As mentioned several times in the article (and again below), this is not to say that I don’t believe in studies, but rather the point that some people tend to put ALL of their belief in them (ie pharmaceutical studies vs natural health supplements).

While I love science (my bachelor’s degree is in engineering), I just get concerned when I see people clamor around the results of a study as absolute fact…there are many factors involved!

Closing Thoughts from the Article

Now don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Studies are not useless. In fact, they are the foundation of modern medicine and modern science. Without them, we might still be treating diseases by regulating bad humors and expelling evil spirits. BUT–and this is a very, very important “but” –

          Clinical trials are not the be-all and end-all of scientific knowledge!

They often contain serious flaws and biases, not to mention being subject to the vagaries of human greed and duplicity.

In the end, individual clinical trials should be considered as divining rods that at best point us in the direction of important conclusions. Certainly, multiple studies that come to the same conclusion are a better indicator than individual studies — but even then, the result is not guaranteed.

As mentioned in the article, if the same bias is carried from study to study (confusing synthetic vitamin E with full complex, natural vitamin E, for example), study after study can end up with the same flawed conclusion, just reached multiple times.

But once we understand the limitations of the different types of studies and the way errors can creep into them, we can see that decades, centuries, and even millennia of anecdotal information about herbal and nutraceutical remedies can be equally effective in “possibly” pointing the way to important healing discoveries.

By Kimberly Carter Gamble with Erin Breech When your doctor tells you your prescription is approved by the American Medical Association (AMA), it’s intended to give you confidence. But what it really means is that the drug or procedure is endorsed and funded by the same corporations that endorse and fund Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and other products that are harmful to your health. In fact, the AMA is in part financed by Pfizer, which owns Monsanto, the company that manufactured controversial and proven-to-be-dangerous products such as the insecticide DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, and recombinant bovine somatotropin(a.k.a. bovine growth hormone) and is now the largest manufacturer of genetically modified seeds and the herbicide glyphosate, which GMO’s require. This is only one of the insidious connections between the AMA and corporations that cause, and prosper from, your ill health.

Here’s how it works:

Founded in 1847, the American Medical Association is the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States. Its stated mission includes “…lobbying for legislation favorable to physicians and patients, and to raise money for medical education.”

The AMA spends big money on lobbying. One of the AMA’s top lobbying firms, the McManus Group, also lobbies for PhRMA, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck and Pfizer. According to OpenSecrets.org, the American Medical Association comes in second in overall money spent on lobbying in the last 10 years with over $264 million. The health industry as a whole trumps all other industries including energy and finance in lobbying expenditure.

The AMA looks to legitimize its agenda through its Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, which is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. JAMA receives major funding through its advertisers, many of which are pharmaceuticals. In addition, the American Medical Association has been accepting money from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations from as early as 1910. In World Without Cancer, G. Edward Griffin makes the argument that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations began to support the AMA in an effort to control the medical schooling establishment and to gain power over this “large and vital sphere of American life.”

The editor of JAMA is very influential, and has historically played a significant role in suppressing alternative health treatments. Morris Fishbein, editor of JAMA from 1924–1950, was directly engaged in suppressing Royal Rife’s cancer cure. In 1849, homeopathy was nearly as popular as allopathic medical practices. The AMA was able to use its position to squash what it referred to as “quackery” undefined stating that the public did not know what was good for it and that the medical establishment must have total control. At that point it called for control over all medical regulations and licenses. These regulations eventually lead to closing down of schools and almost complete suppression of the practice. Even today in America homeopathic practices are mostly “underground.”

This is essentially the same story as that which played out with chiropractors. 12,000 chiropractors were arrested in the first half of the twentieth century simply for helping patients with only their hands. A pivotal point in this war, an antitrust case, Wilk v. the AMA, occurred when court testimony revealed the AMA’s final solution for the “chiropractic menace” to be the “complete elimination of the chiropractic profession.” They called chiropractors “rabid dogs”, “killers”, an “unscientific cult”, and “a danger to public safety”. When taken to task in court, the AMA could not provide one witness to prove these accusations; it was purely propaganda. But the role of the AMA in determining what qualifies as sanctioned medical practice was established nonetheless. It is noteworthy, especially for those who discredit conspiracy theories, that the AMA was convicted of conspiracy for its attack on chiropractic.

