Modern Medicine's Practice of Doing Harm
I've once again developed a hankering to write about more controversial issues, and of all the various blogs I currently keep (all unlinked to each other on purpose), this blog is really the most appropriate outlet.
The issue on my mind today is probably way too big for one post, but you got to start somewhere, right? What's eating me these days concerns the practice of modern medicine and how it affects me and the society in which I live.
At the moment, I am battling a sinus infection, and this time, I am determined to not give in to the use of antibiotics. The MunchK has it too, but she is clearly tolerating it very well, and I think she's basically on the mend. I think I am too, but still need a day or so to recover completely. Anyway, I've entertained and distracted myself by paging through some old issues of the magazine the Couple to Couple League publishes. The magazine is dedicated to educating readers about the practice of Natural Family Planning (NFP), but it also delves into all kinds of issues related to fertility and reproduction as well as natural mothering. While the articles regularly will cite complaints about doctors who are undeducated about NFP, who don't give any credibility to their patients' charts and sometimes misdiagnose them as a result of their arrogance, the organization clearly views this as a problem with that particular physician and is by no means anti-medicine. But after reading five or more articles that mention medical error or just plain arrogance, you can't help but notice a pattern.
Over the past year or so, I have grown much less charitable towards the medical institution and doctors in general, though I do believe there are good doctors out there who actually are openminded and will listen to their patients. We are fortunate to have one as our family physician. During the time many of us bloggers were writing and fighting so hard to save Terri Schindler's life, I really lost whatever faith I had left in modern medicine. There was one point while Terri was starving to death that a number of doctors trotted out on TV and talked about how euphoric death by starvation was. I only know about this because Rush Limbaugh was mocking and decrying it and playing a few of the more ridiculous soundbites. But even before that, how many doctors had already gone public about Terri being in a permanent vegetative state, when any layperson with internet access could determine that to be completely untrue in about five minutes? Then there was the misinformation about what abilities she had and didn't have, which were never properly determined, not even by physicians. Anyway, there were doctors out there on TV, on the internet, on the radio, basically lying through their teeth about Terri and about what she would be experiencing by her death by starvation and dehydration. Whether they were lying or they were plain ignorant, either scenario ought to have been of grave concern to any of their unfortunate patients.
I was bewildered by how doctors could show their face in public with that baloney and expect us all to swallow it. I don't know how many people actually did swallow it, but clearly, their message prevailed where it really mattered. How is it that we as a society put up with and let doctors get away with this malarkey?
Then the answers started coming. Well, maybe not answers, but certainly indications that what I was witnessing ought to have come as no surprise to anyone. These lying or ignorant doctors come from the same medical profession that does abortions. I guess if doctors can rationalize the dismemberement of unborn babies, maybe it isn't such a big jump to rationalize the starvation of a handicapped adult woman. In fact, I learned at some point in my own efforts to save Terri's life that starvation and dehydration happen all the time in hospitals and nursing homes, and Terri was really just one of many victims. OK, so abortions are kind of an anomaly anyway, and many doctors will not do them. But are they really such an anomaly with modern medicine?
Most people are familiar with the Hippocratic Oath, which states to first, do no harm. All doctors are supposed to swear by it. I personally think they should just drop it. Doctors have actually caused countless people a lot of harm ever since the early days of what we now refer to as modern medicine. In fact, Hippocrates himself believed that woman equalled disease and he saw female internal organs as natural hotspots for disease. This couldn't have boded well for any women under his care.
So what harm exactly have doctors caused? Most of us remember reading about the ancient practice of bleeding sick patients, either by cutting their veins or by putting leaches on them. Many people who might otherwise have recovered, including some famous Roman Catholic saints, died of the treatment. I would consider that doing harm. OK, you say, but doctors realized their mistake and now don't do that anymore. I'm relieved that at least that's not one of the many risks I might face should I show up at a doctor's office, but it's hardly the only harmful prescription to their names.
