2. Traditional Influences and Medical Practices

"My first book, published in 1975, had critical attack on the drugs industry"
"My second book, published a year or so later, had taken me one step further. I had investigated the world of medical research and come to the then startling conclusion that medical researchers were contributing very little to the quality of health care, but were simply amassing new information and filling libraries with research papers which had little practical value. Medical researchers were, I concluded, inspired by personal and commercial motives and were accumulating information for all the wrong reasons.

 

The profession wasn't just out of touch; it was completely failing yo deal with the health problems of the twentieth century."

 

At the beginning of the 19th century, life expectancy was low and millions of babies and young children never grew to adulthood. Diseases such as smallpox, typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis devastated whole communities. By the end of the century, life expectancy had improved enormously and infants stood a much better chance of living to childhood and even adulthood.

 

By the start of 20th century, the drug industry was developing and surgical skills were being honed to new high standards.
"Anyone alive at the start of this century would have felt confident that the medical profession would bloom and that in future, people would lead longer and healthier lives. That hasn't happened.
Very few important advances have been made in the last quarter of a century, and in those areas where advances have been made, the work was begun decades ago."

 

Despite the fact that individual doctors remain committed to caring for the sick and the infirm, medicine has sunk into a slough and there has been almost no improvement in either the quality or the quantity of life enjoyed in the developed countries of the world. Indeed, the World Health Organisation figures suggest that in some developed countries there has, in recent years, been a decrease in life expectancy and an increase in the mortality rate among young people.

 

Statistics suggest that people are now more likely to fall ill then they were a generation ago.
"The number of doctors goes up annually. But whenever doctors go on strike, the death rate goes down."

 

Inspite of having richer food supplies and more readily available medicines today than ever before, all the evidences suggests that in Britain people were never healthier than during the ravages of the Second World War.
The government claims to recognise the value of preventive medicine. And yet in Britain half the adult population take some form of medicament every day.
During the last quarter of a century, we have developed remarkably sophisticated machinery for our hospitals, and yet, cancers, immune disorders and allergy problems become commoner day by day.
We now have specialist coronary care units for heart attack victims, and more people than ever are dying of heart disease.
Young people are bigger and stronger than our ancestors, and yet the number of young children with diabetes is doubling every decade.
We have more surgeons and more operating theatres then ever before, and yet there are still enormous waiting lists for essential surgery.
New procedures and drugs are tested far more effectively and extensively than ever before. And yet the incidence of doctor-induced disease continues to rise.
There have never been so many rules to protect the rights of patients and yet patients have never been so deprived of freedom.
We have the technology to prevent unwanted pregnancies and yet the demand for abortion never stops growing.
Medicine has never been more sophisticated. And yet the patients have never been so dissatisfied
Doctors have never tried harder, and never been less well loved.

 

There is no single, simple explanation for this disastrous state of affairs. In part, the problems are due to the fact that the medical profession has spent the last century creating a system of health care designed to suit it s own needs of the patients. In part, the problems are due to the medical profession's failure to define or understand the real needs of the community.

 

But the overriding, essential fact is that doctors have taken too much control for themselves. Overcome with enthusiasm for the marvel of science, doctors have ignored the healing powers of the individual body and mind. Convinces by their own professional propaganda, they have built a profession which has too much respect for therapy and not enough respect for healing. For the first time in history we have a medical profession with the power to interfere with nature. But for the first time in history we have medical profession which has chosen to ignore the phenomenon of natural healing.

 

Doctors have become instilled with a sense of power and have taken too much responsibility, And out of a mixture of respect, admiration and fear, patients have let them take that responsibility. At the one time when we should be recognising the remarkable curative and protective powers of the human mind, we have abdicated all responsibility and handed over our bodies to the technicians.

 

One of the most important reasons why doctors have tended to ignore the natural healing powers of the human body and the mind is because their attitude towards the body and towards illness was largely formulated by a 17th century philosopher called Rene Descartes, who believed that the human body is little more than a piece of machine.

 

Following on from this Cartesian philosophy, the modern doctors believe s that when something goes wrong , when symptoms develop, or when system is not functioning effectively, all you have to do is take the machine apart, examine all the bits and pieces and fiddle with those parts which are malfunctioning.

 

It is simple, mechanistic approach which has served science well foe several centuries. Modern surgical approaches and drug therapies have all been designed to help restorer the smooth functioning of a machine which has been disrupted by infection or injury.

 

The basic aim of most medical treatments is to suppress any signs and symptoms of illness or distress as quickly and as effectively as possible.
A headache will be treated with a painkiller, indigestion will be treated with an antacid and high blood pressure will be treated with a drug designed to lower blood pressure.

