Re: OT: Information Taint

[Guest guest]

Geoff....

Funny thing you pointed out... " always see who is paying for the study. "

Several years ago I was on an airplane and the lady sitting next to me was

very talkative. Turns out she worked for a consulting company and her job

was to design new drug tests to make sure they will go the way the

pharmacitucal company wants them to. She said unless the drug is a total flop,

any test

can be configured to make sure it looks good for the company paying the tab.

Food for thought wouldn't you say?? Martha

[Guest guest]

,

You asked:

" When was a time when doctors went on strike? "

SHORT ANSWER:

Doctors' strikes happen with fair regularity around the globe.

Unfortunately, they are not routinely monitored for changes in death rate.

When they are the phenomenon such as these are generally reported by

saddened morticians:

2000 Israel partial strike: 39% drop in death rate

1976 Bogotá full strike except emergency: 35% drop

1976 Los Angeles work-slow down: 18% drop (followed by a 5% increase

above-normal morbidity rate as doctors began seeing their waiting patients

again.)

1973 Israel full strike: 50% drop

LONG, WINDY, RAMBLING ANSWER:

They have a term for it: " iatrogenic disease " , (iatros - Gr: physician;

genic - Gr: caused by). Iatrogenic disease is a disease, sickness,

impairment, disfigurement, or death caused by the practice of acceptable

allopathic medical care. This does not include malpractice or other medical

mistakes.

Physicians and non-physicians alike point out the apparent irony of

increased longevity with decreased allopathy. However, that is only part of

the story. Similarly situated professionals on the other side of the fence

point to off-sets in post strike numbers. One has to wonder whose claims

the off-sets bolster? With allopathic medicine leading by orders of

magnitude other documented causes of death (see the USG's " Morbidity and

Mortality Weekly " and some rather interesting collections of such statistics

as " Death by Medicine " ).

Part of the problem in researching such things on the Internet is the

constant " parroting " that goes on, site to site. It should be noted that the

implication of reduced mortality during doctors' strikes is NOT that all

allopathic health care should be avoided -- that's a different argument.

The implication is that when allopathic care is restricted to emergency

care, death rates are reduced, and thus that there is a good case to be

made against the drug advertising, over-prescribing, and most elective

procedures.

By Congressional estimates there are 2,400,000 unnecessary surgeries

performed in the USA every year. Two million four hundred thousand.

Babies must be born between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or

Friday (not weekends, golf day (Wednesday) nor holidays, by Caesarian if

necessary. http://www.cam.org/~rsilver/sickmed.htm

The late Mendelsohn, M.D., while Chairman of the Medical Licensing

Committee for the State of Illinois and Associate Professor of Preventive

Medicine and Community Health at the University of Illinois School of

Medicine, wrote:

.. . . the greatest danger to your health is the doctor who practices Modern

Medicine. I believe that Modern Medicine's treatments for disease are seldom

effective, and that they're often more dangerous than the diseases they're

designed to treat . . . I believe that more than 90% of Modern Medicine

could disappear from the face of the earth-doctors, hospital, drugs, and

equipment-and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial.

Not everyone would agree with Dr. Mendelsohn's comments, but they should

give everyone pause and cause a great deal of inspection to take place by

the patient before subjecting themselves to these practices. I realize this

is not the way Lilly, Pfizer, et al would prefer it, but that's another

matter.

Monte Kiline, PhD writes: " Since the early 1980's we've heard a lot about

the impact of " managed care " and health care cutbacks. Medical doctors and

political liberals are screaming that people are dying for lack of services.

Actually, just the opposite is true. Since the " downsizing " of conventional

medical services in the 1980's, life expectancy has made a massive jump both

in the U. S. and Canada. No drug therapy and surgical technique can be shown

to have statistically increased the general life expectancy. No generation

has had its life expectancy increased significantly since medical doctors

began using chemical treatments. Researchers and Sonja McKinlay found

that medical intervention only accounted for 1 - 3.5% of the increase in the

average lifespan in the U. S. since 1900.

