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The History of Modern Medicine At the beginning of the twentieth century, 5 major schools of thought were vying for the leading role in modern medicine. There were over 500 medical schools and physicians were free to practice the art and science of healing according to their philosophy and the wishes of their patients. Doctors were paid no more than other tradesmen, yet because of their commitment to their calling, they made house calls and often worked without compensation at all, or for whatever the patient could barter. Within a few short years, the number of schools dropped to about 50 and doctors became highly paid drug salesmen with a monopoly on the treatment of disease. Here are the major philosophies of medicine that existed before this radical departure from the American tradition of medical freedom: Homeopathy: now 200 years old, this approach came from Dr. Samuel Hahnemann in Germany and was the leading approach in terms of numbers of doctors, medical schools and hospitals. Today, homeopathic medicine continues in its leading role as the leading form of medicine in the world, though not in America. Yet, despite the set-backs of the 20th century, American homeopathy is coming back at a rate of 40% per year. Herbal Medicine: probably the origin of most forms of medical traditions around the world, this approach uses natural plant substances as sources of nutrition and medication. Even today, 1 out of 3 conventional drugs are derived from plants and many others are synthetic analogs of compounds originally discovered in herbal remedies. Eclectic Medicine: this approach attempted to combine and synthesize all the others, drawing on each tradition when most appropriate given the individual disease and patient. This may still be the most rational approach to medicine today. Allopathic Patent Medicine & Surgery: using toxins and chemicals as drugs, these methods entered the European traditions from the universities of the Moslem world during the middle ages. This approach turned out to be the most commercially viable due to the laws of the land (as distinguished from the laws of healing). Many other countries continue to have a pluralistic medical system. For example, under their federal constitution, the public in Germany are guarranteed access to 5 different medical systems with equal standing to treat any disease, including conventional medicine, natural medicine and more than one approach to homeopathic medicine. In Japan there are two: Oriental medicine and Western medicine, and patients are free to choose which approach they want to treat themselves with. How did the radical restriction in American medicine take place, from freedom-of-choice and diversity-of-approach to the present-day monopoly of the conventional Med-Surge philosophy? In 1847, the American Medical Association formulated its first code of ethics, which condemned any proprietary invention by physicians, whether it be a patent medicine or a surgical instrument. Medicine was a higher calling, to serve the sick, and any physician with a gift to help advance that science should provide the fruits to all doctors freely, not for compensation. Later, the entire focus of the field shifted over to the very thing that had been condemned: patent medicine, drugs for profit.* In the process of gaining the upper hand within political medicine, the drug-oriented group was able to virtually wipe out all competition from the eclectic and homeopathic doctors. How was this accomplished? The Carnegie Foundation, established as seemingly philanthropic organizations with the purpose of furthering the interests of this wealthy family and through relation by marriage the Rockefeller family, commissioned a study of the medical field to determine which approach would be the most favorable to making a profit. The Flexner report, published in 1910 clearly indicated that patent medicine would be the most lucrative, and millions of dollars began pouring into the few dozen allopathic medical schools from both the Rockefeller & Carnegie Foundations. The best faculty were hired away from other schools, impressive facilities were erected with well stocked laboratories and libraries. The notion that this was the modern scientific approach to medicine (to the exclusion of all other, i.e. natural and less profitable methods) was then promoted successfully through the state legislatures across the republic. By 1918 only one homeopathic school in Philadelphia and one eclectic school in Cincinnati. Osteopathy had been founded in 1892 and was eventually absorbed into the allopathic approach. Chiropractic, founded in 1895, and Naturopathy, founded in 1902, began to grow outside the medical mainstream to fill the void of natural health care left with the loss of eclectic, herbal and homeopathic medicine. Today, Americans once again make more office visits to alternative practitioners than they do to G.P.s. The short-live era of synthetic drug medicine appears to be coming rapidly to an end as its once cherished foundational notion that someday, through pharmaceutical research, a drug would be found to cure each disease. The reality has been more that ever stronger (and more expensive) drugs are found to patch up the leaky and ill-conceived dam that holds back the flood waters of disease. Bacteria become stronger and develop resistance to virtually all the patented antibiotics (not the herbs and minerals like silver). They even seem to conspire against drug