How well informed is your physician?

Submitted by support on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 00:18

How well informed is your physician? (Click here for more information)

This article, is from a program called House Calls: one of many forums that searches for the truth behind conventional medicine. I have provided you with their article and then added a number of other issues below.

This is an article from: Why you should never trust 'doctor's orders'

https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&tab=wm#all/133457d9c6ab2740

Sometimes, it might seem like your doctor is relying on years of education and experience.

Other times, you might be convinced he's making it up as he goes.

In reality, most doctors follow the guidelines issued by the major medical associations -- and that means some of the biggest decisions he makes about you and your health are based on badly biased information.

Treatment guidelines are routinely written by "experts" with a direct financial stake in the outcome -- and now, a new study finds a massive chain of conflicts in the guidelines written for diabetes treatments and cholesterol control.

Since these just so happen to be two of the most medicated (not to mention over-medicated) conditions in the country, is anyone really surprised?

There have been 288 "experts" on the 14 cholesterol and diabetes panels that have met in the United States and Canada over the past decade, and researchers say 52 percent of them had conflicts of interest such as financial ties to the drug industry.

Even worse, they found those conflicts among 11 percent of the panelists who claimed they were free and clear.

Whoops. Busted!

And of course, you can't really stack a deck without putting some of your best cards on top -- so half of all chairs of the guideline-writing committees had conflicts.

The panels were convened by organizations including private ones like the American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association as well as government groups such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

But when you break it down, only 16 percent of the members of government-sponsored panels had conflicts, versus 69 percent of those convened by nongovernmental groups.

What's more, five of the groups in the study didn't even require conflict disclosures -- and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force won't reveal its own without a Freedom of Information Act request.

That's one of those things that make it look like you're hiding something... even if you're not.

This isn't limited to cholesterol and diabetes panels -- not by a longshot.

Earlier this year, researchers examined 17 critical guidelines from the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology that were issued between 2003 and 2008, and found that 56 percent of the 498 people who helped write them had conflicts of interest... including 81 percent of those who led the groups.

Put it all together, and it's pretty clear why you can't leave your doctor's office without yet another prescription: The deck was stacked against you long before you even walked through the door.

In addition, there are some other issues that make it difficult to trust conventional medicine:

1) Physician are the leading cause of death:

By Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD :

Provided a definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics and found that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good... The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. 3 The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. 4 The total number of iatrogenic [induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures] deaths shown in the following table is 783,936.

It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251. http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston/Leading_Cause_of_Death_in_the_US.html

2) Medicinal mistakes:

A 2006 follow-up to the IOM study found that medication errors are among the most common medical mistakes, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. According to the study, 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long-term care settings, and roughly 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics. The report stated that these are likely to be conservative estimates. In 2000 alone, the extra medical costs incurred by preventable drug related injuries approximated $887 million — and the study looked only at injuries sustained by Medicare recipients, a subset of clinic visitors. None of these figures take into account lost wages and productivity or other costs.[9]

According to a 2002 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report, about 7,000 people were estimated to die each year from medication errors - about 16 percent more deaths than the number attributable to work-related injuries (6,000 deaths).[citation needed] Medical errors affect one in 10 patients worldwide. One extrapolation suggests that 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury.[10] One in five Americans (22%) report that they or a family member have experienced a medical error of some kind.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_error

3) Physician do not report incompetency of others:

For example, although 96% of respondents agreed that physicians should report impaired or incompetent colleagues to relevant authorities, 45% of respondents who encountered such colleagues had not reported them.

http://www.annals.org/content/147/11/795.short

4) Big Pharma write the curriculum for physicians

5) Big Pharma write the protocal and procedure for physicians

6) Big Pharma controls the CE or continuing education of physicians

7) Big Pharma are publicly owned companies that have a legal responsibility to make money

Sources:

For more information, contact: Dr Holly at holly@choicesunlimited.ca

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