By Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey and Rustum Roy
The current healthcare debate has brought up basic questions about how medicine should work. On one hand we have the medical establishment with its enormous cadre of M.Ds, medical schools, big pharma, and incredibly expensive hospital care. On the other we have the semi-condoned field of alternative medicine that attracts millions of patients a year and embraces literally thousands of treatment modalities not taught in medical school.
One side, mainstream medicine, promotes the notion that it alone should be considered "real" medicine, but more and more this claim is being exposed as an officially sanctioned myth. When scientific minds turn to tackling the complex business of healing the sick, they simultaneously warn us that it’s dangerous and foolish to look at integrative medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, or God forbid, indigenous medicine for answers. Because these other modalities are enormously popular, mainstream medicine has made a few grudging concessions to the placebo effect, natural herbal remedies, and acupuncture over the years. But M.D.s are still taught that other approaches are risky and inferior to their own training; they insist, year after year, that all we need are science-based procedures and the huge spectrum of drugs upon which modern medicine depends.
If a pill or surgery won’t do the trick, most patients are sent home to await their fate. There is an implied faith here that if a new drug manufacturer has paid for the research for FDA approval, then it is scientifically proven to be effective. As it turns out, this belief is by no means fully justified.
The British Medical Journal recently undertook an general analysis of common medical treatments to determine which are supported by sufficient reliable evidence. They evaluated around 2,500 treatments, and the results were as follows:
· 13% were found to be beneficial
· 23% were likely to be beneficial
· 8% were as likely to be harmful as beneficial
· 6% were unlikely to be beneficial
· 4% were likely to be harmful or ineffective.
This left the largest category, 46%, as unknown in their effectiveness. In other words, when you take your sick child to the hospital or clinic, there is only a 36% chance that he will receive a treatment that has been scientifically demonstrated to be either beneficial or likely to be beneficial. This is remarkably similar to the results Dr. Brian Berman found in his analysis of completed Cochrane reviews of conventional medical practices There, 38% of treatments were positive and 62% were negative or showed “no evidence of effect.”
For those who have been paying attention, this is not news. Back in the late 70’s the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment determined that a mere 10 to 20% of the practices and treatment used by physicians are scientifically validated. It’s sobering to compare this number to the chances that a patient will receive benefit due to the placebo effect, which is between 30% and 50%, according to various studies.
We all marvel at the technological advances in materials and techniques that allow doctors to perform quadruple bypass surgeries and angioplasties without marveling that recent studies indicate that coronary bypass surgery will extend life expectancy, in only about 3% of cases. For angioplasty that figure sinks to 0 percent. Those numbers might be close to what you could expect from a witch doctor, one difference being that witch doctors don’t submit bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.
It would be one thing if any of these unproven conventional medical treatments were cheap , but they are not. Angioplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) alone cost $100 billion annually. As quoted by President Obama in his drive to bring down medical costs, $700 billion is spent annually on unnecessary tests and procedures in America. As part of this excess, it is estimated that 2.5 million unnecessary surgeries are performed each year.
Then there is the myth that this vast expenditure results in excellent health care, usually touted as the best in the world (most recently by Rush Limbaugh as he emerged from a hospital in Hawaii after suffering chest pain). But this myth has been completely undermined. In 2000 Dr. Barbara Starfield, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association , estimated that between 230,000 and 284,000 deaths occur each year in the U.S. due to iatrogenic causes, or physician error, making this number three in the leading causes of death for all Americans.
In 2005 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that out of the 2.4 billion prescriptions written by doctors annually, 118 million were for antidepressants. It is the number one prescribed medication, whose use has doubled in the last ten years. You would think, therefore, that a remarkable endorsement is being offered for the efficacy of antidepressants. The theory of behind standard antidepression medication is that the disease is caused by low levels of key brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, and thus by manipulating those imbalanced neurotransmitters, a patient’s depression will be reversed or at least alleviated.
This turns out to be another myth. Prof. Eva Redei of Northwestern University, a leading depression researcher, has discovered that depressed individuals have no depletion of the genes that produce these key neurotransmitters compared to people who are not depressed. This would help explain why an estimated 50% of patients don’t respond to antidepressants, and why Dr. Irving Kirsch’s meta-analysis of antidepressants in England showed no significant difference in effectiveness between them and placebos.
You have a right to be shocked by these findings and by the overall picture of a system that benefits far fewer patients than it claims. The sad fact is that a disturbing percentage of the medicine we subject ourselves to isn’t based on hard science, and another percentage is risky or outright harmful. Obviously, every patient deserves medical care that is evidence-based, not just based on an illusory reputation that is promoted in contrast to alternative medicine.
