What's Wrong With the Medical System ... Besides Everything
Have you ever wondered why your doctor can't help you?
Have you ever gone to see your doctor and been told, "I don't know what's wrong with you" or "I can't help you"? As an Endowed Professor who teaches medical and pharmacy students and doctors, let me shed some light on this problem.
When I was a child, my doctor was so old (probably 85) he had graduated from medical school in 1897, and Sigmund Freud had been his teacher. Everyone in our town admired him because he always had an answer, and he could do anything—even stitch your ear up when your brother hit it with a golf club during his backswing! He always knew just what to do and how to make you feel better. Many times, he would hand out licorice tablets (I believe doctors knew back then that it killed viruses). Today, research shows that licorice - NOT the candy - has a high anti-viral and anti-bacterial effect; scientific reports show it kills viruses like COVID and bacteria like H. Pylori. He would also give adrenal tissue shots because back then, doctors knew that the adrenal glands were a keystone to the immune system and infection recovery.
This, of course, is still true today. The human body has not changed from one generation to another, but when I share this information with my colleagues at the Medical and Pharmacy schools, many look at me as if it were the craziest thing they have ever heard. Why? Because natural products and herbs have been systematically scoffed at. During the 1970s, when we were in medical and pharmacy school, we were told they did not work. To make matters worse, only drug companies and the NIH have the resources to conduct the "placebo double-blind studies" our current healthcare system relies upon to create standards of care. Unsurprisingly, there are very few who examine the previously well-known healing properties of herbal medicines, many of which were prescriptions until the 1980s, because it is financially unrewarding. Corporations excel at creating laws and standards that protect their interests, effectively allowing them to cut out any small businesses or other competition offering solutions superior to theirs.
When I got out of school in the early '80s, there were prescription drugs that contained animal tissues (like thyroid, liver, adrenal, and ox bile), prescription digestive enzymes, and many other natural products made from plants. Costs were very low (usually between $2-5), there was little or no insurance reimbursement, and most of the drugs were very safe. Approximately 50% of medicines back then were natural or derived from natural plants, like hydroxychloroquine. However, today this is not the case. Most of the pharmaceutical companies offering natural prescriptions are no longer in business or have been bought out by big pharmaceutical companies.
Doctors and Other Medical Professionals Are Not Trained to Think Critically Today
Have you ever read a medical journal article or blog about a condition, brought it to your doctor, and he or she dismissed it outright? One of my patient's doctors told her to see a psychiatrist after she shared an article with him! It's worth noting that my integrative medical students took one look at the lesions on that same patient's arm and, upon learning her symptoms, quickly identified the parasite that had plagued her for years.
Doctors are no longer receiving a comprehensive medical education, nor are they encouraged to stay abreast of new (or old!) discoveries. When I was in school, medical students and doctors used to have "journal clubs," where they would study what new treatments were available and what might be done to save the life of a patient who appeared to have no other options. In a recent medical class I taught, I asked how many students went to the medical library and searched journals for information on what might help treatment of COVID-19. To my dismay, not one student had looked. If they had, they would have found more than 10 articles on how zinc blocks viruses, and even more on how Vitamin D is low in every immune issue in the hospital. They would have also found an article on Elderberry extracted in alcohol that was used in a nursing home in Louisiana on Coronavirus SARS where zero patients died or were hospitalized, and all got better within 5 days.
Today, the NIH, AMA, and figureheads like Fauci or the corporate hospital compliance board are telling doctors what they are and are not "allowed" to do. I was shocked by this when my brother was in the hospital and could not get what he needed, even from a young Ivy League doctor! Thereafter one of my medical students who worked at a hospital informed me that doctors get in trouble if they deviate from hospital protocols, even if the deviation is sensible and life affirming.
Medical Education is Not What it Used to Be
When I entered a large University pharmacy school in 1978, we were told that one-third of our class would fail out of school; the curriculum then was much more difficult than it is today. Medical students took many of the same courses, including Physiology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Anatomy. Back then, however, each book was 1,400+ pages of very tiny print, packed with information, and each course took a year to complete rather than a few short months or even weeks. Here is a photo of my textbooks:
Over the years, medical education began to change. It started by taking Medical Physiology out of the curriculum (why would a doctor need to know how the body works? Hmmm). Recently I asked one of the researchers at my current University about his work. He informed me he was studying how the adrenal glands are linked to heart problems. When I replied, "Yes, that is how I treat my patients," he was stunned that I knew this. "What, you learned that back in the 1970s?" I informed him that not only had I learned it, but that at the time, there were actual prescription products for the adrenals that treated the adrenal dysfunction.
Next, they took out Pharmacology. Currently enrolled students will say they take a Pharmacology course, but it bears little to no resemblance to the one required when I was in school. The course we took was a year-long, and we learned how each pharmaceutical drug looked, how it acted on the body, what side effects it caused, and what to do about them. Today, there are hundreds more drugs, they are so dangerous that they are considered the third leading cause of death in America.
Students take 6 weeks of a course teaching what drug to give for what condition and nothing about taking patients off from medications, side effects, risk/benefit analysis. Considering that Big Pharma has systematically eliminated all the safe, effective, inexpensive, and natural products and replaced them with far more expensive, far more dangerous products, it would not be surprising if the Pharma Industry financially incentivized the AMA to have the course removed.
Perhaps most egregiously, last year they took out Anatomy—because why would a doctor need to know what a muscle or ligament looks like or where it is in the body? They have replaced human knowledge with a computer, but this is extremely foolish, as not everyone's anatomy is the same, and even injecting someone in the wrong place can be very dangerous.
The NIH, a 50 Billion dollar a year taxpayer-funded agency which is the arbitrator on what is medicine in the U.S., started a curriculum initiative and their webpage says it all:
"The Medical School Curriculum Initiative (curriculum) enhances medical school instruction by helping medical students and health professionals appreciate their role in reducing health disparities in American communities. The curriculum is based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
The curriculum teaches future practitioners about the legal obligation recipients of federal financial assistance have to provide service to persons without regard to their race, color, or national origin, and how doing so reduces health disparities that disproportionately affect various communities. The curriculum also ensures that medical students and other health care professionals understand that some aspects of 'culturally competent' care, including access for persons with limited English proficiency, are crucial in providing equitable, accessible, and optimal quality health care services."
When the government is more interested in equality rather than focusing on how the body works and ends up teaching anything but medicine, this is how we end up with medical doctors who are unable to diagnose and cure.
Between poor training, declining education quality, and the predatory, indelible footprint of Big Pharma on modern medicine, is it any wonder your doctor can't make sense of your symptoms, figure out your diagnosis, and actually solve your health problems?
Read my next article about how much our government allocates for the mess we call medicine in the United States. To formulate a solution, we must understand the problem.
Here is my next article:
Wow. Oh how I wish he were my physician! It’s refreshing to hear someone in medical practice speak the truth that many of us as older patients have seen change over the years.
Thank you for posting.