• The Hoped-For Patient-Driven Health Revolution Fades To Black; Look Towards The Next Generation

    Posted June 9, 2011: by Bill Sardi

    I’m writing in a less hopeful mood today. The optimism that the masses would get wind of the ruse being played upon them by the pharmaceutical companies and the excessive testing and treatment prescribed by doctors is all but a fading dream.

    The Internet was the medium that was predicted to lead a patient-driven health revolution. While the Internet has expanded and penetrated into most American homes over the past decade, no bona fide health revolution is on the horizon. In fact, the greatest online traffic for health related issues emanates from spammers and online hucksters, not from Paul Revere-like pioneers who want to overthrow the reigning disease-care system.

    Health freedom orgs fail miserably

    So-called health freedom organizations have also failed in their efforts to rally the masses largely due to their own self interest and false belief that fund raising equates with change. No one will raise sufficient money to stand up to the entrenched healthcare lobby that has a stronghold in Washington DC.

    Health freedom groups are often side-tracked on seemingly important issues, like environmental toxins and carcinogens, when the lack of a simple B vitamin (folic acid) induces the same degree of DNA damage as exposure to toxic doses of atomic radiation. The environmental toxins may always be there. Promote folic acid which will repair the damage seems a better strategy. Some health freedom groups protest against environmental toxins that in low dose are actually hormetic agents – they trigger the body’s defenses and improve survival.

    Water fluoridation is another problem. It should certainly be undone but the masses are being culled faster by the millions due to drug side effects and the shunning of nutritional medicine. Fluoridation deals with morbidity, not mortality. Millions prematurely die from a lack of vitamin C and D due to premature heart disease and cancer while health advocacy groups lobby for the right to practice homeopathy or other therapies that are of marginal value and will not make a dent in the mortality rate.

    The myth of the best health care in the world

    A major push-back against the health care establishment HAS occurred, but only in the form of objection to Medicare cutbacks. The opposition to change has been led by large health insurers and hospital chains that were able to rally the public in a visible manner. Retirees want the status quo maintained despite the reality that Medicare faces a predicted $66 trillion shortfall over the coming decades. It’s an unreality game being played out. American seniors ought to all be treated for psychosis. They have lost touch with reality.

    Not science-based, but who cares?

    Despite the fact there are treatments but no cures for cancer, and only three major therapies appear to be backed by science (fixing broken bones, repairing teeth and replacing cloudy cataracts with clear lens implants), and the biological action of most prescription drugs can be duplicated with dietary supplements, the public is clamoring for more and more expensive high-technology care. A single example is men who opt for the less invasive gamma radiation treatment for prostate cancer even though there is no published data to show it extends survival.

    New therapies that are only proven to be better than a placebo pill drive most of the increase in health care costs today. Many times these new therapies are not better than older remedies whose patents have expired and are now forgotten. The masses flock to their doctors’ offices having seen a breakthrough medical technology on television.

    The hoax is on the people yet many feel they paid into the health insurance system and they want the best that modern medicine has to offer them. In fact, a point of American pride is that it has “the best healthcare system in the world.” It’s un-American to think anything less.

    Overtreatment driven by appealing to patient fears

    Fear certainly drives much of the excessive care being delivered. Cancer patients and their loved ones demand something, rather than nothing, be done. So chemotherapy is administered till treatment-resistance inevitably sets in and the patient often succumbs at an earlier date than if no treatment were rendered. While modern medicine is detecting tumors in their earlier stages, patients are dying on the same calendar day. There is no significant prolongation of survival for cancer patients. Cancer patients are told otherwise. False hope is fostered by the cancer industry itself.

    Modern medicine just ignores less costly/more effective cures

    Modern medicine often ignores proven therapies that are less expensive than conventional therapies. For example, there is evidence this reporter has uncovered which shows that supplemental vitamin C significantly reduces cholesterol via improvement in bile flow rather than by use of liver-toxic statin drugs that interfere with normal liver function. Patients who read this for the first time will likely be unsure and fearful of doing the wrong thing. So vitamin C therapy for arterial disease remains on the proverbial shelf.

    There is sort of an emerging health revolution underway with vitamin D, led by Dr. John Cannell, founder of The Vitamin D Council, and sales of vitamin D have risen dramatically to $450 million a year. But that represents just $1.43 per person per year, about what it costs for a single tin of cat food. Donuts and Moon Pies obviously out-sell vitamins. It’s “the American way.” It’s going to be difficult to get a natural health movement to grow exponentially.

