• The Over-Commercialized State Of Modern Medicine

    Posted September 22, 2014: by Bill Sardi

    It was George Orwell who once said: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

    Which brings up the topic of medical propaganda. A great deal of what is reported in the news media concerning health, disease and medicine is rubbish driven by commercial interests.

    Take for example the widely broadcast announcement that actress Angelina Jolie elected to undergo a preventive double mastectomy after it was discovered she tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation that is associated with an increased risk for the disease.

    This announcement triggered a response from fearful women, many who had a family history of breast cancer, to undergo DNA tests and genetic counseling. DNA testing increased two-and-a-half times in 2013 compared to the prior year in the United Kingdom. [The Hollywood Reporter Sept 19, 2014]

    The problem was that Angelina Jolie’s announcement sounded more like a public relations stunt. The part of the story that raised eyebrows was that Angelina Jolie received breast implants following bilateral breast removal and that she certainly hadn’t lost her sexual identity or her glamorous image.

    But was she just seeking the breast implants at an age (approaching 40) when breasts begin to sag in women and just happened to undergo DNA testing and her doctors decided to make her a poster girl for a new way to get insurance plans to pay for breast implants?

    In the post-Angelina Jolie era, now any woman who tests positive for the BRCA1 gene can get insurance-paid breast implants.   The ladies lined up.

    And the final word on all this was that double mastectomy doesn’t boost the chance of surviving cancer. After 10 years the survival rate for women who elected to undergo less invasive lumpectomies versus total breast removal was the same (81%). [Daily Mail UK Sept 2, 2014; Journal American Medical Assn. Sept 3, 2014]   But you don’t ge the free breast implants!

    The Ebola virus threat

    Do you believe the Ebola virus poses a health threat in the U.S.? Why would the President of the United States send 3000 U.S military troops to central Africa to help in fighting the Ebola virus outbreak there when there are so many people dying from malnutrition and other infectious disease such as malaria, cholera, AIDS, dengue fever and tuberculosis in Central Africa? [Clinical Microbiology & Infection July 2011]

    Or was the President just a stooge for vaccine makers who are pushing an imagined Ebola outbreak so that rules can be side-stepped and a new vaccine rushed into use?

    Since 1976 there have been 885,3343 suspected and laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola with 932 fatalities in West Africa. That amounts to about 25 Ebola deaths annually in that region of Africa. [Infectious Disease Poverty Aug 2014]

    If you recall an influenza outbreak followed the President’s visit to Mexico in 2011 to meet with their President and the President of France who was in Mexico at the opening of a French vaccine plant there.   The subsequent H1N1 flu outbreak that started in Mexico was later called a “sponsored pandemic.” [International Journal Risk & Safety in Medicine 2011]

    News reports spread alarm that there may be 6,800 cases of Ebola in West Africa by the end of September 2014 [Science Daily Sept 19, 2014] But more reasoned investigators point out that Ebola is a relatively minor public health threat for Africa. [Clinical Microbiology Infection July 2011] The contrived Ebola crisis was used in Sierra Leone to shutdown the whole country and hand out bars of soap, an exercise that few African families can afford. [MedicalXPress Sept 20, 2014]

    Furthermore, many of the cases of Ebola are likely malaria that has similar symptoms. [Guardian UK Sept 10, 2014] The numbers of infected Africans is likely being jacked-up to create feverish fear and prepare all Central and Western African populations for mass vaccination.

    What happens when the science changes? Will your doctor follow?

    The speed that medical knowledge is being produced is out-running the capability of physicians to adopt the latest science into medical practice. Many physicians are practicing largely what they learned in medical school decades ago, that cholesterol is the central paradigm of modern medicine and that vaccines, antibiotics and antidepressants will allay most physical and mental complaints.

    But suddenly we learn that while the adult population is adding years to the end of their lives, it is also facing the problem of living with chronic age-related diseases in the last decade or two of their lives.

    And there is no more horrific discovery than the fact that most Americans will live into their seventh and eighth decade of life but after age 40 the brain begins to slowly shrink and is about the volume of a 7-year old at the end of life. [Stanford Report Sept 17, 2014] The incredible shrinking brain is shortening the human mindspan!

    Now knowing most of their adult patients over age 40 are going to live into their70s and 80s, will doctors begin to practice preventive medicine and recommend all of their patients begin a dietary supplement regimen that includes vitamin B12 and fish oil to slow brain shrinkage? [Proceedings National Academy Science June 4, 2013; Alzheimer’s Dementia June 18, 2014]

    Furthermore, a number of published studies now suggest the lack of sunshine vitamin D is strongly associated with dementia. [Epidemiology Sept 11, 2014; Dementia Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 2014; Neurology Sept 2, 2014] The risk for mental decline in old age rises as much as 41-60% among adults whose vitamin D levels are low. [CNS Drugs Aug 2011] Low vitamin D levels may result in impaired blood flow to the brain. [Nuclear Medicine Communications Oct 2012]

    News reports do echo this science, but is it being put into practice in physicians’ offices? I don’t know of a single doctor who universally prescribes dietary supplements to his aging patients to prevent otherwise inevitable brain shrinkage.   The masses are waiting to be told what to do by their doctors, and they then want someone else to pay for the vitamins (insurance, Medicare) and then maybe they will take them, if they can remember.

    However, as soon as pharmaceutical companies come up with a drug to slow brain shrinkage or slow age-related memory loss, every adult patient will likely be prescribed such a drug across the board.

    My friends this is the state of modern medicine today. – ©2014 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.

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