Scientific Living » pharmaceuticals

5 Problems With Modern Medicine

Scientific Living — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:21:44 +0000

Modern medicine is good. But it also has a lot of bad mixed up with it. We have too much faith in it. Here are a few of it’s the negative aspects.

1. Why Pharmaceuticals?

Pharmaceuticals definitely have a place in effective medicine. But why are doctors overwhelmingly using it when compared to other means? There are lifestyle changes. There are nutraceuticals. There are other means of administering medicine beyond just swallowing a pill. The fact that our society is overwhelmed with the use of pharmaceutical drugs is evidence to the fact that the medical community is not set up to promote effective treatments, but is actually set up to promote profitable treatments. If pharmaceuticals were the most effective component in medicine, then one would expect to see them used in a disproportionate amount compared to other treatments. But we don’t just use them that much. We use them almost exclusively.

2. Profitable Over Effective Treatments

Say you are a big company that is trying to make a profit (as all companies are of course). Do you want to market a product that will cure millions of some illness, and do it at a great price? You would not make much money that way. As a better option, you may prefer to market a product that cures millions, but brings in quite a pretty penny.

But we aren’t even that nice. We go a step lower.

We are predominantly making drugs that far from cure anything. They simply manage symptoms. And of course, they are expensive. Why would any company want to cure their customers of their illness? Do you know what you call a person who has to manage their symptoms lifelong?

Pharmaceutical companies call such people “renewable income”.

Honestly, I can’t think of a satisfactory number of illnesses that our society has widely accepted cures for. I refuse to believe that it is simply that difficult. We in truth are not trying to cure disease with any reasonable efficiency.

3. Undervaluing Clinical Experience

Take for example prolotherapy, which in clinical practice is fairly curative of chronic pain. But there isn’t much research. Does that mean it’s not valid? Definitely not! To depend only on research, and ignore clinical experience is not rational. This is where the individual patient comes in. When we have a health problem, it is our individual responsibility to become aware of the clinical experience of doctors using various treatments. This is because there is no party which is going to gather this information for us.

4. Modern Medicine is the Third Leading Cause of Death

We are certainly an illogical bunch if we achieve this statistic, even when the Hippocratic Oath says to do no harm! This one fact should be sufficient to rouse people to take interest in their own proactive health care.

5. Biased Sources of Information

Doctor’s are only human. He or she may even make strong statements about the worth or worthlessness about various medical treatments, even without actually knowing. It is not impossible to get mislead by a doctor.

Also consider where certain doctors get their information. They are probably reading a decent percentage of pharmaceutical company research, and went to school that taught primarily a pharmaceutical approach to medicine. And of course, pharmaceutical companies are trying to sell their products. Their information is bound to have anywhere from a little to a tremendous amount of bias.

Have you ever known of someone who seemed to always be taking newly invented pharmaceuticals. Why in the world should doctors be always giving what’s new? Why are we constantly trying to invent new things? If we found effective treatments, “new” would not be needed! Why are we giving almost no effort to evaluating old things under the light of modern science? Why not take stock of the past?

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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Drug Company Hypnotizes Viewers

Scientific Living — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:05:03 +0000

Ask a family member to make sure you don’t go out and buy this drug immediately after watching this video, because it is extremely hypnotic!

Celebrex Video:

Does this make anyone else nauseous? Look how care free, and happy-go-lucky the music and visuals are! How starkly those aspects of the video contrast with the words! This is a prime example of hypnotism. I will reveal a couple startling facts about Celebrex in just a minute. First, let me translate a selection of the words in this video:

In English, please!

Statement 1:

“The FDA requires all these NSAIDs, including Celebrex, to have the same cardiovascular warning.”

Translation:

“We are at least as bad as other NSAIDs. But hey, those NSAIDs aren’t perfect either!” (as the guy casually reads the newspaper)

Statement 2:

“Any prescription NSAID, including Celebrex, may increase the chance of heart attack or stroke, which can lead to death”

Translation:

“There is a risk of heart attack. But in my defense, all the other kids are doing it!” (as the guy sips his tea)

Statement 3:

“Having options is important. An NSAID, like Celebrex, may be one option.”

Translation:

“Occasionally, Celebrex might not be much worse than your other options.” (as the guy pets his dog)

Statement 4: (THIS ONE IS THE BEST!)

“In fact, prescription Celebrex has never been taken off the market.”