 

But there have been, over the century, many individuals who have pointed out to the remarkable ability of the human body to heal itself and have argues that, in view of what we know about the body's self healing system, a mechanistic system is far too simplistic.

 

Many researchers around the world have produced evidence to show that the body's internal mechanisms are designed to enable it to adapt the internal pressures and variations and to show that the most efficient healing systems in the world are to be found not in the Doctor's pharmacy or the herbalist's garden, but inside the body itself. There are within every human body itself thousands of sophisticated protective systems.

 

*scar tissue ensures that the injury site is stronger than ever and better able to withstand any further injury.

 

In 1920s, Dr. Clara M. Davis of Chicago discovered that the human body has an efficient appetite control centre of its own. She took a group of newly weaned infants and allowed them to choose their own food without any outside guidance whatsoever. And she found that, without any prompting the infants chose good, varied diets. They ate the right type of food, in the correct quantities and their growth rates, developments and appearance were all just as satisfactory as those of babies who had been eating foods chosen by experts.

 

Other researchers have found that there is a natural tranquiliser in the human brain and that a pain killer, as powerful and as effective as morphine, is released when pain need to be overruled.

 

"A few years ago I wrote a book called Bodypower which contained a comprehensive account of the human body's remarkable self-healing mechanisms. The evidence is unquestionable, but it is significant that it has been ignored and even positively suppressed by members of the medical profession. Ruled and still convinced by the mechanistic philosophy of Descartes, modern members of the profession have been strangely reluctant to acknowledge the importance of the discoveries. They have found it easier to believe that they, and they alone, have answers to all health problems than to accept that must work together with the body's own self-healing systems to obtain the maximum benefit with the minimum of disruption.

 

Despite of the evidence that now exist to show the extent of the body's own healing powers, large number of profession persists with the mechanistic philosophy. And it is hardly surprising that since they argued that the body is a machine, they also claim that the best person to deal with any problems is a mechanic--a doctor.

 

Second reason for not accepting the natural healing mechanism is because there are today many commercial interests and pressure groups which have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and protecting the traditional attitudes towards health and healing.

 

the drug industry, for example, which would suffer badly if the mechanistic approach towards medical care was revised, makes many millions of pounds every year out of the fact that doctors prescribed huge quantities of drugs. It is a fact that if the industry were to suffer in any way, the medical profession would suffer too.

 

A weakening of the international drug industry would see the end to the existence of the majority of medical journals, an end to many research grants, an end to company sponsorship of medical events and perhaps the most important of all, an end to the drug industry's ability to protect the medical profession. It is a neat circle of interdependence.

 

Large number of doctors will claim that all symptoms require interventionist treatment of some kind and that the majority of disorders are best treated by suppressing the body's own responses. They know that if blood pressure and insomnia could be treated effectively without drug therapy, both the industry and medical profession would suffer enormously.

 

This has resulted in the increase in the number of patients who being injured by medical treatment. The fact is that if there are 10 patients lying in a hospital ward today, then the chances are that 1 of them is there because he has been made ill by the doctors. Or say, if you develop fresh symptoms after being treated by your doctor, the chances are that your new symptoms are caused by the treatment given to you for your original problem. Although it is often patients who are blamed for expecting too many wonder pills, it is doctor addicted to prescribing who create the problem in the first place.

 

Drugs like Penicillin, contraceptive pills, insulin etc have helped people from infection, population explosion, diabetics etc. But drugs have not been used wisely or cautiously. Despite the available evidence that drugs which can cure also kill, doctors have consistently obeyed drug company exhortations to keep on prescribing.

 

Doctors frequently claim that they write out all these prescriptions because patients demand drugs. That simply isn't true. Roughly one half of the drugs prescribed are never used at all, but simply end up in bathroom cabinets, discoloring and gathering dust. But truly, doctors have been pushed and bullied into overprescribing and now over prescribe out of habit and addiction rather than satisfy the demands of their patients.

 

The expert committee found by WHO in 1977, came to a surprising conclusion that out of many thousand drugs in the market, doctors ought to be able to deal with most health problems (including all tropical diseases) with a library of no more than 200 drugs and vaccines.

 

Despite this, doctors throughout western world continue to prescribe drugs that are inappropriate, unnecessary, dangerous or ineffective. Misled by drug company advertising, they continue to prescribe drugs that have been recognised as dangerous and they overuse the drugs that are in themselves safe and useful.

