Power to the People:

It is Time to Change Medicine

In recent months, we have seen amazing moments when regular people have taken extraordinary steps to confront and take on superior forces in government, in media and in private life. Women and minorities have stood up and made their complaints known. And astonishingly, all sorts of unexpected results have followed. Efforts have not uniformly been successful. But, problems and opportunities for change have been demonstrated in public view.

Look at how many notable men have lost their jobs since being confronted with sexual harassment and molestation. Some have or are about to go to jail. Names are unimportant.

The Catholic Church has recently taken a real hit on its laundry list of abuses now in Pennsylvania. Others will surely follow. The Pope is even coming out with broadsides against his own priests.

This writer says it is about time for the People to take on the medical establishment which has its own abuses, failings, and neglect. Many of their misdeeds, like those of the Church, have been hidden from public view. Even when exposed, physicians and hospitals often get merely slapped on the hand and told not to repeat their erring ways.

We know quite well that it is hard to stand up to abuse, especially when it is perpetrated by “authorities.” Lawyers and loopholes, time and turmoil often get in the way.

We are seeing some of this play out in the medical field already in the “opioid crisis.” Attacks are being mounted against the manufacturers of these drugs. However, little attention is pointed at the medical system and physicians who direct patients to take them. Without doctors signing prescriptions for synthetic narcotics there would be no crisis.

But opioids are just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Other painkillers, antidepressants, tranquilizers, sedatives, etc. are prescribed in incredible numbers. Doctors and pharmacists and drug manufacturers reap windfalls. But patients and families all too often end up with more problems, side effects, and overdoses.

Then, there is the epidemic of joint replacement surgeries which almost pass for routine now. How many people do you know who have “replacement” of a knee or shoulder?

Actually, there are no joint replacements. Joints aren’t replaceable. Surgeons extract a patient’s joint and put in a mechanical substitute. Often, the “operation is a success.” But, how frequently does one serious problem or another follow?

This writer has yet to meet anyone who has submitted to such surgery and not undergone complications. Surgical operators can point to statistics supporting their work. But, those statistics leave out “the rest of the story.” Infections in the hospital, drug reactions, inter-operative accidents, post-operative strokes and heart arrhythmias, reappearance of local pain or distant symptoms, eventual malfunction of the prosthesis, etc. For every action there is a reaction. And often numbers of them.

We could go on and on listing problems in the medicine and surgery. Even while the public generally believes in “universal health care.” The consensus is that more of the above is the right thing.

Affordable and successful medical care is largely a myth with the exception of true emergencies. Writing decades ago, respected pediatrician Robert Mendelsohn, MD, concluded that

• Annual physical examinations are a health risk.
• Hospitals are a dangerous place for the sick.
• Most operations do little good and many do harm.
• Medical testing laboratories are scandalously inaccurate.
• Many drugs cause more problems than they cure.
• The Xray machine is the most pervasive and most dangerous tool in the doctor’s office. [That was before the present abundance of expensive scanners.]

“If doctors reduced their involvement with people by ninety percent and attended only emergencies, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d be better off.” (Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Mendelsohn)

It has been noted repeatedly over the ages, that the poor are often better off healthwise because they do not routinely subject themselves to physicians and surgeons. In the present time, the media has made note of the large number of migrant children crossing the border who have “never seen a doctor in their lives.” They may have been the better for it. Their ability to walk hundreds of miles attests to their state of health which is surely far better than the majority of Americans. Their well-being in Latin American countries has been challenged by political forces but not medical ones.

How many children in the USA can walk hundreds of miles? How many adults in the country can do the same?

While those migrants seek for liberty, it is time for westerners to reach for power. Let the People imagine taking Power — not Pills. Let us ask for simpler, more natural ways like those used in non-western countries where 80 to 90 percent of “medicine” is performed by practitioners and healers who are neither university trained nor branded with medical degrees and board certification. Numbers of those countries boast indices for health which surpass those in rich nations.

There are always better ways. Let us reclaim powers open to all. Let us join together to seek and share in real medicine and true healing.

Look for more articles in this vein in coming posts.

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