I owe my continued good health to my avoidance of doctors and hospitals. I suspect, but only suspect, that some connection to early deaths and medical treatment might be there, certainly as I am reminded of the pneumonia epidemic of ten to twenty years ago when anyone over 60 went into hospitals only to contract the illness there, leaving hospital in a stiffer condition than they entered. I am reminded that the ancient Greeks, or at least the famous ones, lived long lives supported by very healthy diets.
Modern medicine is an industry, directly connected to economies. Perhaps in mass societies they are seen as necessary, but to what degree?
Dear Stanley
I dont know how lit is in other countries then USA and Poland but let me shere my knowlege about these two dociettias as i know well.
Come to Poland for any medical care doctors do miracles here.
I work in military medical service for 46 years so i know well.
Of course you have to know docter personally doctors personally as
Mady intelligent doctors who get degrees at our medical universities flown to the western countries where they are paid 5 times more then in Poland.
My doughter with PhD in cardiology who works in Chicago is ver frustrated as the clinic boss orders not the cardiac surgery that is optimal for patient but the one which will give more money to the clinic.
Thats it.
Do you have more questions ?
The same story or even worse with big pharma.
Like everything, the methods and knowledge of medicine in whatever state is much better than the system that modulates and monetizes it.
The pharma problem, which Jerzy you highlight, is problematic in psychiatry as General Practitioners try new drugs out on patients having little idea whether or not they cause harm. One client of mine was given a new drug for anxiety and went to work the next day and had a fit accompanied by a blackout. The General Practitioner would have received money from the drug company to test the drug.
I suspect poor diagnosis played a part here.
Jerzy
Your point on your daughter's hospital, I have a paper on here on fraud in 1930s central European mental hospitals where the doctors or hospital claimed break throughs in understanding the link between the brain and mental illness. Not as clear as you might imagine. At the time, the Nelson Rockerfeller Foundation was giving out money for any hospital and individual to find a clear link, encouraging brain surgery. This aided the growth of lobotomy and the present Neuropathology even though the research had been fraudulent. A patient appeared to recover through chemicals pushed into his brain but his recovery lasted one day and the narrative was changed to complete success. The hospital got millions. The man got thousands and became famous. The false narrative is still referenced.
(This incident interestingly and curiously became a myth whereby upon recovering the man leapt out of bed and ran all the way home to see his wife. She unfortunately was in bed with another man......Of course, it did not happen. None of it. In the basis of all this the discoverer received multiple awards and arrived in the USA to acclaim)
It is often believed that modern medicine has enhanced life expectancy all across the globe. However, much credit goes to better food security, fewer wars, better literacy, and awareness about health issues. However, not all medical practices are pious and welfare-oriented. The enhanced profit maximization motives in the medical industry result in ugly consequences. The medical industry extends a fertile ground for high-cost medical treatments, insurance agencies, fear-mongers, tweaking health parameters, compromised diagnosis, and sponsored research (with hidden agendas).
Preventive health care and a healthy lifestyle are a few options available to curb unbridled exploitation from the profiteering medical industry.
Brajesh, I completely agree with you. The kudos to medicine and the medical profession has little truth. The big step forward in public health was the construction of sewers and a concern with hygiene in the 19th century. Mortality was reduced and the age at which people died, from in their 30s to 60s.
There were a few occasions where I almost died. Even at the peak of my sickness, the blood tests revealed no problems. I consulted Naturopaths, a Nurse practitioner with a PhD, and a retired doctor with herbal background. My health is attributed to research, herbs, chelation tinctures, and pure foods. I also steer clear of hospitals and modern medical treatments.
Susan,
Yes. The authoritarian nature of the medical profession makes it dangerous or potentially dangerous. Although you will find advertising evidence for the health services efficacy we do not have equal evidence for when they fail and people die. Like any powerful group and institution, they control their image and control evidence.
I gave lectures on this once and got my students to study hospital websites and consider the images and colours. Nurses and receptionists always smiled, the text indicated treatments always worked and nobody died. Brave New World? Why should they have to project an alternative truth? Health services are expanding empires, it's tentacles everywhere, creating illnesses as well as occasionally curing them.
