Chapter 3: The Moral Climate of Health Care |
|
Section. 6 Readings
When experienced doctors start writing books about the dangers to our health of Modern Medicine, we can be sure that there is much that is sick under the white coat. "Confession of a Medical Heretic", by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, a doctor with 25 years experience in modern medicine, is but one of many recent books exposing the medicopharmaceutical complex. Bob Silverman reviews the expose in considerable detail.
"The
Doctor, once an agent of cure, has become the agent of disease. By going
too far and diffusing the power of the extreme on the mean, Modern
Medicine has weakened and corrupted even the management of extreme
cases." This startling affirmation was made by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, a
man who has worked as a practicing physician for 25 years. In his recent
book, "Confessions of a Medical Heretic", Dr. Mendelsohn describes many
of the conflicts of interest, greed, incompetence, corruption and other
nightmares he came in contact with during his long medical career.
Reflecting upon his
experience Dr. Mendelsohn notes, "l believe that despite the super
technology and elite bedside manner that's supposed to make you feel as
well cared for as an astronaut on the way to the moon, the greatest
danger to your health is the doctor who practices Modern Medicine. I
believe that Modern Medicine's treatments for diseases are seldom
effective, and that they are often more dangerous than the diseases
they're designed to treat. I believe that the dangers are compounded by
the widespread usage of dangerous procedures for non-diseases. I believe
that more than ninety percent of Modern Medicine could disappear from
the face of the eart- doctors, hospitals, drugs and equipment- and the
effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial."
Dr. Mendelsohn's
startling hypothesis that people would be healthier if 90% of Modern
Medicine were scrapped was confirmed. In Bogota, Columbia, Los Angeles
County, Califonia and in Israel, when the doctors went on strike in
these three different places, the death rate went down dramatically.
During the month-long physicians' strike in lsrael in 1973, the doctors
reduced their daily patient contact from 65,000 to 7,000. Guess what
happened? "According to the Jerusalem Burial Society, the lsraeli death
rate dropped fifty percent during that month. There had not been such a
profound drop in mortality since the last doctors' strike twenty years
before." The inescapable conclusion of Dr. Mendelsohn's book is that
Modern Medicine is a gigantic and wealthy industry which destroys human
life while trying to cure sickness. It harms us by its very excesses,
its overmedicalization, its gadgetry. Elaborating on this central theme
the veteran doctor comments, "Every minute of every day, Modern Medicine
goes too far, because Modern Medicine prides itsef on going too far.
One gigantic medical
factory is the Cleveland Clinic. In an article titled, "Cleveland's
Marvelous Medical Factory", published in the Cleveland Clinic's own
magazine, the enormity of their production figures are broken down.The
article boasted of the Clinic's20accomplishments last year: 2,980
open-heart operations, 1.3 million laboratory tests, 73,320
electrocardiograms, 7,770 full-body xray scans, 210,378 other
radiological studies and 24,368 surgical procedures."
Not one of these
procedures has been proved to have the least bit to do with maintaining
or restoring health. The article fails to boast or even mention that any
people were even helped by this expensive extravagance. That's because
the product of this factory is not health at all. So when you go to the
doctor, you're seen not as a person who needs help with his or her
health, but as a potential market for the medical factory's products."
In separate chapters on diagnosis, drugs, surgery and hospitals, Dr.
Mendelsohn spills the beans on the deadly effects of Modern Medicine.
Under Dangerous
Diognosis we learn that studies show that about half of all lab tests
are inaccurate and that the results often change when someone else does
the interpreting. In one of his favorite studies Dr. Mendelsohn notes,
"197 out of 200 people were 'cured' of their abnormalities simply by
repeating the lab test." Indiscriminate use of x-rays is widespread.
"Scientists have implicated X rays in the development of diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure and cataracts. Other
studies have matched radiation to cancer, blood disorders and tumors of
the central nervous system." Conflicts of interest also arrives in
diagnosis as doctors o ften have financial interests in labs.