 

Next is appallingly low standard of teaching in medical schools. Academics are often more concerned with their own research projects than with the students they are paid to teach. Thus, out-of-date techniques and philosophies are handed on to generations after generation. Graduates know far little about the drugs they will spend their lives prescribing.

 

A symposium held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London in 1983, British physician Professor Lant pointed out that 50% of the prescriptions written for antibiotics were either not necessary or inappropriate.

 

According to Professor Lawson of the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, drug treatment side-effects occur in no less than 25% of patients on medical wards. This sort of prescribing anarchy suggests a high level of dangerous incompetence.

 

Tranquilisers such as Valium and Librium became so widely used that during any 12month period between one in 5 and one in 3 women received a prescription for a tranquiliser. In 1981, the health services of 67 of the world's poorest countries spent less on health care than the rich countries spent on tranquilisers. By the time they are 18months old some 25% of all babies will have already received a sedative of one sort or another.

 

In Britain alone there are well over million people who have been taking tranquilisers foe several years or more. Since tranquilisers of this sort were never intended to be prescribed for more a week or two, that rather suggests that there are many doctors who don't know what they are doing.

 

Reasons why all this happen are--

1. Most of the doctors now in practice qualified before drugs of this type appeared on the market.
2. They simply don't know what else to do for the vast number of patients requiring help with problems caused or made worse by stress and anxiety.

By 1960s, it became clear that there was a close link between stress and mental disease.
The drug industry solution only succeeded because the medical profession's leaders looked inside the established therapeutic system for all its solutions, rather than being prepared to look outside for fresh, alternative answers. Many of the most widely prescribed heart drugs are neither particularly useful nor especially safe and yet the companies making them promote them with tremendous enthusiasm. Thank to doctors' poor education, the international drugs industry continues to make enormously healthy profits.
To the uninitiated, high technology, medicine may sound as if it has all the answers, but it is truly Faustian bargain. If we look at the scanners, it becomes clear that these may be useful in technical terms, but they are neither successful nor particularly useful in human terms. They don't save many lives and don't improve the quality of life for patients.
If you look through the medical literature, you'll find no evidence to show that CAT scanners are worth buying; yet dozens of hospital doctors have helped organise fund-raising committees to bye themselves the medical equivalent of a bigger, brighter motor car.
One final commercial factor that has influence on the way that doctors practice medicine: the drive to make money. Even in Britain, where the majority of patients are seen through the National Health Service, countless unnecessary operations are performed every year.
In 1982, Sir George Godber, chief medical officer at the Department of Health and Social Security, wrote that, "it is commonly believed that many of the 90,000 tonsillectomies done in England and Wales are of questionable benefits."
Besides, the relationship between the doctor and the patients has been based on a sale of information, advice and skill. If a patient falls ill, he visits a doctor,receives advice and treatment, pays a fee and either gets better or comes back again.
Hippocrates argued at length that the relationship between a man and his environment is an important one. He pointed out that the health of an individual depends on a very large extent on his personal habits and the world he lives in. He believed that understanding the influence of the man's environment is an essential way of keeping hi m healthy.
In order to be effective, doctor must take into account four different aspects of each patients life.

1. His General Environment: air, water, general climate of the country.
2. Immediate Environment: occupation, etc
3. Personal Environment: Smoking, eating and drinking habits.
4. Personality of the patient

Attempting to treat patients without investigating their environment is like trying to grow seeds without looking at the soil you are trying to grow them in.
treating a patient with drugs or surgery without investigating his personality or outside environment is like pulling a plant that isn't growing properly out of its pot, nibbling at its roots with secateurs and then putting it straight back into the same pot-full of soil.
The two basic errors are made by the modern, 20th century doctors in the way they had tried to use the principle of preventive medicines.

1. they tried to turn preventive medicine to new medical speciality involving patients and doctors in a traditional one-to-one relationship.

There isn't any real evidence to show that cancer smear campaign have been responsible for any appreciable fall in the evidence of cervical cancer. But there is so plenty of evidence to show that different cytologists reading the same slides often produce different reports. And also that many thousands of women have been worried into illness by being told that they need to have followup smears performed for 'technical' reasons.
One recent study financed by the British government has concluded that regular screening examinations are both expensive and ineffective. A study of 7,000 patients showed that those had had health checks were no more or less likely to lose time from work, to need admitting to hospital, to have a visit from their family doctor, or die any sooner than those who hadn't had health checks.
2. Doctors have tried to introduce preventive medicine into the community in a professional acceptable way publicly without first coming to some agreement among themselves and without taking care to silence the commercial groups and lobbyists which have a vested interest in fighting for specific products and types of products.
Take the world of food, for example. There is an enormous amount of controversy here. Should you eat salt? How much fibre should you eat? Are animal fats good for you or bad for you? If you listen to everything the so-called experts have to say, you will end-up thoroughly confused because while one group will tell you one thing, another equally eminent group will say exactly the opposite.