Translation:

“That’s right. We’ve managed to at least meet bare minimum requirements to not be considered outright dangerous.” (as the guy throws a frisbee to his dog)

Statement 5:

“The FDA stated that for certain patients, Celebrex’ benefits outweigh the risks”

Translation:

“Sometimes, our drug does more good than harm.” (as bird flies by screen)

Statement 6:

“Celebrex can be used with low-dose aspirin. Other prescription NSAIDs aren’t generally recommended with aspirin.”

Translation:

“Celebrex can be used with low-dose aspirin. Other NSAIDs can sometimes be used with aspirin, and we didn’t tell you whether or not they can always be used with low-dose aspirin.” (as fish swims by)

Statement 7:

For many with arthritis pain, not treating is not an option.”

Translation:

“We know how shady this drug sounds. But we also know just how desperate some of you are, and we bank on it!” (as married couple dances)

Some Comments

I don’t mean to pick on Celebrex in particular, but this commercial gives insight into the pharmaceutical industry in general. I can understand that someone may argue that this is all legalese that Celebrex is required to state by law, and that the drug is actually not all that bad. But firstly, there is a reason all that stuff is required to be stated by law! Secondly, it is still pretty sad that they have to continuously make comparison to other drugs, just to boost their appearance. Let’s not mention adding in the shooting stars and mellow guitar! If this isn’t all disgusting enough, let me share with you some more information about Celebrex:

Celebrex came on the market in 1998
In March 2007, the Journal of Family Medicine published a study comparing Tylenol to Celebrex
For the short term of the study, the two drugs were “virtually indistinguishable” with regards to improving pain, stiffness, and function in patients with clinically diagnosed osteoarthritis
Quite humorously, the authors of the study concluded that because acetaminophen is less expensive and has fewer safety concerns, it should be the drug of first choice.
In the 8 years that Celebrex was on the market before this study, Pfizer Corporation made 300 billion dollars in gross revenue off of Celebrex

This should raise some serious eyebrows! Why did it take 8 whole years, and 300 billion dollars of people’s money to find out that Celebrex is no better than Tylenol for osteoarthritis!?

The gigantic amount of cash involved just goes to show how seriously awash big pharma is in money. It also goes to show that multimillion dollar marketing campaigns could even sell prescription water if desired.

The Saddest Part

The saddest part is that I am sure a huge percentage of the prescriptions written for Celebrex have been due to patients requesting their doctor to write them one. We have to acknowledge that these twisted marketing campaigns do seriously affect the opinions of individuals.

Another Sad Example

Go to the website for Cymbalta. Right on the front page they admit that they don’t even know how the drug works! Let me ask this:

Don’t you need to have a method of operation in mind before you create a drug that successfully uses that method of operation?

Ideally the answer is a resounding YES! But in truth, the fact that the makers of Cymbalta don’t even know how their drug works, means one of two things:

They discovered it on accident, have observed its effect, but have not yet discovered its method of operation. This story might be okay with me. After all, that is how we got drugs like penicillin.
They intentionally made a drug that was marketable, regardless of whether or not there was significant science behind it. If this is the case, then they have made a drug that interacts with the brain somehow (just to say it does something), and have achieved that goal in a way that satisfies the safety standards of the FDA. This would be greed at its best!

You can think about which option is more likely.

Brainwashing 101

When we are exposed to so many advertisements, many people don’t even process how insane those advertisements are! There is a significant degree of desensitization. We see things so often that we think this is just how it is, and that there is no better option out there waiting for us. This encourages us to sluff off on our own health, and to be too quick to accept inferior treatment. Yes, it is true that in some cases, we have to accept irresolvable situations, but going straight to a drug like Celebrex is selling yourself short…very short indeed.

The sad thing is that this drug will still make lots of money. It is very unfortunate that something like this can actually be so profitable! It is evidence of our lack of education.

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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Vaccine Scandal

Scientific Living — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:05:00 +0000

There is talk about having forced vaccination for Swine Flu. You may have already read all the reports about huge amounts of money generated by people purchasing over the counter medicines to combat Swine Flu, even though the disease has so far been relatively benign. You may have also already heard about the extremely low probability that the three different strains of flu naturally combined to create Swine Flu. If this isn’t suspicious enough, there is more.

“The Big Pharma company Baxter International distributed contaminated vaccines for swine flu to Austria and 3 neighboring countries. The vaccines contained the H5N1 avian flu virus. The Czech Republic just happened to catch the contamination. They tested a batch on ferrets before shipping it out for injection into humans. All of the ferrets died! It was a major scandal. Had they injected humans, we could be facing a disease that could kill millions.