The
Drug Trade
In "Miraculous Mayhem",
Dr. Mendelsohn's chapter on drugs, we see another example of something,
initially desirable and even miraculous, converted into its opposite,
dangerous, unnecessary and mundane, by its own growth and abuse.. Early
in his career penicillin was first developed. He comments on the
miraculous result: "I gave intravenous penicillin every few hours to
children who were suffering the agonizing symptoms of bacterial
meningitis, and then watched miraculous changes occur hour by hour.
Children who had been on the verge of death returned to consciousness
and began to respond to stimuli within a few hours. A few days later
these same children were back on their feet, almost ready to go home."
The doctor recalls how he saw patients on their death bed suffering from
lobar pneumonia, pack their bags and walk out of the hospital after
penicillin was first introduced.
"I-and other doctors
truly felt that we were witnessing and working miracles." "These drugs
that were once extremely valuable are now extremely dangerous."
Doctors began to
prescribe these drugs indiscriminately and Mendelsohn notes: "Many
doctors prescribe penicillin for conditions as harmless as the common
cold. These drugs can cause reactions ranging from skin rash, vomiting
and diarrhea to fever and anaphylactic shock. Every year, from eight to
ten million Americains go to a doctor when they have a cold. About half
of them come away with a prescription for an antibiotic. Not only are
these people duped into paying for something which has no effectiveness
against their problem, but they're set up for the hazards of side
effects and the risks of deadlier infections."
Sometimes several years
pass before the full impact of the side effects become apparent. The
hormone DES was widely prescribed for women in the 1950 as a fertility
drug. "Twenty years later we would discover that DES causes vaginal
cancer and genital abnormalities in children born to women receiving the
drug during pregnancy. In 1959, about 500 children in Germany and 1000
elsewhere were born severely deformed because their mothers had taken
thalidomide, a sleeping pill and tranquilizer, during the early weeks of
pregnancy. In 1962 a cholesterol lowering drug, Tripanorol, was removed
from the market when it was acknowledged that the drug caused numerous
side effects, cataracts among them." Drug disasters like this are going
on every day. Actually, the only apparatus that has grown stronger seems
to be the machinery of keeping dangerous drugs moving from the factories
through the hands of doctors into the mouths and bodies of unwary
patients."
Mendelsohn further
notes that 20,000 to 30,000 yearly deaths are attributed to adverse
effects to drugs prescribed by doctors. Conservative estimates say that
5% of people in American and British hospitals are there because of
adverse reaction to drugs." "One of the unwritten rules of modem
medicine is always to write a prescription for a new drug quickly,
before all of its side effects have come to the surface." Commenting on
the fast gun approach of doctors to prescribing drugs, Mendelsohn notes:
"There is a cozy and profitable relationship existing between the drug
companies and doctors. The drug companies spend an average of $6,000 per
year on each and every doctor in the United States for the purpose of
getting them to use their drugs. Company 'detail' men, actually
salesmen, build friendly, profitable relationships with the doctors on
their route, wining and dining, doing favors, handing out samples of
drugs. The sad fact is that most of the information reaching doctors
about the uses and abuses of drugs comes from the drug companies,
through the detail men and the advertising in medical journals. Since
most of the clinical information from there, too, is highly suspect."
A commission of
distinguished scientists, including four Nobel prize winners, found that
clinical trials of new drugs were "in shambles." The Federal Drug
Administraion of the U.S. in an investigation noted that a third of the
tests had not been carried out at all. (1)
Many drugs have the
same side effects as the conditions the drugs are meant to help. Valium
is supposed to reduce anxiety, fatigue and depression. On reading the
list of side effects we note that valium can cause anxiety, fatigue and
depression.
Eli Lilly, founder of
the drug company of that name once said that a drug without toxic effect
was no drug at all. Every drug has to be approached with suspicion.
