1,000. The post 1991 Gulf War Iraqi death rate claimed by the Hopkins researchers was only 5.0 per 1,000. The same people who once claimed that one million Iraqis, including half a million children, were killed by U.N sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War now want us to believe that the death rate in Iraq actually DECREASED after the 1991 Gulf War in order to validate the Hopkins study numbers.
It’s a classic case of the GIGO (Garbage In – Garbage Out) Effect: “If invalid data is entered in a computer program, the resulting output will also be invalid.”
The most damning critique of the Hopkins study, however, is the study’s own “Confidence Interval” number. The Hopkins study stated, “We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.”
What does that mean in plain English? (95% CI 8000-194 000) means that the Hopkins researchers were 95% confident that their “excess deaths caused by the Iraq War” came out to anywhere from 8,000 deaths to 194,000 deaths.
What’s the population of (…our…) County? Well, there is a 95% chance that it is somewhere between 8,000 and 194,000.
As a critic of the Hopkins study wrote, “This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.”
A detailed critique of the flaws of the Hopkins study can be found at Democrat-friendly MSNBC Slate.com at the following URL:
100,000 Dead—or 8,000 How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?
Well, for one thing, the first thing that a State does when I apply for a medical license is to require me to prove that I actually have a medical education and to provide medical school and National Board certification documentation.
Practicing medicine is like driving a car. Before the State gives you a license to drive a car or practice medicine, the State wants to at least try to find out if you have the slightest clue about what you are doing.
Maybe I could post some pictures from 50 years ago of people that didn't make it because the drugs and diagnostic tools simply weren't available. But you wouldn't count any of that, because it doesn't fit that ax that you are determined to grind.
I sincerely hope that you never have need of modern medicine, but if that day ever comes, I would council you to relax and consider that you live in a day that has the best medical care in human history.
Another issue I did not address was the monetary cost of "defensive medicine".
For example, another poster brought up the fact that a young actress died when "doctors misdiagnosed her pneumonia".
She probably first presented with very minor symptoms that looked exactly like the common cold that every other 20-something year old in the office had that week, so a full-court press battery of lab tests and Chest X-Rays for the next 7 days in a row were not ordered.
So what happens?
The doctors are blamed for her death.
As a result, some doctors then begin to "treat the lawyer and not the patient" and start to order lab and radiology tests out the wazoo for every little thing that walks into his office.
As a radiologist, that mind set makes me a lot of money. :-)
Thanks for your reply.
I agree with you that modern medicine has done much to promote the high standard of living we are enjoying these days. But there are other factors to take into account, such as better working conditions, better nutrition, more education, etc. I also think the state's need to have some type of control over residents who venture onto public property in their automobiles is warranted.
However, I don't see the need for all physicians to be forced to meet standards set out by the government. Why shouldn't someone be able to study medicine on their own, hang out their shingle, charge less than a licensed physician, not need mal-practice insurance (because of waivers, or other binding documents signed by the patient before treatment) and make a fabulous living treating or advising all the non sue-happy people out there? Why wouldn't competition between licensed doctors and those practicing medicine without licenses be beneficial just as it is beneficial for licensed doctors to compete with each other?
"Practicing medicine is like driving a car. Before the State gives you a license to drive a car or practice medicine, the State wants to at least try to find out if you have the slightest clue about what you are doing."
Instead of being analogous to a driver's license, why isn't it analogous to carpentry, masonry, or auto repair? I know that these professions do have some sort of state oversight and requirements, but as a conservative don't you think the free market should be the ultimate oversight? Just like a bad plumber gets drummed out of the business by word of mouth between irate customers, who just might sue him if he messes up too badly, why wouldn't the same happen to non-licensed physicians if they were such hacks?
I think your posts have been well thought out and I would really like to know your thoughts on where the free market stops and government control begins even in such a delicate area as medicine.