....Most people are not aware that drugs companies spend thousands of dollars

per year on each medical doctor " selling " them on using their particular

products. Drug companies hire " detail men " to visit physicians' offices and

give them drug samples. These salesmen, who are not doctors and have no

medical or pharmacological training, tell your medical doctor what drugs to

use for what problems. Drug companies start this process early by offering

medical students gifts, free trips to " conferences, " and free " educational

material, " which translated means propaganda on that drug company's

products. In Australia drug companies spend an average of $10,000 per year

per physician marketing their products. "

Think about that: How would it feel to be so wanted that these big companies

who do not even pay your salary spend $10K on you every year just to make

sure you know their name and their latest, greatest drug?

I think Dr. Mendelsohn put it best when he said, " Doctors in general should

be treated with about the same degree of trust as used car salesmen. "

How do we treat used car salesmen? We check and verify everything they say,

and don't say, before we put our money on the table. If we would do that

for

mere money, why don't we do it for our very lives?

Other interesting sources of information worth reviewing, if you have the

time, are the reports of the JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of

Hospitals and Health Care Organizations,) " The Social Transformation of

American Medicine "

Even down under, the effects of such issues are mounting

(www.sumeria.net/health/drug1a.html), " The rocketing cost of health care in

Australia is not unique to this country, but is typical of all industrial

nations. In his book Limits to Medicine (1979), prominent medical historian,

Ivan Illich, writes:

" During the past twenty years, while the price index in the United States

has risen by about 74 per cent, the cost of medical care has escalated by

330 per cent. Between 1950 and 1971 public expenditure for health insurance

increased tenfold, private insurance benefits increased eightfold, and

direct out-of-pocket payments about threefold. In overall expenditures other

countries such as France and Germany kept abreast of the United States. In

all industrial nations - Atlantic, Scandinavian, or East European - the

growth rate of the health sector has advanced faster than that of the GNP

[gross national product]. Even discounting inflation, federal health outlays

increased by more than 40 per cent between 1969 and 1974. "

This is something I wrote about on this board in 1998, but no one wants to

hear. I live in the middle of agricultural center of the world. We produce

more food here per acre than anywhere else on earth, crops and livestock.

But no one wants to hear:

" ...Over 15 years ago, there were more than 1,000 drug products and as many

chemicals in use by the livestock and poultry producers in the United

States. (16) Also, more than 40 per cent of the antibiotics and other

antibacterials produced every year in the US were used as animal feed

additives and for other animal purposes. Almost 100 per cent of poultry, 90

per cent of pigs and veal calves, and 60 per cent of cattle have regular

amounts of antibacterials added to their feed. (17) Seventy-five per cent of

hogs have their feed supplemented with sulphur drugs (18) and almost 70 per

cent of US beef is from cattle fed on hormones to promote growth. (19)

The amount of drugs and chemical substances used on farm animals in the

industrialised nations is enormous.

As could be expected, one result of the vast over-consumption of drugs is

the astronomical profits generated by the drug industry. Since the beginning

of the sixties, drug industry profits (as a percentage of sales and company

net worth) have surpassed all other manufacturing industries listed on the

Stock Exchange.

Another result is the inevitable deterioration of public health. According

to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 1.5 million Americans were

hospitalised in 1978 as a consequence of taking drugs and some 30 per cent

of all hospitalised people are further damaged by their treatments. Every

year, an estimated 140,000 Americans are killed because of drug taking and

one in seven hospital beds is taken up by patients suffering from adverse

drug reactions.

A report by the General Accounting Office in the United States revealed that

51.5 per cent of all drugs introduced between 1976 and 1985 had to be

relabelled because of serious adverse reactions found after the marketing of

these drugs. These included heart, liver and kidney failure, foetal toxicity

and birth defects, severe blood disorders, respiratory arrest, seizures and

blindness. The changes to the labelling either restricted a drug's use or

added major warnings. ... "

FIFTY-ONE PERCENT!!!!

http://www.vernoncoleman.com/drhazar.htm

Well, all of that is a pretty long and rambling answer to your question

reflecting in part, my brief look back into what I thought was pretty common

knowledge. Suffice it to say, my opinion is similar to Mendelsohn's.

However, I think Reagan's approach is a bit more pragmatic and

certainly more socially acceptable: TRUST BUT VERIFY.

The problem I see is that we trust, but we don't verify. Literally hundreds

of thousands of people die needlessly every year in the USA alone because of

this; those who fall into chronic illness and suffering are far greater in

number.

Geoff