Part 4 - Spin Doctoring and Medicine!
Perception is Reality – Unfortunately.
From the 2 previous posts we have seen that Conventional Medicine (CM) is not as effective or as safe as is claimed. So, why is there the perception in many people’s minds and the media that this so-called ‘CM’ or ‘Scientific Medicine’ is more effective than Alternative Medicine and has been thoroughly tested?
What does ‘Spin Doctor’ mean?
“Someone, especially in politics, who tries to influence public opinion by putting a favorable bias on information when it is presented to the public or to the media.” - Allwords.com.
What are the accomplishments of Conventional (Biomedical) Medicine?
According to Conventional Medicine –”The remarkable increase in our life span during the 20th Century has been due, in large part, to the contributions of basic biomedical research.”1
THIS IS AN OVERESTIMATION AND NOT TRUE!
Many sources acknowledge medicine’s minimal role in life expectancy improvements the last century. They don’t due it as sarcastically as one writer put it in a letter to the editor of the BMJ (British Medical Journal): “There was an audit of the effect of modern medicine in the USA…improvement in human health and fall in disease incidence there could be attributed to improvement in sanitation, improved nutrition, better education, decent housing, economic empowerment of the masses, and healthier life style avoiding tobacco and alcohol, only 3.4% of the change could be due to modern medical claptrap!”2
In fact before to-days dominant Conventional (Biomedical, Allopathic, Orthodox, Western) Medicine took control of health-care and marginalized Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, Americans were healthier. -
“During the period [before Conventional Medicine took over health-care], the United States was one of the healthiest nations, with the world’s lowest infant mortality rate.” 3
Now the United States ranks 46th in the world for life expectancy according to the World Fact Book (put out by the CIA). This along with the most spent per capita in high tech health care in the world.
Who controls the Government and the Media – Conventional or Alternative Medicine?
“A Policy Analysis” from the CATO Institute entitled –
“The Medical Monopoly: Protecting Consumers or Limiting Competition?”
Here are the highlights or should I say lowlights from the ‘Analysis’ by the health policy consultant who wrote the article:
• “Nonphysician providers of medical care are in high demand in the United States.
• But licensure laws and federal regulations limit their scope of practice and restrict access to their services…Licensure laws appear to be designed to limit the supply of health care providers and restrict competition to physicians.
• In addition to using government to restrict competition, the medical monopoly also turns to government for subsidies.
• Any serious reform of the U.S. health care system must address the medical monopoly…
• Although protection of the public is often cited as the reason for medical licensing and limiting access to unconventional therapies, history indicates that professional interest was more of an overriding concern in the early enactment of those laws…
• …the self-interest of physicians soon began to assert itself. The AMA (American Medical Association) was determined to protect physicians from competition by nonphysician health care providers…
• There is little actual evidence that medical licensing improves quality or protects the public.” 3
“Indeed, the history of medicine through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes it clear that if it were not for the extensive political manoeuvring by the profession in accordance with its own visions and goals, it is extremely doubtful whether biomedicine would occupy the position it does today… large scale investment enabled the biomedical model to establish a virtual monopoly in developed nations within a few decades.”4
And you thought that from the ‘Spin Doctoring of Medicine’ that ‘the medical and scientific establishment’ was doing altruistic (unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others, dictionary.com) work to benefit the masses of humanity.
A United Kingdom physician calls a ‘Spade a Spade’ –
Notice that he points out that “the medical and scientific establishment…control politicians and the media”!
“The medical and scientific establishments have (largely through the fact that they have sold out to the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry) obtained more or less complete control over politicians and the media.”5
Who does Vernon Coleman M.D. say really controls “the medical and scientific establishment”?
In brackets in the above quote he really states who is in charge of the agenda “the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry” controls Conventional Medicine and thus “more or less complete control over politicians and the media.”?
He who ‘controls the purse strings controls the agenda’!
The ‘control of the purse strings’ was caused in part by Governments cutting back independent research dollars to medical scientists and “the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry” filling the vacuum. -
This will be discussed further in the next post – Part 5 - In Medicine he who ‘controls the purse strings controls the agenda’!
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Dennis Cutforth is a researcher and writer with over 35 years experience in health-care sales, marketing and research in pharmaceuticals and natural health. Visit his website at Get A Better Life Today.
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1. Julius Axelrod, Ph.D., Scientist Emeritus of the National Institutes of Health 1970 Nobel Laureate in Medicine. Living Longer And Loving It, Issue 8
2. Hegde, BM, Retd. Vice Chancellor Mangalore-575004, India, BMJ
3. 4. Sue Blevins, 1995 Policy Analysis no. 246 3 December 15 1995, CATO Institute