Ritual Mutilations
Conservative
estimates-such as that made by a congressional subcommittee say that
about 2.4 million operations performed every year are unnecessary, and
that these operations cost $4 billion and 12,000 lives, or 5% of the
quarter million deaths following or during surgery every year in the
U.S. The independent Health Research Group says the number of
unnecessary operations is more than 3=2 0million. And various studies
have put the numbers of useless operations between eleven and thirty
percent. My feeling is that somewhere around ninety percent of surgery
is a waste of time, energy, money and life." "One study, for example,
closely reviewed people who were recommended for surgery. Not only did
they find that most of them needed no surgery, but fully half of them
needed no medical treatment at all." Dr. Mendelsohn points out that the
principle victims of unnecessary surgery are children and women. About a
million tonsillectomies are done in the U.S. each year, "yet the
operation has never demonstrated to do very much good", he notes.
Hysterectomies seems to be a growth industry as well as annual totals
are now approaching one million. Very few of them are necessary. In six
New York hospitals, forty three percent of the hysterectomies reviewed
were found to be unjustified. Women with abnormal bleeding from the
uterus and abnormally heavy menstrual blood flow were given
hysterectomies even though other treatments or no treatment at all-
would have likely worked just as well."
Obstetricians are now
rapidly turning the natural process of childbirth into a surgical
procedure. "Layer upon layer of 'treatment' buries the experience under
the mantle of sickness, as each layer requires another layer to
compensate for its adverse effe cts. Strangely enough, you can always
count on doctors to take credit for the compensations, but not for the
medical disasters that made the compensation necessary in the first
place."
More and more
deliveries are being scheduled to the doctor's convenience. "In many
hospitals the induced 'nine-to-five' delivery has become the rule."
Caesarians are mushrooming. I can remember when if a hospital's
incidence of Caeserain deliveries went above four or five percent, there
was a full scale investigation. The present level is around twenty-five
percent. There are no investigations at all. And in some hospitals the
rate is pushing 50 percent." The profit motive, not the human motive,
explains the large amount of unnecessary surgery. Mendelsohn observes:
"There's no doubt that if you eliminated all unnecessary surgery, most
surgeans would go out of business. In prepaid group practices where
surgeons are paid a steady salary not tied to how many operations they
perform, hysterectomies and tonsillectomies occur only about one-third
as in fee-for-service situations." Often operations are performed to
meet the quotas of the recent medical graduates. On three separate
occasions Mendelsohn used his influence to reduce unnecessary
operations. Once he eliminated a question on a routine medical
examination form. The number of tonsillectomies went down. "As you might
expect, I soon got a call from the chairman of the ear, nose and throat
department: I was threatening his teaching program."
The
Temple of Doom
After having spent the
last 25 years of his life on the staff of hospitals, Dr. Mendelsohn
refers to them as "Temples of Doom." He begins: "A hospital is like a
war. You should try to stay out of it. And if you get in it you should
take along as many allies as possible and get out as soon as you can.
For the amount of money the average hospital stay costs, you could spend
an equal length of time at just about any resort in the world,
transportation included. For the hospital is the Temple of the Church of
Modem Medicine, and thus one of the most dangerous places on earth."
Elaborating on the
perils of hospitals Mendelsohn notes: "Overall, your chances of getting
an infection in the hospital are about one in twenty. That's a
conservative estimate. Half of the infections in hospitals are caused by
contaminated medical devices such as catheters and intravenous
equipment. Before the explosion in the use of these devices around
1965,20device-related infections were virtually non-existent. About
15,000 people die from hospital acquired infections every year.
"In my experience, a
one in twenty risk would have to be the base line risk representing the
minimum danger of infection. I've seen epidemics spread through
hospitals so fast that everyone had to be sent home. Pediatric wards and
newborn nurseries are the most vulnerable to spreading infections."
Hospitals are contaminated with more than germs. Remember, since
hospitals are the temples of Modem Medicine all the dangerous chemicals
that doctors love to use are in plentiful supply. With all these drugs
at their disposal, doctors are bound to use them. And they do. Patients
in the hospital receive an average of twelve different drugs. But even
if you're not drugged to death or disability there are other chemicals
that are floating around that can make your stay less than healthy. In
the first place, your doctor may not be using drugs, but everyone else's
doctor is. Poisonous solvents used in laboratories and cleaning
facilities, flammable chemicals, and radioactive wastes all threaten you
with contamination."