It was around the turn of the century that the AMA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation forged their partnership. They put their money into drug-based research and made that the main focus of “healthcare”undefineda move that turned “healthcare” into “sickness management.” The Rockefellers and other prominent banking elite have been able to control and profit enormously from the drug industry.

Now, all medical doctors in the USA are trained in medical schools that are run and/or accredited/sanctioned by the AMA. Of 129 medical schools in America, only 22 require even what amounts to basic rudimentary courses in nutrition. Medical students are not trained to see the connections between many degenerative diseases and malnutrition. Instead they are taught only how to treat with surgical or pharmaceutical methods but do not cure or alleviate the root problem or ailment. In this way, they are assured of life-long customers. Surveys conclude that nearly half of all Americans regularly take prescription drugs. In 2013, the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. #37 in healthcare despite spending $8,608 on each person annually.

What Can We Do?

We are whole and integrated beings and therefore require whole-system, integrated health care solutions.

• Get educated and take responsibility for your own health.
• Ask your own health care providers to disclose the source of their information regarding their prescription choices and knowledge updates, if they know who funds the research they are relying on, and ask if they have any interactions with drug companies whose products they prescribe.
• Create small community-based health clinics, including home visits for individual patients as well as health education and promotion for whole communities.
• Encourage more whole-system education throughout all schools.
• Make Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) part of mainstream curriculum undefined not as something to be learned in addition to medical training, but rather as a valid body of knowledge to be integrated at all levels.
• Create a campaign to make integrative medicine a mandatory part of curriculum in U.S. medical schools through the American Commission for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME).
• Join a campaign to protect alternative health practices.
• Support naturopathic medical colleges in the U.S. with enrollment and funding.
• Lobby to make alternative therapies accessible to everyone. Currently most alternative therapies in the U.S. are not covered by health insurance and alternative treatments are rarely accessed by low-income individuals. Fabulous work on this is being done by Dean Ornish. Follow and support his work.
• Educate yourself and bring awareness of new energy technologies and health devices based on Rife and other current inventors work out into the open. If you have financial resources, help support their development and dissemination.

As people are waking up, Monsanto has been removed and banned by Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia, France, and Switzerland. Monsanto is currently the target of effective resistance in the US as well. This same organizing can happen with pharmaceuticals, as we gain an understanding of the connection between them and the agribusiness companies and the medical establishment.

Next time someone says “It’s approved by the AMA”, ask them if they understand what that really means, and share this information.

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Naturopaths (and other alternative health practitioners), work with the body (think lifestyle and nutrition) to allow it to heal itself.

The current healthcare debate has brought up basic questions about how medicine should work. On one hand we have the medical establishment with its enormous cadre of M.D.s, medical schools, big pharma, and incredibly expensive hospital care. On the other we have the semi-condoned field of alternative medicine that attracts millions of patients a year and embraces literally thousands of treatment modalities not taught in medical school.

One side, mainstream medicine, promotes the notion that it alone should be considered “real” medicine, but more and more this claim is being exposed as an officially sanctioned myth. When scientific minds turn to tackling the complex business of healing the sick, they simultaneously warn us that it’s dangerous and foolish to look at integrative medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, or God forbid, indigenous medicine for answers. Because these other modalities are enormously popular, mainstream medicine has made a few grudging concessions to the placebo effect, natural herbal remedies, and acupuncture over the years. But M.D.s are still taught that other approaches are risky and inferior to their own training; they insist, year after year, that all we need are science-based procedures and the huge spectrum of drugs upon which modern medicine depends.