    What government hath wrought

    Meanwhile government has played a role in lending its imprimatur to all manner of problematic drugs and vaccines. There was a temporary public rebuff of flu shots during the 2009-10 flu season, but still millions of misled Americans lined up for the shots.

    The number of flu-related deaths are overstated to strike fear in the population. Most Americans who die of the flu are nutritionally deficient not vaccine deficient. The massive deaths cited in the influenza outbreak of 1918, the so-called Spanish flu, were actually caused by a drug company over-promoting mega-dose aspirin that year. Aspirin depletes vitamin C and dulls the immune system. This still remains a hidden fact.

    Americans are now being coerced into taking flu shots as a requirement for schooling or employment, or coerced to take statin drugs to get health insurance – what represents fascism in American medicine. When government covertly works in league with drug and vaccine companies to mandate use of health products, that is fascism. The public often sees nothing wrong with this since it falsely believes government is always working in their best interest.

    The widespread public campaign to push flu vaccines on the public has been called disease mongering. The idea of disease mongering is to expand the definitions of disease to sell more drugs and vaccines. In fact, virtually every disease is treated as if it were a drug deficiency when it is often a dietary disorder. An example is attention deficit disorder among growing children, which is inappropriately treated with a stimulant drug when it often emanates from iron deficiency anemia.

    The introduction of high fructose corn syrup, bemoaned by many a dietician as having spawned the diabesity epidemic in America, was developed by none other than the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    Government agencies never properly screened bisphenol A, a hormone disrupting chemical, used in baby bottles and as a liner in tin cans. Americans consume about 7 pounds of bisphenol A annually. Now researchers call bisphenol A an “obesogen As early as 1981 bisphenol A was identified as a teratogen – an agent that may induce birth defects. Yet it is “FDA approved.”

    Industry has countered by issuing reports stating that low-level exposure to bisphenol A is not problematic. But now it is revealed that exposure levels have been underreported. One pregnant woman was recently found to have bisphenol A levels that were 300 times greater than the average level.

    Are the population control conspiracy theorists right?

    Maybe the conspiracy theorists who claim there is an effort to cull the population finally have substance behind their suspicions.

    Fat and cholesterol is required for production of sex hormones and it is no coincidence that the phobia over dietary fat paralleled the expansion of fertility clinics across America. Fluoridated water reduces male fertility. Hydrogenated fats (trans fats) reduce female fertility. Even statin drugs appear to reduce male fertility. Is a hidden population control effort underway with a naïve and overly compliant citizenry ready to adopt whatever government health authorities dictate?

    None the wiser

    With all of this having been said, a vast number of Americans are none the wiser. Still 100 million Americans a year line up for problematic flu shots. The Centers for Disease Control intentionally misled the public when the time window to treat the flu had been passed and any further vaccination would be worthless.

    The government also included data from wintertime colds with flu cases to spread fear of an imagined flu pandemic.

    With the 2010 flu vaccination campaign a flop, leaving millions of unused doses of the vaccine, government agencies have come storming back by inducing pharmacy chains across America to vaccinate against the flu in an even larger manner than before.

    Government hides its failures

    This writer even discovered the side effects of a flu vaccine used in a government sponsored vaccination program among nursing home patients in 1992 were so severe that for the first time since the Spanish flu in 1918 U.S. life expectancy did not rise. Yet this fact was hidden from the public. Think of how you hide a fact that large! You have to control the news media to do it.

    Patients have no gumption

    When informed that cholesterol is not the primary cause of coronary artery disease (calcium is), and that statin drugs have a higher side-effect-to-benefit ratio (virtually 100% side effects and 3% effectiveness –1 in 71 users over 5 years avert a non-mortal heart attack), statin drug users typically respond that they are afraid to withdraw from this drug and don’t have the gumption to stand up to their doctor.

    My doctor says I will die of a sudden heart attack if I don’t take this pill,” is often heard. This doesn’t sound like a health revolution that is ready to depart from the existing paradigm.

    It’s an upside down world

    We live in an upside down world these days. Years ago no one would have never thought of what you are about to read.