 

Its not difficult to understand ho all this hapopen. Imagine, for example, that a lone researcher in Sweden produces a piece of evidence showing that runner beans cause migrane. The newspaper or television correspondent will notice this research work and will print a paragraph or two detailng the results. The research work will have affected relatively few people.

 

But by now, the Runner Bean Marketing Board will have been alerted. Its advisers will scour the world's liiterature until they find an expert prepared to argue that runner beans are good for you. They may, if they are lucky, find a researcher in, say Australia or California, who beliebes that without daily runner beans we run an inceased risk of developing liver disease.

 

Frightened that the consumption of runner beans might be damaged by the original Swedish report, the Runner Bean Marketing Board (which is, of course, financed by the farmers whose livelihood depends upon the steady marketing and sale of runner beans) will pay for the foreign research scientist to go on an international tour, They will arrange for him to hold press conferences and they will send copies of his reports to doctors and dieticians everywhere.

 

At this point the Board Bean Marketting will get worried. They will see all this publicity for runner beans as a threat and will look around for an expert or two of their own. They will come up with a specialist in Germany or Israel who believes that broad beans prevent heart disease or tooth decay. They will provide him an international platform from which to expound his views. And they won't be particularly worried if he also uses the massive publicity machine with which they have armed him to propound another dotty theory that carrots cause baldness and impotence. After all, their reasoning will go, if people stop buying carrots, they will probably buy more broad beans.

 

The Carrot Marketing Board wont be too pleased by this new development, however, and they will quickly launch a campaign of their own. In no time at all hundreds of experts from all around will be arguing with one another, producing quite different statistics, making all sorts of outrageous claims and ensuring that no one lietens to anything that doctors say.

The food industry was one of the first to realise that you can buy any number of medical experts for a few grants and a fistful of airline tickets to conferences in Miami. And it has become one of the most successful industries at lobbying

To give a more specific example, consider animal fat. Animal fat is the one foodstuff that most of the genuinely independent experts agree we really should avoid if we want to stay healthy. In 1953, it was shown that there are was a convincing correlation between a high intake of animal fat and the development of heart disease.

In 1928, the World Health Organization published a recommendation of its own advising people to cut down on fat. Numerous major scientific and medical committees around the world have agreed that we should eat less fatty meat, less butter, less cream and fewer eggs.

But since the farmers and the food manufacturers have an obvious commercial interest in that we continue to eat lots of butter and drink plenty of milk, they have joined together to pay a number of extremely effective propaganda organisations. These organisations do their work in number of ways.

1. They bombard jornalist of all kinds with information suggesting that animal fats really aren't bad for you after all. That ensures a certain amount of confusion in the press and on television. 
2. Then, they send doctors a stream of information prepared by their own team of hired experts. 

By a combination of accident and design the 20th century has seen the traditionally dominant role of the doctor confirmed and strengthened, and the traditionally subservient  role of the patient confirmed equally vehemently. To a certain extent, patients have encouraged this trend. This unequal and unbalanced distribution of responsibility had had a number of bad effects.

1. It had undoubtedly damaged the doctor-patient relationship. Medical profession had promised far more than iot could offer. Patients had been promised good health and longevity and their doctors had been unable to fulfil either promise.
2. It had put far too much pressure on doctors themselves. Doctors have been found to be the unhealthiest group of individuals in the world. They die younger than most of the other people. They commit suicide more often. They have more heart disease and peptic ulcerations. They need psychiatric advice more often than most other groups. They turn to alcohol and drugs far more frequently than most of their contemporaries. Their marraige do not survive. They crumple and they shatter under the tremendous pressure. They have put themselves into an impossible situation. How can they pretend to promise the rest of the world good health when their own state of health is so terrible?
3. By denying their patients a chance to take back more personal responsibility for their own health, 20th century doctors have failed to take advantage of the rapidly growing amount of evidnece pointing to the powerful self-healing qualities of the human body--self healing techiques which cost nothing, are free of side-effects and offer protection as well as cure, well-being as well as good health.
4. And the most important of all, 20th century doctors have, by strengthening the mechanistic philosophy of health, denied each one of us the opportunity to experience and benefit from the remarkabke self-healing powers within our own minds.