If a pill or surgery won’t do the trick, most patients are sent home to await their fate. There is an implied faith here that if a new drug manufacturer has paid for the research for FDA approval, then it is scientifically proven to be effective. As it turns out, this belief is by no means fully justified.

The British Medical Journal recently undertook an general analysis of common medical treatments to determine which are supported by sufficient reliable evidence. They evaluated around 2,500 treatments, and the results were as follows:

13 percent were found to be beneficial

23 percent were likely to be beneficial

Eight percent were as likely to be harmful as beneficial

Six percent were unlikely to be beneficial

Four percent were likely to be harmful or ineffective.

This left the largest category, 46 percent, as unknown in their effectiveness. In other words, when you take your sick child to the hospital or clinic, there is only a 36 percent chance that he will receive a treatment that has been scientifically demonstrated to be either beneficial or likely to be beneficial. This is remarkably similar to the results Dr. Brian Berman found in his analysis of completed Cochrane reviews of conventional medical practices. There, 38 percent of treatments were positive and 62 percent were negative or showed “no evidence of effect.”

For those who have been paying attention, this is not news. Back in the late 70’s the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment determined that a mere 10 to 20 percent of the practices and treatment used by physicians are scientifically validated. It’s sobering to compare this number to the chances that a patient will receive benefit due to the placebo effect, which is between 30 percent and 50 percent, according to various studies.

We all marvel at the technological advances in materials and techniques that allow doctors to perform quadruple bypass surgeries and angioplasties without marveling that recent studies indicate that coronary bypass surgery will extend life expectancy in only about three percent of cases. For angioplasty that figure sinks to zero percent. Those numbers might be close to what you could expect from a witch doctor, one difference being that witch doctors don’t submit bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.

It would be one thing if any of these unproven conventional medical treatments were cheap , but they are not. Angioplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) alone cost $100 billion annually. As quoted by President Obama in his drive to bring down medical costs, $700 billion is spent annually on unnecessary tests and procedures in America. As part of this excess, it is estimated that 2.5 million unnecessary surgeries are performed each year.

Then there is the myth that this vast expenditure results in excellent health care, usually touted as the best in the world (most recently by Rush Limbaugh as he emerged from a hospital in Hawaii after suffering chest pain). But this myth has been completely undermined. In 2000 Dr. Barbara Starfield, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, estimated that between 230,000 and 284,000 deaths occur each year in the US due to iatrogenic causes, or physician error, making this number three in the leading causes of death for all Americans.

In 2005 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that out of the 2.4 billion prescriptions written by doctors annually, 118 million were for antidepressants. It is the number one prescribed medication, whose use has doubled in the last ten years. You would think, therefore, that a remarkable endorsement is being offered for the efficacy of antidepressants. The theory behind standard antidepression medication is that the disease is caused by low levels of key brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, and thus by manipulating those imbalanced neurotransmitters, a patient’s depression will be reversed or at least alleviated.

This turns out to be another myth. Prof. Eva Redei of Northwestern University, a leading depression researcher, has discovered that depressed individuals have no depletion of the genes that produce these key neurotransmitters compared to people who are not depressed. This would help explain why an estimated 50 percent of patients don’t respond to antidepressants, and why Dr. Irving Kirsch’s meta-analysis of antidepressants in England showed no significant difference in effectiveness between them and placebos.

You have a right to be shocked by these findings and by the overall picture of a system that benefits far fewer patients than it claims. The sad fact is that a disturbing percentage of the medicine we subject ourselves to isn’t based on hard science, and another percentage is risky or outright harmful. Obviously, every patient deserves medical care that is evidence-based, not just based on an illusory reputation that is promoted in contrast to alternative medicine.

We are not suggesting that Americans adopt any and all alternative practices simply because they are alternative. These, too, must demonstrate their effectiveness through objective testing. But alternative modalities should not be dismissed out of hand in favor of expensive and unnecessary procedures that have been shown to benefit no one absolutely except corporate stockholders.

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