How Scientific Is Modern Medicine Really?

[stanmrak]

A scathing article on the myth of modern medicine from the Huffington Post:

Dana Ullman: How Scientific Is Modern Medicine Really?

A quick summary of the article:

Doctors today commonly assert that they practice "scientific medicine," and patients think that the medical treatments they receive are "scientifically proven." However, this ideal is ... a clever and profitable marketing ruse, not fact.

The combined efforts of the drug companies and the medical profession... have been wonderfully effective in convincing consumers worldwide that modern medicine is the most scientific discipline that has ever existed.

The British Medical Journal's "Clinical Evidence" analyzed common medical treatments to evaluate which are supported by sufficient reliable evidence (BMJ, 2007). They reviewed approximately 2,500 treatments and found:
• 13 percent were found to be beneficial
• 23 percent were likely to be beneficial
• 8 percent were as likely to be harmful as
• 6 percent were unlikely to be beneficial
• 4 percent were likely to be harmful or ineffective.
• 46 percent were unknown whether they were efficacious or harmful

In the late 1970s, the US government conducted a similar evaluation and found a strikingly similar result. They found that only 10 percent to 20 percent of medical treatment had evidence of efficacy (Office of Technology Assessment, 1978).

Although we are commonly told that we are living longer than ever now, this is simply a clever use of statistics. The fact of the matter is that there has been a considerable reduction in deaths during the first five years of life ... and this reduction in deaths has resulted primarily from a medicinal agent called "soap," not from the use of any specific conventional pharmaceutical agent.

Ultimately, an American who was 40 years old in 1900 and an American who was 40 years old in 1960 have a similar chance of living to be 80 years old.

[Just Passing Through]

I thought that statistic was mostly influenced by infant mortality, which has been reduced a lot thanks to various surgical techniques and prenatal monitoring, etc.

Either way quality of life has gone down, as has functional life span.

[DavidPro]

Thank you for that great summary. It's sad, but true, that many drugs hit the shelves with no proven benefits. It simply costs too much and takes too long to conduct convincing studies. And, drug companies have to invest enormous amounts of money in the discovery and production of their drugs in the first place

Check out this quote. It was in an article by Gary Null PhD, Caroly Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD and Dorothy Smith PhD in their recent paper Death by Medicine - October 2003, released by the Nutrition Institute of America.

"A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.

[Savage]

They're actually applying good science if you view it through the lens of optimizing profit rather than cure ratios.

[Daffy Duck]

Medicine used to be open source. It's not as much anymore.

Source:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, most scientists ignored the lure of commerce. When Jonas Salk was questioned about patenting his polio vaccine in 1954, he replied, "Could you patent the sun?"

How charming, yet how naive, his remark seems today; imagine, handing over your discovery to the public interest without keeping a few million bucks for yourself. The culture of science valued the separation of research and commerce, and universities maintained a firewall between them. Scientists got their money from the government or independent funding institutions, and were more or less free to spend years investigating a problem that might or might not payoff, either intellectually or practically.

A scientist who went public, profiting from his or her discoveries, was regarded with suspicion, even disdain. "It was once considered unseemly for a biologist to be thinking about some kind ofcommercial enterprise while at the same time doing basic research," says bioethicist and scientist Sheldon Krimsky.

'The two didn't seem to mix. But as the leading figures of the field of biology began intensively finding commercial oudets and get·rich·quick schemes. they helped to change the ethos of the field. Now it is the multivested scientists who have the prestige."

The critical event occurred in 1980, when the Supreme Court ruled that patents could be issued on genetically modified bacteria, independent of its process of development. That meant that you could get a patent for discovering a virus, altering a plant, isolating
a gene, or modifying any other living organism as a "product of manufacture." The gold rush was on-the scientists' road to Sr. Andrews.

Before long, many professors of molecular biology were serving on the advisory boards of biotechnology corporations and owned stock in companies selling products based on their research. Universities, seeking new sources of revenue, began establishing intellectual property offices and providing incentives for faculty who patented their discoveries.

Throughout the 1980s, the ideological climate shifted from one in which science was valued for its own sake, or for the public interest, to one in which science was valued for the profits it could generate in the private interest. Major changes in tax and patent laws were enacted; federal funding of research declined sharply; and tax benefits created a steep rise in funding from industry. The pharmaceutical industry was deregulated, and within a decade it had become one of the most profitable businesses in the United States.

And then scandals involving conflicts on the part of researchers and physicians began to erupt. Big Pharma was producing new, lifesaving drugs bur also drugs that were unnecessary at best and risky at worst: More than three-fourths ofall drugs approved between 1989 and 2000 were no more than minor improvements over existing medications, cost nearly twice as much, and had higher risks. By 1999, seven major drugs, including Rewlin and Lotronex, had been removed from the market for safety reasons. None had been necessary to save lives (one was for heanburn, one a diet pill, one a painkiller, one an antibiotic) and none was better than older, safer drugs. Yet these seven drugs were responsible for 1,002 deaths and thousands of troubling complications.