medicine, as we learn that one bacteria, once it learns the secret to defusing an antibiotic, can pass this gene along to other bacteria thriving in the same host. Hospitals become a perfect breeding ground for the worst germs, causing nosocomial infection. One in three patients leave the hospital with a new iatrogenic illness. And according to a study by Ralph Nader, conventional American medicine kills 300,000 Americans a year. Kills. And before you conclude that this is some distortion of the truth, realize that in every public health study of physician strikes around the world (including California), the death rate has dropped significantly when modern medicine has been unavailable. Another example is when several important asthma drugs were to be taken off the market in New Zealand due to dangerous side effects. Doctors, patients and public health officials alike were very worried about the lack of adequate substitutes for these drugs, and feared increased asthma deaths. In reality, the death rate from asthma actually dropped significantly. Or take a closer look at modern cancer treatment, as some doctors in Europe have done using meta-analysis of all the cancer studies performed all around the world in recent years. What did the statistical findings show, when all the data was compiled? People who say no thank you to radiation, chemotherapy and surgery actually live longer than those undergoing conventional treatment. And what about quality of life? Another study of oncologists found that 90% of them, if they had cancer would themselves reject the very treatments they subject their patients to. Does this sound a bit like the study a few years back when Cardiologists were still poo-pooing Vitamin E to their patients while most of them secreting were taking that very supplement themselves? Yes. Something is very seriously wrong with this system of medicine. It is radically incomplete, without the very modalities that nature has provided to support healing and sustain life. Vital nutrition. Herbs from God's vast pharmacy. Energy (e.g. in the form of energetic homeopathic medicines) Natural light. Fresh air. Clean water. Soothing sounds from nature. Or a kind word. The reassuring warmth of a gentle touch. The prayer of a loved one. Americans are beginning to say to themselves, "there must be a better way!" They are beginning to vote with their feet and their pocketbooks for a more humane, more inclusive, more response, more sane approach to health and healing in which the doctor and patient become partners. In this paradigm, as old as it is new, the doctor must learn to listen to the patient, who, despite lack of medical training, still knows more about the case than anyone on earth. The doctor, too, must return to the true role of his calling. Doctor after all, means teacher. So even before the doctor can hope to teach his patient something about maintaining and regaining health, the doctor himself must learn this view. After all, if American doctors knew more about health (not disease) than there patients, wouldn't they have a higher life expectancy than average, rather than dying at an average age of 57.5 years old. This is a sad statistic indeed, and reflects the health of our present disease (not health) care system. Much of modern medicine is not only wasteful, but dangerous. In 2000, per capita Medicare spending was $10,550 in Manhattan, but only $4,823 in Portland, Oregon with no difference in quality of care or patients satisfaction. Furthermore, mortality rates are 2 to 5% higher in regions that spend more on conventional medicine, comparing areas with the same level of health.
Conventional Medicine may be the leading cause of death in our culture of death. JAMA published a study that could support the idea that doctors may be the leading cause of death in the States. In 1994, an estimated 2,216,000 (1,721,000 to 2,711,000) hospitalized patients had serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 (76,000 to 137,000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death. Fatal ADRs accounted for 0.32 percent (95 percent confidence interval (CI), 0.23 percent to 0.41 percent) of hospitalized patients. That means hospitals kill one in every 300 patients via drug reactions alone. Russian roulette, anyone?
Medication-related problems (MRP) continue to occur at a high rate in ambulatory hemodialysis (HD) patients. Medication-dosing problems (33.5 percent), adverse drug reactions (20.7 percent), and an indication that was not currently being treated (13.5 percent) were the most common MRP. 5,373 medication orders were reviewed and a MRP was identified every 15.2 medication exposures.
In 2002, 16,176 adverse drug reaction reports were received, of which 67 percent related to reactions categorized as 'serious.'
Medication administration errors (MAEs) were observed in two departments of a hospital for 20 days. The medication administration error rate is 14.9%. Dose errors were the most frequent (41 percent) errors, followed by wrong time (26 percent) and wrong rate errors. 10% of errors are estimated as potentially life-threatening, 26 percent potentially significant and 64 percent potentially minor. Serious and Fatal Drug Reactions in US Hospitals Drug-related morbidity and mortality have been estimated to cost more that $136 billion a year in United States. These estimates are higher than the total cost of cardiovascular care or diabetes care in the United States. A major component of these costs is adverse drug reactions (ADE).