Noting even more
dangers of hospitals, the veteran doctor notes: "Hospitals are virtual
models of ineptitude. There are so many simple mistakes-mistakes in
which someone has two or three choices and chooses wrong- that you must
feel extremely apprehensive when you stare to contemplate all the
opportunities for co mplex errors! "Everything gets mixed up in
hospitals -including patients. My brother went to the hospital for a
hernia operation many years ago. He was scheduled for surgery at 11 A.M.
I went up to his room at 9.3O but he wasn't there. I ran down to the
operating room, and sure enough, there he was. They'd taken him instead
of another patient. The only reason he escaped was that the other
patient was supposed to get a hysterectomy.
Dr. Mendelsohn refers
to studies which indicate widespread malnutrition in hospitals. "lf the
drugs, the germs, the surgery, the chemicals or the accidents dont get
you, you still stand a good chances of starving to death." A study
carried out on surgery patients in a large Boston hospital by Dr.
Georges Blackburn noted that half the patients were severely
malnourished. They were malnourished enough to threaten their recovery
and lengthen their stay in the hospital. Commenting on this startling
revelation Mendelsohn notes: "The results of this study are by no means
uncommon. Many studies have since discovered malnutrition in anywhere
from twenty-five to fifty percent of patients in American and British
hospitals. And Dr. George Blackburn has since stated that malnutrition
is one of the most common causes of death among old people in
hospitals."
The
Devils Priest
Mendelsohn, who has
spent most of his life among doctors, describes the M.D.s in the
following fashion... "Doctors turn out to be dishonest, corrupt,
unethical, sick, poorly educated, and downright stupid more often than
the rest of society. When I meet a doctor, I generally figure I'm
meeting a person who is narrow-minded, prejudiced, and fairly incapable
of reasoning and deliberation. Few of the doctors I meet prove my
prediction wrong."
Corruption,
particularly at the highest levels, is rampant among doctors. Mendelsohn
informs the reader that the deans of ths Yale and Harvard Schools of
Medicine acted as paid consultants to the Squibb Corporation at the same
time they were trying to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to
lift the ban on Mysteclin, one of Squibb's biggest moneymakers. Later,
the Harvard dean, Dr. Robert Ebert, became a paid director of Squibb.
"Fraud in scientific
research is commonplace. The Food and Drug Administration has uncovered
such niceties as overdosing and under dosing of patients, fabrication of
records and drug dumping when they investigate experimental drug trials.
Of course, in these instances, doctors working for drug companies have
as their goal producing results that will convince the FDA to approve
the drug."
One of the crudest
examples of research fraud occurred at the Sloan-Kettering institute in
New York. (Both Sloan and Kettering were helmsmen at General Motors and
Alfred Sloan masterminded the destruction of the streetcar systems in 45
U.S. cities during his lengthy presidency of that automobile company),
investigator Dr. William Summerlin admitted painting mice to make them
look though successful skin grafts had been done.
Doctors as a group seem
to be sicker than the rest of society. Conservative counts peg the
number of psychiatrically disturbed physicians in the U.S. at 17,000 or
one in twenty the number of alcoholics at more than 30,000 and the
number of narcotic addicts at 3,500 or one percent. A thirty-year study
comparing doctors with professional of similar socio-economic and
intellectual status found that by the end of the study nearly half the
doctors were divorced or unhappily married, more than a third used drugs
such as amphetamines, barbiturates or other narcotics and a third had
suffered emotional problems severe enough to require at least ten trips
to a psychiatrist. The control group of non-doctors didn't fare nearly
as badly.
Mendelsohn notes that
doctors are part of the upper classes and that's where their sympathies
lie. "They view themselves as the true elite class in society. The
doctor's lifestyle and professional behavior encourage autocratic
thinking, so his conservative politics and economics are predictable.
