Isn’t it ridiculous how the medical establishment, the FDA, and big pharmaceutical companies reject alternative and natural medicine? 

While it’s clear that the motivation of Big Pharma is avarice, and the FDA’s problem is their incestuous relationship with Big Pharma, it’s still puzzling how doctors who  enter their profession because of a desire to contribute to the health and well-being of others sell out to a system that prohibits the use of effective natural treatments.  

The majority of doctors know little of nutrition and seem to have forgotten the “roots” of their profession.  Many doctors not only don’t take advantage of alternative medicine but aggressively pooh pooh the entire concept that anything other than drugs and surgery might be beneficial in their profession.

Doctors receive very little education in nutrition in medical school.  Just how little?  In some schools no more than 8 hours.  For an example of how little importance the medical establishment attaches to nutrition consider the food served to patients in the hospital – fried foods, mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese, Salisbury steak with gravy, homogenized milk, vegetables with all the nutrition cooked out of them, and dessert.  That’ll help you recover quickly – yeah right!

Big Pharma representatives start cozying up to doctors early, paying for medical school textbooks and holding special vacations (oops – seminars).  Then they continue to build the relationship paying for more educational junkets and making sure they are assigned a “detail rep” to visit doctors’ offices frequently to drop off free drug samples and many enticing gifts.  In 2004 there was one drug rep for every four and a half office-based doctors.

These companies monitor what quantity of their product each doctor prescribes to his patients.  Generics are available for most prescriptions, but the next time you get a prescription from your doctor look at it closely.  If you see “DAW” written on the prescription, it means “dispense as written”.  Your doctor is prescribing a particular brand of drug from a particular pharmaceutical company.

The FDA opposes nutritional products and has used any opportunity to try to regulate nutritional companies out of business while at the same time permitting the continued sale of drugs found to injure or kill people.  Under the law, proponents of natural health products not only can’t claim that their products can have a beneficial impact on chronic disease or illness, they must actually state that they don’t.  But according to an article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine published in 1996, 42% of the material given to doctors by drug reps made claims that were in violation of FDA regulations, and only 39 percent of the material referred to scientific evidence to support its marketing claims.

Many MD’s want to do the right thing, but they are battling a medical system focused almost entirely on the marketing of drugs and surgical procedures.  In the medical profession there are documents called “clinical guidelines”.  Supposedly designed to give doctors confidence that they are making decisions regarding patient care that reflect the best available scientific evidence the guidelines often don’t meet established standards.  A report in The Lancet found that only 1 of 20 clinical guidelines examined met established quality.  but the guidelines provide standards by which the quality of a doctor’s care can be judged and they can be used as evidence in medical malpractice cases.  If for instance, a doctor violates a clinical guideline that calls for administration of a particular drug he or she could face a malpractice suit and loss of their medical license.

Are you as frustrated about this as I am?  Well, here’s a news flash!  Frustration is not the worst thing that can happen to you or your family because of this system.  If you or your family have a life threatening illness or disease, it could cost you your life!

Here is a short documentary video that tells about a New Zealand farmer who almost died from swine flu due to the refusal of the medical team to try high dose vitamin C as the family asked.  The doctors wanted to take him off life support because they said there was no hope he would live. 

Don’t be bullied to death.  Consider alternative medicine and nutritional products.  Ultimately, you are responsible for your own health, so utilize information to educate yourself.