I hate to inject the motive of politics into all issues, but this one smells like an attempt to bash the drug companies and doctors, to lower medical costs to the consumer.
The hundreds of medications on the market that have helped people survive and live normal lives are nothing less than a blessing from G-d, providing the inspiration and innovation for their discovery and use.
Do doctors make mistakes? They are human beings. Do hospitals at times become negligent and sloppy? Unfortunately. But to assert that we'd be better off without the medical profession is ridiculous to the extreme.
The concept just reeks of political motives behind it.
One of the basic fallacies is that doctors/medical profession are interested in and devoted to your health. They are not. Their study is of disease, not of health. They are devoted to the profitable practice of medicine as described and determined by the American Medical Association. If a doctor knows of a better cure but it is one which is considered alternative and not sanctioned, he cannot tell you about it for fear of losing his license.
Everyone knows that a balanced life, with a healthy diet(no, not the pyramid) and exercise and enough sleep and a healthy spiritual life, is the best medicine in the world.
Life expectancy may be up, but why do you give all the credit for this to the practice of medicine? Up also, in dramatic fashion, is cancer, heart disease, diabetes and and other modern killers. Modern medicine will tell you it is looking for cures for these but that is a lie. What they are looking for is the profitable treatment of these.
When the general quality of life is up, life expectancy will be up. Most of what contributes to longer life has nothing to do with the medical profession at all. It has a lot to do with not living in filth, drinking fresh clean water, eating good clean food, and not living an oppressed life. It helps to be living in a somewhat free country.
Taking advice from people who will profit from your doing so will seldom be profitable to you.
I pretty much agree, but think it reeks more of stupidity.
Because the other things that used to kill us no longer do.
I understand that this is just a flippant answer you have tossed out, but I wonder is this because you are truly ignorant of this subject or is this the deepest level of thought of which you are capable.
You sound pretty cynical.
My father (a wonderful physician) is not anything like what you describe.
Oh, I need to add that when I had cancer 7 years ago, I heard lots of advice from people like you who consider physicians' treatments to only be for their good and the good of big medicine. Good thing I took the advice of physicians, though, as I'm now 100% cancer free.
As a survivor of many things that would have killed me in an earlier time period, I find your response to me very puzzling.
"defensive medicine".
LOL YES! It seems to me that if the "studies" are to be valid, the people doing them need to take that into account.
Of course the Doc's practice CYA medicine while the HMO's practice you over lab over medicate!
The boy's father researched until he found a place in the east that had treated children with seizures for many years. He took his son there to be treated with the ketogenic diet. It includes cream, butter, bacon, etc. Guess what, the boy's seizures stopped.
The doctor of the boy was interviewed and asked why he did not tell the family of the diet and he said because he hadn't exhausted all possible drugs yet and then admitted that no one makes money off the diet.
It is being proven that fish oil is effective for many ailments involving the brain. I have family members with Huntington's disease as well as an autistic grandson. I also believe that over the years if my drug-addicted mother had been treated with natural remedies instead of drugs her life would have been much happier. Her drugs cost over $500 per month and they have not brought her happiness.
I can go on and on but I hope that medical doctors realize there are better ways to treat many patients than with drugs.
It shouldn't be "natural" vs. "drugs." Many of the "drugs" that are being prescribed are derived from "natural" treatments (which have undergone testing and refinement).
I'm a big "both-and" person. BOTH shark-cartilage-healthy-diet-clean-water-good-lifestyle-vitamins-fresh-fruits-and-vegetables-grape-seed-extract-green-tea AND appropriate medications to treat symptoms/sickness. My oncologist told me that the "alternative" treatments that I described to him wouldn't hurt and might help. So I took those in addition to the physician-prescribed treatment.
Of course, in the end, it's the common daily things you put in your body that have the most beneficial effects: good food and liquid, clean living, physical activity....
Let's be more "BOTH-AND" and a bit less "EITHER-OR"....
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