At another time in history (and right now I'm just writing--maybe I'll go in later and fill in all my sources), many women were dying in childbirth or shortly after from "childbed fever." This form of maternal mortality began after doctors started taking over the practice of delivering babies from midwives who were actually doing quite well. Anyway, doctors who attended laboring women had this ego trip about how dirty their hands got. They would go from one woman to the other, and sometimes stop at the pathology lab or morgue in between such visits, and never once wash their hands. The women got infected and many of them died. A Jewish man (I don't know if he was a doctor himself or not) dared to suggest that doctors should wash their hands in between patients. He was ridiculed, impuned, and pretty much run out of the medical profession for that. It wasn't until fifty years later that doctors made it a practice to regularly wash their hands. How many people under physicians' care during those fifty years suffered and died needlessly as a result of that kind of arrogance?
Today, most people at least give lip service to the fact that breast milk is by far superior to formula as nutrition for infants. Actually, a more accurate way to put it is that formula is far inferior to breast milk. Babies deprived of breast milk can expect to experience more ear infections, more allergies, poorer health (and a whole list of other ailments) than their breastfed counterparts, all else being equal. And who was it that got mothers to abandon breastfeeding in favor of an inadequate substitute? Why doctors or course. Doctors started telling women that formula was better for their babies, that they weren't making enough milk for their babies, and so forth. To back that up, hospital procedures surrounding birth were making breastfeeding extremely difficult, so the women who believed their doctors were not just being gullible; they were being robbed of their God-given right to nourish their children, and they and their children suffered for it. About half of the women of about age 60 that I know have told me their doctors told them they couldn't breastfeed for various lame reasons. Did doctors honestly believe that a full half of the female population couldn't perform a basic female function? I doubt many of them even thought of it, which I do not find reassuring.
And what about C-sections? The current national C-section rate is 29 percent. So, I'm supposed to believe almost one third of the female population is incapable of another basic function, childbirth? No, the truth is many C-sections, which are major abdominal surgeries, are performed unnecessarily, and those unnecessary surgeries do cause harm. And who does C-sections? Doctors, of course. And this doesn't even delve into all the idiotic and harmful interventions doctors routinely do to women giving birth in hospitals and to their babies. Entire books have been written on the subject; feel free to look it up.
And once women are past the childbearing age, then they'd better hold onto their wombs for dear life. In America, nearly one third of women over the age of sixty have had hysterectomies and many of these women have also had their ovaries removed as well. The most common reason for a hysterectomy is the presence of uterine fibroids, benign but annoying tumors that grow in the walls of the uterus, and most of which will shrink during menopause. Why do uterine fibroids lead to removing the entire organ, and possibly the entire female reproductive system? Because it's easier to cut out the whole uterus than to carefully cut out the tumors. Why should doctors be bothered with a tedious surgery to cut out tumors rather than just get rid of it all? They seem to have this notion that if you're no longer bearing children, then you don't need a uterus. Actually, the uterus produces all kinds of important hormones that help a woman weather the transition to menopause and beyond. No problem, the doctors say. We'll just put her on hormone replacement therapy. I'm sure I don't need to go into what a fiasco HRT has turned out to be. First do no harm. My foot!
If hysterectomies have become a right of passage for women on the brink of menopause, let's take a look at male infant circumcision, one of the most common and useless surgeries performed on infant boys. According to Dr. Fleiss, an MD who writes for NOCIRC, circumcision traditionally was never accepted as something civilized people do. As the Roman empire was expanding into areas where circumcision was practiced for religious reasons, it outlawed the practice. The Catholic Church also came down against circumcision early on. I personally find it interesting that it was one of the very first issues to be decided on by the early Christians and they determined it was not something to be imposed on converting Gentiles. Circumcision made a comeback in America during a time when everyone was worried about boys masturbating. Someone thought circumcising those boys would put a halt to their masturbation and voila, the practice became acceptable again. When it became clear that circumcision did not mitigate masturbation, rather than give up the practice, the medical community started coming up with medical reasons to do it, all of which have since been proven to be hogwash. My favorite is the claim that it's more sanitary. Sure, let's make an open wound on a sensitive area and then regularly expose it to poopy diapers for the next year; yup, that's much more sanitary than leaving well enough alone. Only a doctor could see the logic in that!