We are not suggesting that Americans adopt any and all alternative practices simply because they are alternative. These, too, must demonstrate their effectiveness through objective testing. But alternative modalities should not be dismissed out of hand in favor of expensive and unnecessary procedures that have been shown to benefit no one absolutely except corporate stockholders.
For more information go to deepakchopra.com
Shocking and very disturbing facts regarding one of the most sensitive subjects of the mankind.
I don't think that people can easily accept any alternative practice but what I'm sure is that there
is a great percentage of people(including myself) that are becoming skeptics about modern
medicine and it is explainable and simple because it is a meter of life and death and modern
medicine cannot manipulate with the human disadvantage of reaching the bottom and being
helpless at the same time while struggling any kind of disease.
What I'm saying is that if we were skeptics about alternative medicine before we are becoming
more skeptics of the modern medicine now.Evidently it is all about the results as this sad facts
mentioned in this article. I'll take the recent happenings with the vaccine for the virus H1N1.
The open withdrawals in some of the countries was not enough.I never heard the answer from
my government why it was not suspended in my country?! However it is a discouraging and very
offensive fact for every human being on the planet.
I'm not someone who proclaims alternative medicine.I'm just saying that there have been cures
and practices useful for centuries and I have hundreds of friends cured by alternative medicine
but on the other side a great deal of close people that unfortuntely didn't make it because of the
modern one(including my mother).
Much Love,Eva
Unfortunately many things in life come down to money. The medical establishment, with all its components, is propelled by it. I have been in the hands of "the living god"–modern medicine–and it was hell on earth. My life may be shortened by the chemo I received years ago–normal chemo has long-term carcinogenic dangers, but it's like Tylenol compared to the chemo in bone marrow transplants–the most lethal legal poison on earth. As one is vomiting relentlessly, with a red blood cell count so low you can't get enough oxygen to walk across a room, you think "There must be a better way." The cost to keep me alive? My insurance company paid out $1,250,000 to doctors, hospitals and pharma companies for the drugs and treatment. I'm happy to be alive, and my sons are glad too. But I can't help thinking how many lives that would've saved in Africa providing the simple inoculations we all take for granted. We've lost our horizon.
That being said many alternative cures are no cures at all when subjected to controlled testing with placebo groups. Laetrile, shark cartilage, Essiac and others have been found to be worthless. Scams abound, which discredit practitioners like my acupuncturist, who trained in Japan, and has helped me manage my pain without narcotics.
Alternative practitioners charge much less than allopathic doctors and the good ones aren't in it for the money. But I've found that much of what good practitioners advise–proper diet, meditation, moderation–works best as a preventative for many maladies. I see this from my qigong practice.
Unfortunately if alternative practitioners do become covered by insurance, human nature may take over, and they'll start charging more for their treatments. I'm reminded of the old J. Geil's song: "First I look at the purse."
I am not surprised in the least, guys! THE TIME HAS COME FOR CONSCIOUSNESS! Even the witch doctor knew that
Hello Deepak
The main disconnect with science based medicine is the fact that it does not connect the body-mind, the body-diet, or how our emotions affect our health, maybe, now, it is starting to, a little bit, but, certainly, not the way that is necessary to promote health.
People go to Doctor's and actually expect them to know about the body, how it works what makes it sick and what sustains health, unfortuantley, the only thing most Doctor's and medical schools focus on is diseases, what body part is where and what it is called, it seems.
Just look at the fact that in until recently, very recently, the food we feed children in schools has been very unhealthy, the food in hospitals even more so, not to mention what people in nursing homes get fed, and medical schools and Doctors were blissfully unaware and unconcerned, like it has no bearing on our overall health to eat crap all our lives.
Anyway, I could go on and on but really science based medicine is so far behind where it sould be as far as the healh of the human body is concerned it is simply sad.
Look at the problem we are having as far as the outbreak of autism and autism related diagnoses in young children today. Any so-called medical community would be horrified as most mothers and fathers and concerned citizens are in that, what, 1 in 100 kids are affected today, mostly boys, and it seems that the American Medical Association can only come up with what they believe does NOT cause autism while most partents of autistic children are doing the actual work in trying to find out the cause. When it comes the the epidemic of autusim in our children today, science based medicine is about as helpful as twitching one's nose in actually doing something about finding the cause and the cure. This one area says so much about the American Medical Association and what it says is that they are "just not that interested."
The cost of science based medicine is, frankly, much, much, much more than it is actually worth, when it pertains to one's health.
I am not unaware of the fact that science based medicine has it place it is just that like Deepak states it need to move over and be inclusive in order to bring the best it can to the patients who need it.