The public has reacted to such news not only with the anger they are accustomed to feeling toward dishonest politicians. but also with dismay and surprise: How can scientists and physicians possibly promote a drug they know is harmful? Can't they see that they are selling out? How can they justify what they are doing? Certainly some investigators, like corrupt politicians. know exactly what they are doing. They are doing what they were hired to do-get results that their employers want and suppress results that their employers don't want to hear, as tobacco-company researchers did for decades. Bur at least public-interest groups, watchdog agencies, and independent scientists can eventually blow the whistle on bad or deceptive research.

The greater danger to me public comes from the self-justifications of well-intentioned scientists and physicians who, because of their need to reduce dissonance, truly believe themselves to be above the influence of their corporate funders.

[AndrewJen]

I was mis-prescribed codeine when I was younger, ever since then I've been really weary of my doctors and modern medicine. It's not to say it is completely a ruse, I'd like to have faith that medicine will be pruned and we will stop being guinea pigs for coporations seeking profit at the expense of our well-being, but I'd much rather live in a country that views food as the real medicine in our lives, and laughter, and tears and friendship. Western medicine has it's benefits but life is so much more effective than the quick fixes of a questionable industry.

[faithsdaddy]

Allopathic medicine is often the best choice in acute cases, such as road accidents or when drastic organ failure has occurred.

In most other cases, there are numerous (and superior) treatments. However, most people are conditioned to believe that Doctor knows best, so off we trot to Doctor Death with our problems and accept whatever side effects or likelyhood of death as the best possible solution.

[AndrewJen]

Originally Posted by faithsdaddy

Allopathic medicine is often the best choice in acute cases, such as road accidents or when drastic organ failure has occurred.

In most other cases, there are numerous (and superior) treatments. However, most people are conditioned to believe that Doctor knows best, so off we trot to Doctor Death with our problems and accept whatever side effects or likelyhood of death as the best possible solution.

Yes, seems to be true, and I'd like to think doctors care and put up with years of med school to legitimately help people, but every doctor I've had has only been able to give me surface level information about questions I had whether it was my about my tonsils, weight issues, stress, specific cases, etc. I stopped feeling a need to go to my doctor years ago, sadly.

[ginkgo]

Are you living in the past in Great Britain? A physicist was saying that in GB scientists, like physicists, do not get paid very well. This is due to the attachment from old England where only wealthy people could become scientists and they made no money from it.

It is not like that in that U.S. now and it was never like that in the U.S. Modern medicine is about making money since we live in a capitalistic society. It is not about health and wellness. It is about profiting from the sick. Do you think that we are living in ancient China when the doctor was paid only when the patient was well, not when they are sick.

Medicine is great business. It is the science of making money. People do not get a Bachelor's of Arts degree in marketing, but a Bachelors of Science degree (B.Sc. not B.A.) in marketing. Drugs are marked up by huge amounts. Joel Fuhrman M.D. explains that mammograms help 10% of the women but cause damage in 10% of the women also. Imagine a business where you get all these healthy women to pay to get mammograms that do not help them.

From my site below on breast cancer (from health ranger):

Vitamin D is 'the cure' for breast cancer that the cancer industry ridiculously claims to be searching for. The cure already exists! But the breast cancer industry simply refuses to acknowledge any “cure” that doesn’t involve mammography, chemotherapy or high-profit pharmaceuticals.

Vitamin D is finally gaining some of the recognition it deserves as a miraculous anti-cancer nutrient. It is the solution for cancer prevention. It could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year in the U.S. alone. Even Dr. Andrew Weil recently raised his recommendation of vitamin D to 2,000 IU per day. [The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is 400 IU]

This is the vitamin that could destroy the cancer industry and save millions of women from the degrading, harmful cancer “treatments” pushed by conventional medicine. No wonder they don’t want to talk about it! The cancer industry would prefer to keep women ignorant about this vitamin that could save their breasts and their lives.

The rest of it is quotes from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Christiane Northrup M.D and many other famous MDs.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by ginkgo

Even Dr. Andrew Weil recently raised his recommendation of vitamin D to 2,000 IU per day. [The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is 400 IU]

RDA is supposed to represent the daily allowance you need, to prevent a deficiency disease.

It's not supposed to represent the amount that would give you the optimum health benefit from that particular vitamin or mineral.

That's my understanding anyway.

[mikej]

drawing on my own experiences, and those of friends, family members etc, i would say that modern medicine is a bit "hit-and-miss".

[joelr]

Originally Posted by AndrewJen

I was mis-prescribed codeine when I was younger, ever since then I've been really weary of my doctors and modern medicine. It's not to say it is completely a ruse, I'd like to have faith that medicine will be pruned and we will stop being guinea pigs for coporations seeking profit at the expense of our well-being, but I'd much rather live in a country that views food as the real medicine in our lives, and laughter, and tears and friendship. Western medicine has it's benefits but life is so much more effective than the quick fixes of a questionable industry.

That's rare usually it's reverse, hard to get proper amounts of pain killers.Everyone I know who has fibromialgia never has enough to live comfortable.