Going back to breastfeeding and the abandonment thereof, this lead almost directly to the widespread use of contraception. Women who on average can space out their children every two years by breastfeeding now had their fertility return early and found themselves pregnant every year and with more children too quickly than they could handle. Rather than encourage them to return to breastfeeding, they were encouraged to take contraceptives instead. Several very convincing arguments have been made for the wide acceptance of contraception being responsible for many of the sexual perversions and other social ills that we now find ourselves facing. I can't go into them now as they would make for their own post, but more information can be found on the Couple to Couple League website. But general social ills notwithstanding, even people who have no quarrel with contraceptives in principle (I happen to, being Catholic) will agree that many of them carry serious side effects, most of which are not fully disclosed to women being offered the contraceptives. The Pill alone has been implicated in several cancers, infertility, permanent migraines, and at least three pages of fine print of other side effects. Tubal ligations are just as risky, with 37% of women reporting complications from the procedure, notably tubal pregnancies, one of the few cases where even adamant prolifers are forced to support the decision to abort, as the baby has no chance and the mother is likely to not survive either--a heartbreaking and dangerous situation for women finding themselves in that predicament. Anyway, contraceptives have caused harm and the medical profession has pushed them.
The detereoration of my own views of modern medicine as beneficial, or at the very least, benign, began while I was pregnant with the MunchK and some friends encouraged me and Crazy Diamond to fully investigate the vaccine issue. We did and were surprised by what we found. This too could make its own blog post, or entire blog for that matter, so I will only summarize and encourage you to investigate the issue for yourself especially if you have or will have babies or young children. In a nutshell, pretty much every benefit that has been purported to be brought about by vaccination has come under heavy fire, and for good reason, as there is much evidence to the contrary. As an example, take thimerosal, a mercury-derived preservative in many vaccines. Many people have attributed thimerosal to the recent nearly 600 percent increase in the rates of autism and related neural disorders among children. The jury is still out on that one as it's actually quite difficult to determine causation in that situation. However, whenever people have injected thimerosal into rats or mice, the animals have gotten brain damaged. If you inject thimerosal into ten mice, you will be left with ten brain damaged mice. The people who actually do these animal tests say there is no good reason (see bottom or page 3 in linked article) to believe that when you inject thimerosal into a human infant, that infant will not also get brain damaged. And yet, thimerosal-laced vaccines are routinely injected into infants and their unsuspecting parents assume their infants are being protected, not harmed. Doctors tell them they should give their kids shots, so they do. Unless someone tells them otherwise, as was the fortunate case for us.
Going back to why I refuse to take antibiotics for a sinus infection. My understanding is that antibiotics were extremely useful in treating war wounds and some very serious bacterial infections like pneumonia. We're talking fatal if left untreated pneumonia. Under those circumstances, I might even think antibiotics are a good idea. The problem is that they get overprescribed, and you can take them for viral head colds, ear infections, strep throat, sinusitis, and anything else you can imagine--things that our bodies are perfectly capable of dealing with on their own given fluids, rest, and maybe some extra immune support. Taking antibiotics for these can cause all sorts of problems, like diarrhea, yeast infections, killing off of all the good bacteria in our bodies--all of which would be trivial if your life is threatened by an infection, but which can start an unnecessary vicious cycle otherwise. Also, many of the infectious bacteria, including the more virulent kind, have grown resistant to common antibiotics due to their constant exposure to them. And yet who prescribes antibiotics for everything under the sun? Doctors do, and in this case patients do at times demand it and put pressure on the doctors to prescribe. Yet doctors have means to refuse to prescribe stuff that is not indicated and they don't always use those means as they should.
I could probably think of other examples of doctors having caused harm rather than good to the people who trust them to treat them for their ailments, but I think there's enough here. Doctor-induced illness and death is actually something that has been statistically measured, and while I do not know the exact ranking, iatrogenic (doctor-induced) deaths rank right up there with the top killers: cancer, heart disease, car accidents. Doctors indeed have a long history of harming, not helping, their patients. And we have a long history of placing way too much trust in them. In fact, as a society, I would say we have an idolatrous relationship with modern medicine. Doctors are treated as if they carry god-like stature and their word is considered the final authority on people's health and well-being. If you don't believe me, take any health issue concerning your children that you are at odds with the in-laws about, and then tell them your kid's doctor backs you up and watch them fall right into line. Modern medicine is looked on in much the same way Jesus was when he was walking around performing miracles--with unqualified awe and wonder.
