Abuses Within The Health Care System
..."Furthermore, the Regulators are blatently biassed (in favour of Big Pharma) in the criteria that they use to BAN selected CAM products. FDAs ban on Mahuang-ephedra, Fangji-Aristolochia & related herbs, Kava-Kava, etc was grossly unwarranted. The people who died were taking such products, BUT also had serious medical problems beforehand (alcoholism, cirrhosis of liver, etc) AND were taking western drugs at the same time."...
In most herb-related deaths, the person was using OTC products that were NOT PRESCRIBED by a trained professional. Despite that, the FDA saw fit to ban the suspect herbs. To ban effective herbal medicines because someone uses them wrongly (while using powerful western drugs at the same time) is grossly biassed in favour of the western drug. Why not ban the western drugs?"..
See:
Health Myths Exposed for copious supporting data on the above.
also:
Illegal Medical System Made Legal
Chris Gupta
-----------------------Abuses within the Health care System.
Big-Pharma and the Med-Vet Establishment is very worried about the exponential growth in the use of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Complementary & Alternative Veterinary Medicine (CAVM) in western societies. Today, billions of dollars are being diverted annually from conventional Healthcare towards CAM-CAVM.
This trend has huge implications for the Establishment. IMO, all involved (especially Big Pharma, Regulators, Universities, Health Service and hospitals) are conspiring the demise of CAM/CAVM. They are doing (and will continue to do) all in their power to kill off CAM-CAVM, unless Western Governments intervene to stop the conspiracy
Here are some ways that the Big Pharma conspires with the conventional Healthcare Industry (Med & Vet) to keep everyone involved on-side.
1. Big Pharma is a multibillion industry with turnover more than that of many countries. It wields incredible power from top to bottom within the Healthcare Industry.
It has found a willing mouthpiece in Quackbusters and allied groups. These are medical and veterinary groups who satirise every aspect of CAM/CAVM, while purporting to be unbiassed, objective professionals who seek only the public good. They advocate EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine), a very limited form of medicine based on strict science but by THEIR ideas of science. Their ideas deviate markedly from evidence that is acceptable to sincere and intelligent clinicians, who get very good results with CAM-CAVM every day.
Big Pharma ensures that its products are bought by influencing key policy-makers and decision-makers on the drug-regulation- (FDA, EU Drugs Boards, National Drugs Boards) and purchasing- (National Health, Hospital- and Clinics- purchasing officers) side.
Big Pharma cannot be seen to bribe policy-makers, so its power is exerted in subtle ways:
(A) TECHNICAL INFO
Probably >90% of technical info used in medical decision-making is supplied by Big Pharma.
Most big companies have WWW pages, wherein their clients can access technical info (and prices) easily.
To promote their products they use high-power sales forces to target major labs and clinics.
Big-Pharma is selective in what info it releases to the Drug- Regulation Agencies and clinicians. There have been MANY cases where a Pharma company KNEW that one or more of its products had potentially dangerous side-effects, but the files on that evidence were destroyed and the products released on the market, nonetheless.
A key part of the Hippocratic Oath is "Primum non nocere" ("First do no harm"). Unfortunately conventional (allopathic) medicine and surgery do GREAT harm. In the USA today, iatrogenic deaths, from drugs or procedures followed CORRECTLY, run somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 per year. [See Medline for the authors and statistics].
If the US Govmt were to lose that many soldiers in a foreign war, they would end that war immediately by pulling out or nuking the enemy!
Those figures do NOT include non-fatal iatrogenic morbidity (non- fatal side-effects of medicines and conventional medical procedures). These may run to ow millions per year in USA.
In stark contrast, iatrogenic disease from CAM-CAVM used by professionally experienced therapists is at a very low level.
Big Pharma AND the Establishment would like to bury those facts also!
The long-term future of the ENTIRE Establishment [Big Pharma, Universities, Healthcare System] depends on REPEAT BUSINESS to generats consistent cash-flow/turnover year after year. This has the following effects:
Pharma would like end-users to use its products daily for weeks, months, of (better still) for life! It is not interested in products that can give long-term remission after a few doses!
De facto, Regulators are NOT interested in an UNREGULATED CAM/CAVM. They conspire with Big Pharma to insist on REGULATION of CAM/CAVM. They KNOW that the problems of meeting allopathic standards for CAM/CAVMs will drive most of those products off the market. This suits the Establishment very well indeed.
Furthermore, the Regulators are blatently biassed (in favour of Big Pharma) in the criteria that they use to BAN selected CAM products. FDAs ban on Mahuang-ephedra, Fangji-Aristolochia & related herbs, Kava-Kava, etc was grossly unwarranted. The people who died were taking such products, BUT also had serious medical problems beforehand (alcoholism, cirrhosis of liver, etc) AND were taking western drugs at the same time.
In most herb-related deaths, the person was using OTC products that were NOT PRESCRIBED by a trained professional. Despite that, the FDA saw fit to ban the suspect herbs. To ban effective herbal medicines because someone uses them wrongly (while using powerful western drugs at the same time) is grossly biassed in favour of the western drug. Why not ban the western drugs?