You are not making many friends with such an assertion but, yes, I believe as lower as is the undesranding/knowledge of medicine of the patient higher is his risk of receiving unnecessary treatment - but this is a personal view
David,
Since posting my two long detours into psychiatry I can confirm my popularity has indeed shrunk but this nevertheless brings up the matter of excessive reverence for medicine and the need to burrow into its proofs. Why people are unwilling to do so and even imagine that the 'cures' are not as valid as medicine has told them is a truly curious matter. I will make the point that the tepid reaction to my reasoned understanding of psychiatry, implying that it comes from a specific direction ideologically laced and reflects merely an elite group, has received a damp cloth response only on here but elsewhere has been received enthusiastically. As a clinician I have treated many, many people badly affected by psychiatric drugs, experiences which psychiatry dismisses preferring their own professional gaze.
I considered this might be wider than we realise and the figures for the benefits of certain treatments and drugs might be, well, doctored but not I hasten to add for nefarious reasons but because they have all been caught up in a mindset, a social world, an institutional mindset, which demands loyalty to a specific ideology. The reaction of many to criticism or simply reflection on medicine is interesting.
I'm throwing into the ring something stated by Eysenck, long dead, who engaged in exploration of IQ testing and its genuineness. He believed in IQ tests although I think claims of well over 200 for unremarkable people leaves uncertainty. but Eysenck claimed that doctors were not the great minds doctor's think they are but have on average around 120. He pointed out that the cab drivers, plumbers and builders who score high on these tests are often equal to the scores of most doctors and more. A good plumber would score on many occasions the same as a consultant and even more.
Imo, Stanley Wilkin , the core problem is the following:
Modern medical Science is an application of classical material science; which was not designed to pertain to living beings; it can only assess and address the material aspects of the system. Since, “science” is often equated with this reductionistic mechanical material interpretation. Some people even claim this to be ‘science’. Some state: ‘if it is not described, it cannot be described, thus it cannot exist, thus is unscientific’. The claims of predictability and repeatability of inert matter are immaterial; living being are characterised by being predictably unpredictable; because of their innate use of freedom of choice.
A change in perspective is a must. As long as ‘modern medicine’ adheres to the tenets of ‘classical science’, subjects will be regarded as objects, consciousness will be reduced to (DNA) matter, and living beings as cadavers. This is not a figure of speech. Medical students still spend much time studying cadavers; without considering how this alienates them from contact with living beings.
Modern medicine manipulates politicians and the public by referring to the merits of classical science. Classical science is a deadly foundation for health care. Classical science addressed invariance: action + reaction=0/No-change). Invariance was traditionally called Hell (Closed System).
Most of the complaints about ‘regular’ medicine are based on this. It is based on a bias: a model of control and domination (as in dealing with objects) instead of participation/interaction based on consciousness and communication (offered by Traditional Health Care).
Modern’ medicine uses the philosophy of mechanical material control and domination (a war model) to overrule all ‘other’ forms of healing. It ridicules or rejects as ‘unproven’ all aspects which discern living beings from dead matter; the “blind spots” of classical science (life, love, consciousness and health). (For example: it demands the use of RCT (Random Control Trial) studies for hand-on healing. RCT was developed to assess effect of pharmaceutical powders; most of which are white when refined. RCT is meaningless where practitioner and patient can usually feel immediate effect.)
It claims its model is “proven verifiable, repeatable and predictable” (these are dead matter traits of Classical Science). Classical medicine uses these claims for asking higher prices, muscling political agenda’s, and bribing professional/public goodwill by advertising, and to discourage use of other forms of healing. This tendency is reinforced by a deceptive predominance of corporate (profit) interest in medical care. As long as “disease” equates with “profit”, diseases will be maintained, or created !
Science needs to include the findings of Traditional Health Care: understanding life. Health is integrity in personal involvement. Your involvement matters. This must be part of the formulation of medicine.
Stephen,
I will use your observations at some point. I will employ them hopefully in my papers on psychiatry and will use your views for other kinds of medicine at a later point as well as therapy.
The next one in psychiatry is on its way and details what the drugs actually do and how they work against the claims of psychiatry. Psychiatry fits in neatly with the social constructivist model for there is no reason for doctors to have power, certainly to the extent they do in psychiatry. Nor should they be telling us what reality is, and yes it is according to them materialistic and fits to some extent your arguments on science. By the way, no genuine information can be taken from a cadaver, except anatomy, as dead matter is opposed to living matter. They function differently.
Your point about connecting disease to profit is apt as that is exactly why a psychiatric patient receives treatment all their life, and why the drugs function very differently to what psychiatry claims.
And yes Stephen, doctors, in their hubris, present a particular philosophy which is no more than arrogant nonsense and yet it is taken seriously not only by them but those who reverence the profession.
Hopefully, I can in my papers on psychiatry expose what is no more than poorly informed claptrap by the over privileged in our societies.