I must, in the defense of doctors, add that doctors are not alone in this blatant violation of the trust society has placed in them. Doctors are part of an entire institution known as modern medicine that consists of the medical schools, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the politicians on both sides of the aisle who rely on these companies for campaign and party contributions, and the government who also is acting out of vested interests beyond our health. Books have been written about this too, and they make a fascinating read. Many doctors have the best of intentions and are caught in the throes of a system they do not understand and which is far more powerful than they are, and they do not have complete information either (although the truly good ones try to seek it out). For the most part I don't have quarrels with individual doctors, but I do not believe the institution of modern medicine to have my family's best interests at heart. Still, I do not blindly trust even our wonderful family doctor. I do the research myself and try to use the least invasive way to treat a bug that I can find--most of those treatments I will not learn about at the doctor's office. I must also state a disclaimer that since I am not citing all my sources, you, the reader, should not take me at my word, but look up the information and decide on this for yourself. See the relevant links at the bottom of this post.
So, given all the harm that modern medicine has caused people--the unnecessary surgeries, the bogus reccommendations, the arrogance with which many who question those reccommendations are treated--is it really such a huge step that this same institution, with many doctors who represent it, would also promote abortion, euthanasia, and recently, the cruel public starvation of an innocent, disabled woman? Is it really such a surprise that those representative doctors would use whatever lies they needed to in order to foist their agenda of death onto the unsuspecting public?
No, it really is not a big step, or a big surprise. It certainly isn't to me anymore.
For more information, visit some of these websites:
Abortion
Euthanasia
Starvation and dehydration
Circumcision
Vaccines another interesting article here.
Contraception
Childbirth
More technical info on childbirth
Natural Mothering
Breastfeeding
An interesting article on why we trust modern medicine so much
Hysterectomies
one of many alternative medicine websites
Thimerosal and autism
More on Thimerosal and autism
Also check out Confessions of a Medical Heretic and Male Practice by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn
Many more books and much more information can be found by doing a search on amazon and/or google.
The issue on my mind today is probably way too big for one post, but you got to start somewhere, right? What's eating me these days concerns the practice of modern medicine and how it affects me and the society in which I live.
At the moment, I am battling a sinus infection, and this time, I am determined to not give in to the use of antibiotics. The MunchK has it too, but she is clearly tolerating it very well, and I think she's basically on the mend. I think I am too, but still need a day or so to recover completely. Anyway, I've entertained and distracted myself by paging through some old issues of the magazine the Couple to Couple League publishes. The magazine is dedicated to educating readers about the practice of Natural Family Planning (NFP), but it also delves into all kinds of issues related to fertility and reproduction as well as natural mothering. While the articles regularly will cite complaints about doctors who are undeducated about NFP, who don't give any credibility to their patients' charts and sometimes misdiagnose them as a result of their arrogance, the organization clearly views this as a problem with that particular physician and is by no means anti-medicine. But after reading five or more articles that mention medical error or just plain arrogance, you can't help but notice a pattern.
Over the past year or so, I have grown much less charitable towards the medical institution and doctors in general, though I do believe there are good doctors out there who actually are openminded and will listen to their patients. We are fortunate to have one as our family physician. During the time many of us bloggers were writing and fighting so hard to save Terri Schindler's life, I really lost whatever faith I had left in modern medicine. There was one point while Terri was starving to death that a number of doctors trotted out on TV and talked about how euphoric death by starvation was. I only know about this because Rush Limbaugh was mocking and decrying it and playing a few of the more ridiculous soundbites. But even before that, how many doctors had already gone public about Terri being in a permanent vegetative state, when any layperson with internet access could determine that to be completely untrue in about five minutes? Then there was the misinformation about what abilities she had and didn't have, which were never properly determined, not even by physicians. Anyway, there were doctors out there on TV, on the internet, on the radio, basically lying through their teeth about Terri and about what she would be experiencing by her death by starvation and dehydration. Whether they were lying or they were plain ignorant, either scenario ought to have been of grave concern to any of their unfortunate patients.