The numbers of deaths reported in data sets varied 34-fold and were up to several 100-fold less than values based on extrapolations of surveillance programs.
About 0.05% of all hospital admissions were certainly or probably drug-related. Incidence figures based on death certificates only may seriously underestimate the true incidence of fatal adverse drug reactions.
In one study of 200 patients, ADRs may have contributed to the deaths of two (1%) patients.
In a survey of over 28,000 patients, ADRs were considered to be the cause of 3.4 percent of hospital admissions. Of these, 187 ADRs were coded as severe. Gastrointestinal complaints (19 percent) represented the most common events, followed by metabolic and hemorrhagic complications (nine percent). The drugs most frequently responsible for these ADRs were diuretics, calcium channel blockers, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and digoxin.
*It is interesting to note the parallel with the American Dental Association, which included in its founding platform the need to eliminate the quacks from dentistry who used mercury based dental filling materials. ...How the best of intentions often go astray! Medicine of the Future...Now: Star-Trek-Medicine is a reality today in many ways. Air-Therapy: Energy-Fields:
Energy-Medicine:
Exercise:
Life-Energy-Therapy-Systems:
Light-Therapy:
Visualization-Systems:
Water-Therapy:
Star-Trek: Voyager: Sickbay contains the equipment and technology necessary to keep the ship's crew healthy. It contains a primary bio-bed located in the surgical bay and three standard bio-beds. All are equipped with medical sensors and other diagnostic devices. A forcefield containing a sterile atmosphere can be erected anywhere within sickbay e.g. around the surgical bay. Sickbay also contains the Doctor's office and its position also gives him (or his assistant) the benefit of being able to observe patients from there. There is also an adjacent medical lab, which includes computer consoles and seating, where the Doctor (or his assistant) can work on, say, analysing medical samples. Sickbay is a holographic environment equipped with several holo-emitters. This is because Voyager is equipped with an Emergency Medical Hologram. This is a program intended for short-term use, to supplement the Doctor, but in 2371 Voyager's human doctor was killed and the EMH has taken his place. He has been online almost all the time since then. The EMH is programmed with information from 2,000 medical references and the experience of 47 physicians plus over five million surgical treatments and techniques, with contingency options and adaptive programs. The program contains over 50 million gigaquads of data and is equipped with the medical knowledge of over 3,000 cultures. The EMH is automatically activated during a red alert. The EMH has the ability to walk through forcefields, meaning that they cannot impede him at his work. The EMH program incorporates an adaptive heuristic matrix which allows the EMH to learn and adapt from its experiences. That was originally conceived as a means to improve upon its medical knowledge and skills but Voyager's Doctor, aided by the crew, has developed into what they all consider to be a sentient being. Janeway says: "The Doctor is a person, as real as any flesh and blood I've ever known." The primary biobed, located in the surgical bay, is the most important piece of diagnostic and surgical equipment in Sickbay. It is usually the first place where a patient is examined and diagnosed, especially for obviously critically ill or injured persons. It is a free-standing unit which can rotate through 360°, and also incline if needed, to allow medical staff to access the patient if necessary from any angle. It contains more monitors, console and other medical equipment than the standard biobeds. As with the standard biobeds, surgical support frames are built into "clamshell"-like arms that extend from both sides of the primary biobed. The arms, which contain additional high-resolution medical scanners, form a bridge over the patient, and provide detailed diagnostic information as well as recovery devices and, in surgery, they combine with the overhead unit to generate a sterile environment. Above the primary biobed are bright lights to enable medical staff to see clearly, an array of biological sensors and a forcefield generator. The forcefield generator is used not only to contain the sterile atmosphere necessary for surgery or quarantine, but it can also be used to confine a dangerous or violent patient. In the latter circumstance, a security team is also likely to be assigned to sickbay. All biobeds serve as examination tables, and are accordingly equipped with monitors and scanners. Physiosensors constantly monitor and report the patient's condition. On average a biobed is 1 metre wide and 2 metres long, which is sufficient for most humanoid lifeforms. The bed is raised to a comfortable working height for medical examination or treatment, and it can also incline, if necessary, to benefit the patient e.g. during pre-natal examinations and childbirth. Biobeds are equipped with biosensor displays which are mounted at the head of each unit. |
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Volition of this Ministry is for our Self-Healing of each
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of all Truth by the Authority and Grace of our Sovereign-King
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