ALL nutrients, drugs and supplements (even all essentials for life, like air, water, carbohydrate, protein and salt) are TOXIC if the DOSE used is excessive. Why not ban salt or sweets when we know that some people (who take too much of these) may suffer serious consequences, even death, from their abuse?
Hospitals want all beds and clinics filled; all equipment, instruments and scanners used, etc. Official acceptance and promotion of CAM would empty many of their beds and clinics rapidly.
Clinics/practitioners like their clients to come back regularly; every visit = extra income; every extra (often unnecessary) test = extra turn-over (usually with a mark-up for the practice).
Universities want as many students as possible, and professors would not welcome opponents in parallel CAM areas within the University.
Students want a "guaranteed future" [reliable employment after graduation, usually within the Establishment].
(B) CARROTS: MAJOR FUNDING for academic and applied research in Universities and Government-run research institutes
Back-handers as gifts;
Holidays and junkets;
Funded Conferences & Meetings (with full- or partial- coverage of conference costs);
"Prizes" awarded to its best clients, or by raffle at conferences/meetings;
gifts of medical-, analytical-, or computer- equipment at no cost, or nominal cos. The catch here is that the company's products, reagents, software (which pushes the company's products) must be used with that equipment;
(C) STICKS:
Big Pharma has threatened to withdraw FUNDING from Universities that teach CAM-CAVM (very few of these), and from research institutes that run WELL DESIGNED research projects on CAM/CAVM.
Pharma will fund badly designed CAM research that shows no significant effect, or a negative effect of CAM
It will withdraw other favours from any previous supporters who switch to CAM/CAVM methods.
(D) SHAFTING CAM/CAVM
The biggest money-earners for Big Pharma are mind-altering drugs (upers, downers, lithium, prozac, sedatives, sleepers, etc); hugely expensive cytotoxic chemotherapy, monoclonal antibody therapies, analgesics, antiinflammatories (steroids & NSAIDs), hormones and antihormones, etc.
CAM/CAVM has many therapeutic modalities. The best of these include:
Herbal medicine (especially Chinese and Ayurvedic);
Acupuncture and related therapies (electroacupuncture, LLLT-Low Level Laser Therapy, Infrared Therapy, Ultrasound-acupuncture, Homeopathic-injection of Acupinnts, moxibustion, cupping, leeching, TENS, Guasha, Tuina, Qigong, etc);
Manipulative therapies (osteopathic, chiropractic);
Homeopathy.
These powerful and much less expensive CAM/CAVM methods address very effectively the conditions treated by the more expensive drug-types mentioned above.
Big-Pharma [AND the Conventional Medical/Academic Establishment] are scared of CAM/CAVM methods because they threaten the cash-flow of Big-Pharma, and the authority base of academia.
Universities (or rather the university professors) do NOT want to acknowledge the clinical efficacy of CAM/CAVM because it means that THEY must master it themselves [a VERY difficult and time- consuming task], OR they must allow the FACULTY to create NEW posts to be filled by competent CAM/CAVM clinicians and teachers.
The Deans and Boards of the Universities reject the efficacy of CAM/CAVM. If they admit to its efficacy, the implications for the Universities are enormous. Med & Vet courses ALREADY are long and expensive. If several ADDITIONAL years of study [to cover even 1 or 2 of the main CAM/CAVM modalities] must be added, students would need 8-14+ years in College before graduation, instead of 4-7 years.
So, to bury their inadequacy and incompetence as managers, teachers and professional educators, the University Boards, Deans and Professors conspire in the falsehood that CAM/CAVM are ineffective and invalid medical therapies.
In maintaining this lie, they play into the hands of Big-Pharma and the entire Establishment [Hospitals, Clinics, the whole shebang] that wants the STATUS QUO to remain as it is.
The Establishment is NOT interested in finding the BEST solutions to Public Health issues, or the management of the common animal diseases. Nor is it interested in saving millions, if not billions of dollars annually for the Governments and tax-payers who must pay more and more to fund the grossly inefficient and enormously expensive conventional Healthcare System.
That is why Pharma and the Universities support Quackbusters in any way they can. Quackbusters and such groups aim to influence the PUBLIC (as well as open-minded colleagues and the Establishment) to turn them against CAM/CAVM.
The public WANT an effective, economical Healthcare System. They are NOT getting that from the current Establishment and are turning more and more to CAM/CAVM. Therefore the Establishment MUST destroy CAM.
It will do so unless Governments act quickly to stop this conspiracy.
I hope that Michael Moore's film will go for the jugular and expose the conspiracy and the abuses within the system. This may FORCE western governments to act, and to insist that CAM gets a fair slice of the OFFICIAL Health Care and Educational budget
Best regards,
Chinese Proverb: "Man who says it can't be done, should not interrupt man doing it"
posted by Chris Gupta on Monday December 13 2004
updated on Saturday September 24 2005URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/12/13/abuses_within_the_health_care_system.htm
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