I was bewildered by how doctors could show their face in public with that baloney and expect us all to swallow it. I don't know how many people actually did swallow it, but clearly, their message prevailed where it really mattered. How is it that we as a society put up with and let doctors get away with this malarkey?
Then the answers started coming. Well, maybe not answers, but certainly indications that what I was witnessing ought to have come as no surprise to anyone. These lying or ignorant doctors come from the same medical profession that does abortions. I guess if doctors can rationalize the dismemberement of unborn babies, maybe it isn't such a big jump to rationalize the starvation of a handicapped adult woman. In fact, I learned at some point in my own efforts to save Terri's life that starvation and dehydration happen all the time in hospitals and nursing homes, and Terri was really just one of many victims. OK, so abortions are kind of an anomaly anyway, and many doctors will not do them. But are they really such an anomaly with modern medicine?
Most people are familiar with the Hippocratic Oath, which states to first, do no harm. All doctors are supposed to swear by it. I personally think they should just drop it. Doctors have actually caused countless people a lot of harm ever since the early days of what we now refer to as modern medicine. In fact, Hippocrates himself believed that woman equalled disease and he saw female internal organs as natural hotspots for disease. This couldn't have boded well for any women under his care.
So what harm exactly have doctors caused? Most of us remember reading about the ancient practice of bleeding sick patients, either by cutting their veins or by putting leaches on them. Many people who might otherwise have recovered, including some famous Roman Catholic saints, died of the treatment. I would consider that doing harm. OK, you say, but doctors realized their mistake and now don't do that anymore. I'm relieved that at least that's not one of the many risks I might face should I show up at a doctor's office, but it's hardly the only harmful prescription to their names.
At another time in history (and right now I'm just writing--maybe I'll go in later and fill in all my sources), many women were dying in childbirth or shortly after from "childbed fever." This form of maternal mortality began after doctors started taking over the practice of delivering babies from midwives who were actually doing quite well. Anyway, doctors who attended laboring women had this ego trip about how dirty their hands got. They would go from one woman to the other, and sometimes stop at the pathology lab or morgue in between such visits, and never once wash their hands. The women got infected and many of them died. A Jewish man (I don't know if he was a doctor himself or not) dared to suggest that doctors should wash their hands in between patients. He was ridiculed, impuned, and pretty much run out of the medical profession for that. It wasn't until fifty years later that doctors made it a practice to regularly wash their hands. How many people under physicians' care during those fifty years suffered and died needlessly as a result of that kind of arrogance?
Today, most people at least give lip service to the fact that breast milk is by far superior to formula as nutrition for infants. Actually, a more accurate way to put it is that formula is far inferior to breast milk. Babies deprived of breast milk can expect to experience more ear infections, more allergies, poorer health (and a whole list of other ailments) than their breastfed counterparts, all else being equal. And who was it that got mothers to abandon breastfeeding in favor of an inadequate substitute? Why doctors or course. Doctors started telling women that formula was better for their babies, that they weren't making enough milk for their babies, and so forth. To back that up, hospital procedures surrounding birth were making breastfeeding extremely difficult, so the women who believed their doctors were not just being gullible; they were being robbed of their God-given right to nourish their children, and they and their children suffered for it. About half of the women of about age 60 that I know have told me their doctors told them they couldn't breastfeed for various lame reasons. Did doctors honestly believe that a full half of the female population couldn't perform a basic female function? I doubt many of them even thought of it, which I do not find reassuring.
And what about C-sections? The current national C-section rate is 29 percent. So, I'm supposed to believe almost one third of the female population is incapable of another basic function, childbirth? No, the truth is many C-sections, which are major abdominal surgeries, are performed unnecessarily, and those unnecessary surgeries do cause harm. And who does C-sections? Doctors, of course. And this doesn't even delve into all the idiotic and harmful interventions doctors routinely do to women giving birth in hospitals and to their babies. Entire books have been written on the subject; feel free to look it up.