The word “contamination” suggests an accident. But according to the extremely strict procedures for vaccine production, the “accidental” presence of live avian flu in a swine flu vaccine is an impossibility. It is so remote that some Czech newspapers speculated that Baxter was trying to provoke a pandemic. Such a pandemic would help it reap untold billions in profits from producing the vaccine to counter a bird flu outbreak.”
(From Second Opinion Newsletter)

There is plenty of evidence that points to the fact that vaccines do terrible harm to people’s health.

In 1988 1 in 2500 children had autism
Today 1 in 166 children have autism

What has changed? Vaccines are certainly a part of it. Heavy metals are known contaminants in vaccines, and are a known cause of autism, as well as many other diseases.

If nationalized health care results in forced vaccination, then we have a serious problem.

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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Vaccine Facts

Scientific Living — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:26:50 +0000

Here are some facts about vaccines. They speak for themselves:

In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000 deaths. During the same period in Germany, with a vaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (The Hadwen Documents)
In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don’t Get Stuck, Hannah Allen)
In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio vaccines were contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)
In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after 96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)
In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)
In the 1970′s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)
In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )
In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People’s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)
In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)
The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.
In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)
In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)
In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990)
In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association had an article on measles which stated ” Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated children.” (JAMA, 21/11/90)
In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)
In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over 80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been fully vaccinated.
On November 2nd, 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced that its members voted at their 57th annual meeting in St Louis to pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccines. The resolution passed without a single “no” vote

Source: Vaccination Debate.

Update 5/8/2010

What happened to vaccinationdebate.com?

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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Health Insurance Was Made for Man, Not Man for Health Insurance (Self-imposed Slavery)

Scientific Living — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:02:38 +0000

Many of you must personally know people who are ready to retire, but don’t do it, simply because it will cause them health insurance problems. If they quit their jobs, they will no longer get employer sponsored health insurance. Then they either have to pay much higher premiums that they cannot afford, or they cannot be accepted to any plans in the first place. They are also still several years too young to be eligible for Medicare, which in itself has many criticisms. And so instead of living the life they want to live, they go on working.

The fact that we’ve gotten ourselves into this situation is shameful. It is a factor that leads people towards living a fear-based life. Anything that encourages fear must go. Anything that makes a person weak should be thoroughly uprooted.

“Strength is life. Weakness is death.”

People spend their whole lives a slave to society and never think there is any other way to live. Then they invent all sorts of complex ways to enhance their ways of living, and end up unwittingly trapping themselves. The bloated institution of health care is just one of these ways we have strangled ourselves and limited our freedom. Insurance should be a factor that helps us reach freedom. It is clear that our efforts in this regard have gone terribly awry. Instead of giving us freedom, it has more and more become a factor of bondage.

One of the most reliable signs of a truly excellent doctor is that he or she does not accept insurance. Insurance is a limitation in a big sense. It funnels doctors and patients down channels that have been predetermined. If those funneled paths were really tried and true, then why is illness so much on the rise?

“Few of the many pharmaceutical drugs on the market are actually safe and effective.”
(Dr. Weil)

So those who criticize people who practice “voodoo” alternative medicine, or push “snake oil” are perhaps the ones who really are subjected to snake oil. I recently heard of some government agency that reported in a study that 80% of all treatments are actually unproven!

By the way, Dr. Weil has a new book which looks extremely interesting:

“Almost everyone who has been treated by – or works within – the American healthcare system at least suspects that it is deeply dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse. Although politicians have weighed in on all sides, in Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future, Dr. Weil identifies the root of the problem. He shows precisely how American medicine, manipulated by profiteering drug companies and abandoned by government overseers, has lost its way. He then presents a solution that will not only make healthcare affordable, but will also dramatically improve the rapidly deteriorating health of the nation’s citizens.”
(Dr. Weil)

You can read more about it on his website.

You can take care of your health now. I heard on the news that another government agency estimated 80 to 90% of all chronic disease would be eliminated if people stopped smoking, exercised, controlled stress, and ate healthy. So why not start with that. That may be more valuable than any amount of health insurance. Don’t wait for someone to solve your problems. You alone are responsible. And if others cannot take care of themselves then educate, encourage, and empower them to do so.

And yes, keep your health insurance. But take care of your health with integrative means that hopefully make you never need it.

Disclaimer: This article is not medical advice. This is opinion and is for informational purposes only. If seeking medical advice, consult a licensed physician.

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