    A century ago, before the era of antibiotics and other modern medicines, there would have been a torrential demand for a pill that even hinted it could delay the ravages of aging. Ponce de Leon would have risen out of his grave for it. But today the public is jaded.

    When red wine resveratrol pills were first introduced in 2004 an online AARP poll revealed most senior Americans would forego an anti-aging pill for fear of running out of retirement money. With the growth of the senior adult population in America, health care costs to treat age-related disease are soaring out of control. In fact, modern medicine has priced itself out of existence as millions of Americans simply cannot afford to purchase health insurance. If a pill would delay the onset of age-related disease by just 7 years it would save Medicare from insolvency. But could you get senior Americans to take it? Polls show only if it were provided to them for little or no cost.

    Today millions of Americans take a baby aspirin and/or statin drugs to avert a sudden mortal heart attack. But, as previously mentioned, statin drugs do not reduce the risk for death from an acute heart attack and the dose of aspirin being used by most Americans (81 mg) is not sufficient to prevent a blood clot in a coronary artery that causes most mortal heart attacks. So the two major preventive measures against mortal heart attacks are ineffective. (Population control conspiracy theorists take note again.)

    But when animal studies not only showed that one brand of red wine resveratrol pill not only prevent blood clots in coronary arteries like aspirin does, and switches on protective measures that turn mortal heart attack into non-mortal events, doctors and the public largely disregarded this discovery, with only a few people opting to purchase a cheaper unproven resveratrol pill against the one that was shown to work in the animal lab.

    Their very lives were at stake and most of the consumers who elected to take resveratrol pills made their brand choice solely upon price. It would require 5 to 35 of the cheap resveratrol pills to provide the dosage of resveratrol in the pill that was proven to work.

    Doctors demand controlled prospective studies before changing their course of therapy. But since there is no ethical way to demonstrate resveratrol pills work to save human lives other than retrospective studies, Americans still die needlessly while taking statin drugs and aspirin tablets that give them a false sense of security.

    In an even more perplexing dilemma, an oral nutriceutical pill looms that can replace expensive injectable drug treatment for macular degeneration, a condition that robs senior adults of their central vision. But preliminary marketing studies show most eye doctors would shun this development because it takes thousands of dollars out of their pockets and retail pricing for a 30-day supply of the pills directly to seniors would have to be below a $10 price point, which is less than the cost of produce such a pill. Even though this pill would cost only ~$300 a year, and injectable drug treatment would cost Medicare $9200-$20,000, there is no foreseeable way to sell it to miserly patients or greedy doctors.

    Furthermore, this resveratrol pill appears to cure the one out of six cases that fail to maintain their vision after receiving the injectable drug. The pill is a great discovery, but over pocketbook issues patients will have none of it. Ironically, this pill is priced at less than $1.00/day which is below the cost of cigarettes and excessive alcohol which are primary risk factors for the disease. Many patients opt for the needle stab directly into the white of their eyes because it is covered by Medicare whereas the nutriceutical must be purchased out-of-pocket.

    Here we have an opportunity to save billions of healthcare dollars and improve care, and neither patients nor doctors appear ready to adopt this technology. This is the crazy world we live in today.

    Will there be a healthcare revolution?

    My friends, there will be no healthcare revolution. Those individuals who have already bolted from conventional medicine stand to benefit from learning about home remedies that will serve them well. Few senior Americans don’t take prescription drugs, but I’d be certain that most who are prescription-drug-free are dietary supplement users.

    One of the frustrations for many people who are avidly informed dietary supplement users is their inability to convince spouses and family members of the benefit of nutritional medicine. The natural healthcare revolution is stopped cold at this point because word-of-mouth often fails to convince loved ones. Most supplement users will nod their heads after reading this.

    No amount of scientific evidence is going to convince people who are mistakenly suspicious of vitamin pills and who won’t invest a nickel on their own health. They are not about to admit they have fallen for a fraud by taking problematic prescription drugs.

    The best approach now is to work to introduce vitamin pills to the next generation. Comic books that target children and encourage kids to use vitamins should go a long way towards repudiating drugs later in life. The promotion of vitamins C and D and fish oil to children would be good starters. Moms and dads would likely start taking junior’s vitamin pills now and then, and who knows, we might finally have a revolution underway.
    © 2011 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc. Not for posting on other websites.

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