And once women are past the childbearing age, then they'd better hold onto their wombs for dear life. In America, nearly one third of women over the age of sixty have had hysterectomies and many of these women have also had their ovaries removed as well. The most common reason for a hysterectomy is the presence of uterine fibroids, benign but annoying tumors that grow in the walls of the uterus, and most of which will shrink during menopause. Why do uterine fibroids lead to removing the entire organ, and possibly the entire female reproductive system? Because it's easier to cut out the whole uterus than to carefully cut out the tumors. Why should doctors be bothered with a tedious surgery to cut out tumors rather than just get rid of it all? They seem to have this notion that if you're no longer bearing children, then you don't need a uterus. Actually, the uterus produces all kinds of important hormones that help a woman weather the transition to menopause and beyond. No problem, the doctors say. We'll just put her on hormone replacement therapy. I'm sure I don't need to go into what a fiasco HRT has turned out to be. First do no harm. My foot!
If hysterectomies have become a right of passage for women on the brink of menopause, let's take a look at male infant circumcision, one of the most common and useless surgeries performed on infant boys. According to Dr. Fleiss, an MD who writes for NOCIRC, circumcision traditionally was never accepted as something civilized people do. As the Roman empire was expanding into areas where circumcision was practiced for religious reasons, it outlawed the practice. The Catholic Church also came down against circumcision early on. I personally find it interesting that it was one of the very first issues to be decided on by the early Christians and they determined it was not something to be imposed on converting Gentiles. Circumcision made a comeback in America during a time when everyone was worried about boys masturbating. Someone thought circumcising those boys would put a halt to their masturbation and voila, the practice became acceptable again. When it became clear that circumcision did not mitigate masturbation, rather than give up the practice, the medical community started coming up with medical reasons to do it, all of which have since been proven to be hogwash. My favorite is the claim that it's more sanitary. Sure, let's make an open wound on a sensitive area and then regularly expose it to poopy diapers for the next year; yup, that's much more sanitary than leaving well enough alone. Only a doctor could see the logic in that!
Going back to breastfeeding and the abandonment thereof, this lead almost directly to the widespread use of contraception. Women who on average can space out their children every two years by breastfeeding now had their fertility return early and found themselves pregnant every year and with more children too quickly than they could handle. Rather than encourage them to return to breastfeeding, they were encouraged to take contraceptives instead. Several very convincing arguments have been made for the wide acceptance of contraception being responsible for many of the sexual perversions and other social ills that we now find ourselves facing. I can't go into them now as they would make for their own post, but more information can be found on the Couple to Couple League website. But general social ills notwithstanding, even people who have no quarrel with contraceptives in principle (I happen to, being Catholic) will agree that many of them carry serious side effects, most of which are not fully disclosed to women being offered the contraceptives. The Pill alone has been implicated in several cancers, infertility, permanent migraines, and at least three pages of fine print of other side effects. Tubal ligations are just as risky, with 37% of women reporting complications from the procedure, notably tubal pregnancies, one of the few cases where even adamant prolifers are forced to support the decision to abort, as the baby has no chance and the mother is likely to not survive either--a heartbreaking and dangerous situation for women finding themselves in that predicament. Anyway, contraceptives have caused harm and the medical profession has pushed them.
The detereoration of my own views of modern medicine as beneficial, or at the very least, benign, began while I was pregnant with the MunchK and some friends encouraged me and Crazy Diamond to fully investigate the vaccine issue. We did and were surprised by what we found. This too could make its own blog post, or entire blog for that matter, so I will only summarize and encourage you to investigate the issue for yourself especially if you have or will have babies or young children. In a nutshell, pretty much every benefit that has been purported to be brought about by vaccination has come under heavy fire, and for good reason, as there is much evidence to the contrary. As an example, take thimerosal, a mercury-derived preservative in many vaccines. Many people have attributed thimerosal to the recent nearly 600 percent increase in the rates of autism and related neural disorders among children. The jury is still out on that one as it's actually quite difficult to determine causation in that situation. However, whenever people have injected thimerosal into rats or mice, the animals have gotten brain damaged. If you inject thimerosal into ten mice, you will be left with ten brain damaged mice. The people who actually do these animal tests say there is no good reason (see bottom or page 3 in linked article) to believe that when you inject thimerosal into a human infant, that infant will not also get brain damaged. And yet, thimerosal-laced vaccines are routinely injected into infants and their unsuspecting parents assume their infants are being protected, not harmed. Doctors tell them they should give their kids shots, so they do. Unless someone tells them otherwise, as was the fortunate case for us.
