Tuesday, February 16, 2016

WSJ Review of "Cure"

"But 'Cure' points a way toward a future in which the two camps might work together.  After all, any medicine that makes a patient better, whether conventional, alternative, or placebo, is simply medicine."  Such is the conclusion of Dr. Ross's review in today's Wall Street Journal of Jo Marchant's new book titled simply "Cure."  We can only wish at this time that all medical professionals had such open minds.

The book is apparently filled with lots of anecdotes about people who've recovered from injury or other health problems simply from the use of a placebo.  I've used a story in my speeches for years about a knee replacement study done at Baylor Hospital in Houston where folks who didn't have their knees replaced scored the same as those who did, simply from the placebo effect.

The drug industry knows all about the placebo effect and they hate it.  It ruins all of their research and studies by showing how folks really don't need the latest and greatest drugs after all.  So they campaign aggressively and effectively against it with the FDA and anybody else who will listen.  And the medical community steps right in line for them.

The human body has unknown and unlimited abilities to heal itself.  Conventional medicine wants to maintain its exclusive control of health care in America.  Alternative health care recognizes the potential of every person to heal themselves.  Maybe one of these days the two opposites will shrink the distance between their extremes.  Apparently there is reason for hope.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Medical Malpractice

Did you know that just 1% of all doctors were responsible for 32% of all medical malpractice claims during the past decade?  According to the New England Journal of Medicine recently those are the numbers yet very little is being done to hold those responsible accountable.  Why?  Maybe because the national database called the National Practitioner Data Bank doesn't list doctors by name to protect their privacy, they're assigned a number.  It seems that Colorado is one of the very few states where medical malpractice is a matter of public record.

Why doesn't the medical profession take the responsibility to revoke the licenses of bad doctors?  Don't they realize that by protecting the 1% that are bad they're casting a shadow on the 99% of doctors who do a good job?  Letting a bad doctor simply move from one state to another and start practicing again harms patients. 

It's time for voters to start demanding that their elected officials begin making state licensing boards become more vigilant in protecting voters, not the doctors that send them money.

If you want to learn more I understand that Dr. Lawrence B. Schlachter has a new book coming out soon called "Malpractice:  A Board-Certified Neurosurgeon Reveals How The American Health Care System Fails To Protect Patient Safety and Investigate Negligence."