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Back to the Forum Archives In my Forum essay, Theory and Practice, I had no intention of selling the medical establishment short. Certainly doctors, hospitals, and clinics play a major role in the maintenance of our health. At best, they are a huge asset in our struggle to maintain our health and vigor. At worst, they sometimes have the opposite effect. In my life, I have encountered a large number of the best and a couple of the worst. I think the profession does not matter, we will always find a few charlatans and incompetents in the woodwork. Still, we need medicine. The question becomes, how much medicine. I think we currently have too much in many cases. I have already made part of my case against the excessive dependency on pills in our culture. Too often, we don't give our body a chance to use its natural mechanisms. The first answer has come to be another pill or drug of some sort. With a couple of regrettable exceptions, I have made a habit of avoiding drugs as the first option. I think I am much better off as a result. The fact is, the human body is a magnificent machine. It does have within it the power to heal itself. We tend to forget that with all of our drugs. As a consequence, we often cause more problems with drugs than we cure. This is not a brief against all drugs at all times. There is a time to use drugs and surgical procedures, but, except in an emergency, those things should not be the method of first choice. Too often, no other avenue is even considered. Drugs have become the easy way of life for many of us. We have become much too dependant on a seriously dishonest drug industry. Viagra and its companion drugs are just one example. I am convinced that a healthy life style would obviate the need for these drugs in most cases. The same is true of many of the other new drugs. In many cases they are no better than the old generic drugs they replace. In some cases, we have found they are also deadly. More important than that, however, is they are very often unnecessary. I am not saying we should have stopped with aspirin, but there are too many drugs out there that don't do anything useful and they are dangerous to life. Much of that is our own fault. We want a pill for everything. We are too lazy and hedonistic to take proper care of ourselves. We want quick easy fixes for our indolence and our indulgences. We misuse our medical facilities for frivolous reasons. As a result the delivery costs of necessary medicine has gone out of the reach of many people. On the plus side, we have recently seen many alternatives to conventional medical practices which are being explored by some people. Even some medical people are looking at these new "old" ideas. Self healing through some form of meditation or concentration is getting more notice. Acupuncture and other foreign techniques are also being explored. Patient attitude is clearly seen as very important in the much of this new approach. Attitude has a great deal to do with discipline. Indeed, our overall health has a great deal to do with discipline. Proper diet is a huge factor in this. It's no longer news that a large part of our population is obese. It never should have been news. We need but look around us to see the waddling bubble butts. That is obvious to the world. There is another part to this discipline that does not get much notice. That has to do with a patients recovery from injury or surgery. I have been through several surgeries and I have seen the problem first hand. A first rate surgeon will preform a minor miracle on a patient only to have the patient screw it up. People simply do not do what they must do to recover and remain healthy. They will not do the therapy necessary or they will do it half heartedly. Then they have the dishonesty to blame the doctor for their ill health when they regress. They say the surgery failed when the failure was their own. They were too lazy to do what was necessary. In all of my bouts with debilitating illnesses I have considered recovery to be my full time job until my recovery was complete. I believe that is the only proper way to approach it. It is really a life style attitude. In fact, I have implemented some of the recovery therapy into my ongoing life style. I have developed a set of exercises that I do at least three times per week whether I am recovering or just maintaining my health. I do bending and stretching exercises, cardiovascular exercises, and mental exercises. I believe this is a large reason why I was able to survive ingesting the poisonous chemical, Vioxx. In spite of all the problems we cause ourselves with medicine, we do need some medical intervention at times and this requires that we do medical research. There are obviously many good things that have come out of honest medical research. Here is one such thing. We noticed on the television news that science has created a vaccine for one kind of cervical cancer in woman. It deals with the most common cause by preventing it. It will save countless lives. Unfortunately, the rabble cannot tell the difference between real medication and junk. We owe thanks to the Madison Avenue swine for much of that. When they lost their big clients in tobacco and booze, they quickly discovered that the drug industry has very deep pockets. Now, with their well developed Pavlovian techniques they make the rabble believe they need drugs more and more. They have made themselves the greedy hucksters for the greedy drug industry We can also cite the culpability of the FDA in putting a lot of dangerous and useless drugs on the market. There are currently two arguments about the role of the FDA in medicine. One is the FDA releases drugs too soon without proper testing and people die as a result. The other is the FDA drags its feet and people who could have been helped by a new drug die. I submit, both are true and there are reasons for it. I think it depends on influence more than science or procedure. At the very best it depends on politics. We should look at the influence of the various drug companies within the FDA. I suspect the FDA has an agenda similar to that of most state's attorney generals. Most attorney generals see the state government as their client rather than the citizens. That's why I so admired Frank Kelly of Michigan. He took the opposite view. I think, in many case, the FDA sees the drug companies as their client rather than the public. That would be flat out wrong, but, if it were true, it would explain quite neatly the confusion about drug approval. The speed would be simply a matter of influence. The more influence a drug company has within the FDA, the easier it will be to get a drug approved. All of that does not obviate the fact that I am responsible for my own health. My doctor is not responsible for that, nor are the drug companies. I am! The final decision as to whether or not I will use a drug is mine. I have a personal doctor who agrees with that position. I will suggest, if your doctor does not agree with that, get another doctor. Do not stick with a father-knows-best doctor. Take responsibility for your own health and find a doctor who will help you do that. When we take that attitude medicine assumes its proper role
in our life. From my own experience I have concluded that the
role of medicine should be to supplement and support the natural
tendency of the body in it's self healing. In our overall strategy,
drugs can help, and surgery may be necessary in some cases. However,
the goal of these things should be to aid the natural healing
properties of the human, to supplement rather than replace them.
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