Going back to why I refuse to take antibiotics for a sinus infection. My understanding is that antibiotics were extremely useful in treating war wounds and some very serious bacterial infections like pneumonia. We're talking fatal if left untreated pneumonia. Under those circumstances, I might even think antibiotics are a good idea. The problem is that they get overprescribed, and you can take them for viral head colds, ear infections, strep throat, sinusitis, and anything else you can imagine--things that our bodies are perfectly capable of dealing with on their own given fluids, rest, and maybe some extra immune support. Taking antibiotics for these can cause all sorts of problems, like diarrhea, yeast infections, killing off of all the good bacteria in our bodies--all of which would be trivial if your life is threatened by an infection, but which can start an unnecessary vicious cycle otherwise. Also, many of the infectious bacteria, including the more virulent kind, have grown resistant to common antibiotics due to their constant exposure to them. And yet who prescribes antibiotics for everything under the sun? Doctors do, and in this case patients do at times demand it and put pressure on the doctors to prescribe. Yet doctors have means to refuse to prescribe stuff that is not indicated and they don't always use those means as they should.
I could probably think of other examples of doctors having caused harm rather than good to the people who trust them to treat them for their ailments, but I think there's enough here. Doctor-induced illness and death is actually something that has been statistically measured, and while I do not know the exact ranking, iatrogenic (doctor-induced) deaths rank right up there with the top killers: cancer, heart disease, car accidents. Doctors indeed have a long history of harming, not helping, their patients. And we have a long history of placing way too much trust in them. In fact, as a society, I would say we have an idolatrous relationship with modern medicine. Doctors are treated as if they carry god-like stature and their word is considered the final authority on people's health and well-being. If you don't believe me, take any health issue concerning your children that you are at odds with the in-laws about, and then tell them your kid's doctor backs you up and watch them fall right into line. Modern medicine is looked on in much the same way Jesus was when he was walking around performing miracles--with unqualified awe and wonder.
I must, in the defense of doctors, add that doctors are not alone in this blatant violation of the trust society has placed in them. Doctors are part of an entire institution known as modern medicine that consists of the medical schools, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the politicians on both sides of the aisle who rely on these companies for campaign and party contributions, and the government who also is acting out of vested interests beyond our health. Books have been written about this too, and they make a fascinating read. Many doctors have the best of intentions and are caught in the throes of a system they do not understand and which is far more powerful than they are, and they do not have complete information either (although the truly good ones try to seek it out). For the most part I don't have quarrels with individual doctors, but I do not believe the institution of modern medicine to have my family's best interests at heart. Still, I do not blindly trust even our wonderful family doctor. I do the research myself and try to use the least invasive way to treat a bug that I can find--most of those treatments I will not learn about at the doctor's office. I must also state a disclaimer that since I am not citing all my sources, you, the reader, should not take me at my word, but look up the information and decide on this for yourself. See the relevant links at the bottom of this post.
So, given all the harm that modern medicine has caused people--the unnecessary surgeries, the bogus reccommendations, the arrogance with which many who question those reccommendations are treated--is it really such a huge step that this same institution, with many doctors who represent it, would also promote abortion, euthanasia, and recently, the cruel public starvation of an innocent, disabled woman? Is it really such a surprise that those representative doctors would use whatever lies they needed to in order to foist their agenda of death onto the unsuspecting public?
No, it really is not a big step, or a big surprise. It certainly isn't to me anymore.
For more information, visit some of these websites:
Abortion
Euthanasia
Starvation and dehydration
Circumcision
Vaccines another interesting article here.
Contraception
Childbirth
More technical info on childbirth
Natural Mothering
Breastfeeding
An interesting article on why we trust modern medicine so much
Hysterectomies
one of many alternative medicine websites
Thimerosal and autism
More on Thimerosal and autism
Also check out Confessions of a Medical Heretic and Male Practice by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn
Many more books and much more information can be found by doing a search on amazon and/or google.
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