Health News (Week 48 – 2014)
By Robert Redfern
In the early days when I was asked by readers to provide the science or studies so they could present them to their doctors who had asked for them, I would spend time digging them out and I, like the reader, innocently thought the doctor would say ‘wow’ and start supporting their plan to recovery.
Of course it never happened.
The nearest any reader ever got was a metaphorical pat on the head from the doctor saying, “yes, carry on if you think it is doing you some good, it cannot do any harm”. Since it was proved to be a waste of time providing the studies I stopped wasting my time and started to only look at science (cynically), for when I am evaluating a new formulation.
Now you would think that doctors are cynical disbelieving people (as I claim to be) but you could not be further from the truth. Doctors are believers. They believe what the authority tells them to prescribe in face of the daily massive failure of those prescriptions to get anyone healthy. I am sure they do not enjoy this failure and in fact I read that doctors are seriously unhappy with their work life.
This is understandable since in spite of the trillions spent on so-called health care by the medical system the five leading causes of death in Western Nations are: 1st. Heart Disease, 2nd. Cancer, 3rd. Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases, 4th. Stroke, and 5th. Unintentional death (mainly caused directly by that very medical system). The 5th leading cause of death is the medical system itself, set up to prevent (they do call themselves health care) and to help heal these conditions. It is my opinion that a large proportion of the deaths in 1 to 4 are indirectly attributable to the medical system.
These five leading causes of death are all preventable by better care and especially the 5th one, ‘Death Directly Caused by Medical Care’. Imagine if the 5th leading cause of death in the Western world was plane crashes caused by bad design or pilot error? Airline customers would not put up with such a threat to their lives. Why do those same customers put up with harm or death from medical error or badly designed or prescribed drugs?
More to the point why do doctors put up with medical error and badly designed drugs. The big difference between medical doctors and pilots may be that pilots fly in the same planes as we do. Pilots insist the planes are mechanically safe and they insist the crew and ground staff are trained to a 100% degree of detail to ensure everyone is safe. Pilots and crew would just refuse to fly unsafe planes just as we would.
It may be time for a revolution by doctors and their customers. The medical system they are being asked to operate does not work for the leading causes of death and the other chronic conditions that are easily dealt with. To give you some idea on how the information is kept from you in the media I am using the statistics from the USA (now on), which may have the most open freedom of information system in the world.
There will be small differences from country to country.
What’s truly terrible about this list above is that the top four can be directly attributed to lifestyle. (In 1900, the top three causes of death were due to infectious diseases.)
-
- A 55yr old in the year 1900, could expect to live (on average) an extra 18 years.
- A 55 yr old in the year 2009, could expect to live (on average) an extra 26 years. (Source, American Council of Life Insurers)
By my calculations that is an extra 8 lousy years extra for spending trillions on medical care which has failed by any measure. It is likely those extra 8 years are the result of better working conditions, cleaner drinking water and better sanitation. I cannot say the food is better now.
To compare deaths from plane crashes from 1920 to present day would not be fair but the fact is the success by plane makers and the crews have made flying safer and safer. To get a real perspective on how safe flying is:
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- In 1999 the total number of deaths in plane crashes was 1200 people
- In 2013 the total number of deaths in plane crashes was 265 people
Imagine if the medical system could improve their record to the same degree.
I said that the 5th cause of death (around 150,000 in the USA) was ‘Death Directly Caused by Medical Care’ of course the medical system and the authorities try to hide the facts about the number of people who die at the hands of the medical system. They would never put it into such a table since it may cause a revolution by doctors and their customers. The real amount of people killed by the medical system may dwarf them all and may be the largest cause of death. These below are the USA figures but there is no reason to believe it is any difference in the UK and other western countries.
As I said there is no way the medical system and the authorities will publish the real figures and so groups in the USA have collected all of the figures from the sources shown. Estimated Annual Mortality and Economic Cost of Medical Intervention (Collated by Life Extension Foundation)
Condition |
Deaths
|
Cost
|
Author |
Adverse Drug Reactions |
106.000
|
$12 billion
|
Lazarou (1), Suh (49) |
Medical error |
98.000
|
$2 billion
|
IOM(6) |
Bedsores |
115.000
|
$55 billion
|
Xakellis (7), Barczak (8) |
Infection |
88.000
|
$5 billion
|
Weinstein(9), MMWR (10) |
Malnutrition |
108.800
|
$77 billion
|
Nurses Coalition (11) |
Outpatients |
199.000
|
$122 billion
|
Starfield (12), Weingart (112) |
Unnecessary Procedures |
37.136
|
$9 billion
|
HCUP (3,13) |
Surgery-Related |
32.000
|
————
|
AHRQ (85) |
Total
|
783.936
|
$282 billion
|
Using Leape’s 1997 medical and drug error rate of 3 million (14) multiplied by the 14% fatality rate he used in 1994(16) produces an annual death rate of 420,000 for drug errors and medical errors combined. Using this number instead of Lazorou’s 106,000 drug errors and the Institute of Medicine ‘s (IOM) estimated 98,000 annual medical errors would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths annually.
These figure may be slightly high or slightly low. The main thing is that the medicals system and authorities are hiding the truth of the devastating number of deaths and injuries. It is like hiding the number of plane crashes, which they don’t.
What will you do? Change your diet? Exercise? Take missing minerals?
This truly has to become the age of self-responsibility but for that to succeed the doctors have to be part of the revolution and fight against the “Pharma Gangsters” and their paid hirelings in the medical system and politicians.
Over the past 25 years I have communicated with 10’s thousands who had given up on the medical system and wanted to solve their condition. The results for those who follow the plans in my books are outstanding. Are they 100%? No, but for those who follow the plan in detail around 70% do clear their problems. That is 70% better than a failed system.
P.S. All of my books / plans are free to download and the printed ones (paid for) are available in the Good Health Stores or on Amazon.