Most doctors are white, male and rich, hardly in a position to relate
effectively with the poor, the nonwhite and females."
Education of Doctors
"The admission tests
and policies of medical schools virtually guarantee that the students
who get in will make poor doctors. The quantitative tests, the Medical
College Admission Test, and the reliance on grade point averages funnel
through a certain type of personality who is unable and unwilling to
communicate with people." "Medical school does its best to turn smart
students stupid, honest students corrupt and healthy students sick. It
isn't very hard to turn a smart student into a stupid one. First of all,
the admissions people make sure the professors will get weak-willed,
authority-abiding students to work on. Then they give them a curiculum
that is absolutely meaningless as far as healing or health are
concerned."
Doctors generally cover
up the errors, even fatal ones, of other doctors. ln New Mexico a
surgeon tied off the wrong duct in a gall bladde r operation and the
patient died. Although the error was discovered at autopsy, the doctor
was not disciplined. Apparently, he wasn't taught the right way to do
the operation, because a few months later he performed it again-wrong
and another patient died. Again, no punishment and no surgery lesson.
Only after the doctor performed the operation a third time and killed
another person was there an investigation resulting in the loss of his
license."
Perhaps some readers
will think that Dr. Mendelsohn is some kind of weird malcontentwho
vented his spleen because he failed in the medical world. Well that's
not the case. Dr. Mendelsohn is the Chairman of the Medical Licensing
Committee of the State of Illinois, Associate Professor of Preventative
Medicine and Community Health in the School of Medicine of the
University of lllinois and the recipient of numerous awards for
excellence in medicine and medical instruction. That a doctor with his
experience and his credentials could write "Confessions of a Medical
Heretic" indicates that much of modem medicine is a threat to our
health.
Dr. Serge Mongeau is a
Québec doctor, a medical heretic and author who holds opinions very
similar to Dr. Mendelsohn's. He has written several books on the
subjects of health and medicine, among them "Survivre aux soins Médi
caux" and "Adieu Médecine, Bonjour Santé". Mongeau notes: "lt is the
whole medical system that is on the wrong track and has become counter
productive. Latrogenesis-illnesses caused by medical attention-have
become epidemic. The stubborness of the medical profession in denying
the evidence and in refusing to take measures to correct the situation
perpetuate the danger."
Modem Medicine's
horrors are made worse by it also being a monopoly. We must pay money to
"illegal" alternative therapists like midwives, homeopaths, rebirthers,
and countless others while the counter productive official medicine is
massively subsidized. An immediate end to the monopoly of the Quebec
Order of Doctors and the recognition of the various alternative health
practitioners would give the people a free choice of what type of health
care they want.
Modern Medicine: It's only Another Business
While thousands of
people get sick or die from iatrogenic illnesses, the medico-industrial
complex becomes stronger and stronger. Former U.S. president, Jimmy
Carter, called it the second most powerful interest group in the United
States. Sickness expenses now rival military and road building expenses
for the share of the national budgets. The July edition of Le Monde
Diplomatique notes that medical capitalism is a growth industry in the
United States and lists hospital chains and drug companies that have
recently vastly increased their values on the stock market.
That's the
contradiction. Your health versus their profits. Take a deep breath and
for your own health, say: "Goodby Doctor".
Sources
Confessions of a
Medical Heretic, Roberet S. Mendelsohn, M.D. Warner Books, New-york.
Survivre aux soins
Médicaux, Dr.Serge Mongeau, Québec/Amérique, Montréal.
Adieu Médecine, Bonjour
Santé, Dr. Serge Mongeau, Québec/Amérique, Montréal.
Medical Nemesis, ivan
Illich, Pantheon Press.
(1): Confessions of a
Medical Heretic, P. 74
|
|
© Copyright Philip A. Pecorino 2002. All Rights reserved. Web Surfer's Caveat: These are class notes, intended to comment on readings and amplify class discussion. They should be read as such. They are not intended for publication or general distribution. |
Return to: Table of Contents for the Online Textbook |