Hello bOObs Bloggettes:
I thought I’d take a few moments to expand on medicine’s Standard of Care treatment for disease in this blog. I was re-reading an excellent eye-opener of a book today written by Otis Brawley, MD, oncologist and former Chief Medical Officer for the American Cancer Society. (As I’ve mentioned previously, I interviewed Dr. Brawley for my films, a 45-minute interview which proved to be invaluable.)
In his book “How We Do Harm,” Dr. Brawley pulls no punches when it comes to many things, the least of which is explaining how medicine’s Standard of Care (SOC) practices came into being — and how oftentimes they accidentally do more harm than good.
Dr. Brawley explains that the SOC for diseases used to be purely evidence-based, that is, based on the scientific evidence conducted and published in medical journals including the findings of clinical trials.
However, Dr. Brawley warns that something happened in the 1990s that largely changed the “evidence” upon medicine was built. While he didn’t say specifically what it was, I’ve heard from several times doctors what was behind this change and also researched it myself: There were many laws passed by Congress (around one-half dozen, I believe) that changed medicine forever. They were all geared to grease the runway for Pharma and Big Medicine to make more money, giving a lot of loose rein to do whatever Big Medicine and Pharma felt was best.
Health researchers at the federal government’s National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health were allowed to take patent monies from research they conducted using government dollars, for one, which suddenly ladened the science behind health research with conflicts of interest — much based on pure greed, patients be damned. Vaccine manufacturers were no longer held responsible for their products and could no longer be sued for adverse events and side-effects, so stringent safety and efficacy guidelines became lax. Pharma was allowed to run ads on TV for their products. And on and on…
And of course there’s the “revolving door” conflict of interest problem where government officials, after leaving service, go and work for Pharma for big bucks. So while they are in their official Fed. Govt. they keep their eye on the eventual money ball. (Why Congress hasn’t changed this regulation is a mystery as it only does harm to the patient.)
Then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was behind the passage of many such laws and even sponsored one bill himself — then after he retired he landed a huge sum of money for endorsing Viagra, bragging on TV about how it helped his ED. He had made himself the butt of many jokes, but he didn’t seem to care much.
Per Dr. Brawley, Medicine also started to rely on algorithms for its SOC practices instead of relying on common sense and instincts of doctors who instead listening to a patient’s woes. This is particularly troublesome in cancer treatments, as another oncologist will explain in my next film “A New Standard of Care.” This doctor states that it’s all about “ramming patients through chemo” to maximized profits. Terrible. And this is exactly how it felt when my husband was subjected to two rounds of five chemos which ultimately cost him his life.
The other troubling problem coinciding with all this — but not totally separate from the above — is that two editors of the top five medical journals (one former, one still sitting) have written articles and books about this: Roughly 50% of the medical literature is fraudulent. The problem is they don’t know which 50%, has become the punchline. And because of this, one editor contends patients can no longer trust their own doctors.
I tell you this to warn you that being your own advocate (or having someone else there at doctor appointments to do that job) is critical these days. You really should research anything medicine on the internet before going to the doctor’s office. I’ve mentioned this before, but I really want to drive home this point. Case-in-point: Everything I’ve ever had wrong with my health was largely brought on by medicine itself, either a misdiagnosis, a non-diagnosis, or a side-effect to a medication. Luckily most of the damage has been reversed thanks to my perseverence, but it was not without a lot of work.
Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word! (Please see the “share” links below.) And we’d love to hear comments from you! (see below as well)
Stay healthy,
Megan
Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts
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