In a televised town meeting aimed at selling his program, Obama rightly pointed out that Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world but don’t necessarily get more. One example is the estimated $700 billion dollars in unnecessary tests that doctors routinely run each year. As soon as he made the point, however, a doctor in the audience raised a familiar specter. If your wife or daughter had cancer, he said, would you tell them they can’t get the best care possible, no matter what the cost? It’s a fearful question, and frankly, the ace in the hole that mainstream medicine has been pulling for decades.
So which is worse, cancer or the huge cost of health care?
If we can set our fears aside, certain facts need to be faced. A recent European study on prostate cancer poked a hole in the need for early detection, a need that’s drummed into us constantly for every type of cancer and which costs billions every year in expensive tests. The new study "indicated that saving one man’s life from the disease would require screening about 1,400 men. But among those 1,400, 48 others would undergo treatments like surgery or radiation procedures that would not improve their health because the cancer was not life-threatening to begin with or because it was too far along," to quote the New York Times. The same story covered an early-detection campaign known as "Check Your Neck" aimed at thyroid cancer. Yet this rare cancer kills only 1,400 people a year, and there’s no evidence that regular checkups for it save lives. The same holds true for ovarian, lung, and skin cancer. Considering all the factors, including side effects and risks of treatment, one expert in early detection gloomily declared, “There are five things that can happen as a result of screening tests, and four of them are bad."
The one good outcome, finding a fatal cancer that responds well to treatment, is what Americans pay billions and billions of dollars in the hope of achieving.
So, will doctors back off on the standard PSA tests to detect prostate cancer, much less the protocols of radiation and surgery to treat it? Not unless a new system of health care emerges that reduces fear as well as costs. Thirty years ago I first entered alternative medicine with an emphasis on wellness, believing that it represented a new system. I still believe it does. Cancer, and the anxiety it induces, is a red herring. The mean adjusted age of death from all types of cancer — meaning how long the average patient survives before succumbing to the disease — has barely changed since the 1930’s for both men and women With all the early detection and advanced treatments, a cancer patient today is by no means guaranteed to live longer than a cancer patient in our grandparents’ generation. That’s another fact we need to face.
The final fact is that American health care needs prevention more than anything else. The majority of medical costs go to treating three conditions: obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. As this society grows fatter, older, and less likely to exercise regularly, all three will rise, and yet sensible prevention would go a long way to halt or reverse that trend. A major type of diabetes, Type 2, is directly linked to obesity, so even though type 1 is incurable, maintenance and prevention would effectively fight the scourge of diabetes, not to mention the myriad secondary problems it causes.
The thing about a giant squid is that you can’t peel it off one tentacle at a time. You need to find a way to pull off every arm at once. In our current crisis, doctors and Congress cannot do the job. Vested interests will be fighting over health care for years to come. The public is right to worry that Obama’s promised reforms cannot be paid for without extra taxes, and even then the overall costs may not go down. But it’s the public that is best equipped to kill the monster, not by focusing on the war on cancer, gene therapy, heart bypass surgery, and the next miracle drug — these all cost a king’s ransom and are controlled by powerful interest groups — but by finally waking up and taking charge of our own health. The cry for preventive medicine and inexpensive natural treatments isn’t new or glamorous, yet we need to heed it now more than ever.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
Dear Deepak,
Excellent article.
Hopefully people will be hearing that
Deepak,
This article is terrific! Thank you for writing it and sharing your perspective, I will pass it on to my network as we need to begin the responsibility process of taking care of our health.
Thank you,
Lorin
Lorin Beller Blake
http://www.lorinbellerblake.com
Dear Deepak,
Your points are very well taken. I met you at your seminar in Marina Del Rey and handed you my book Everywoman a Goddess: Everyman a Hero in Her Service and you told me you would read it. I know you are a very busy man and although you haven't written me I have noticed that you are making many more statements about the spirituality of women and the Divine Feminine.
My last blog here at intent and also on my website and blog was titled Universal Cancer Biomarker and Vaccine. I would love for you to read that and perhaps help me to continue my research in this area. It would address and solve the problems that you have just identified.
love and light and the blessings of the Schechinah, you are very loved.
Stuart
http://stuartmarkberlin.com http://heroinherservice.blogspot.com
resrchmd@aol.com
Hi Dr. Chopra,
I address you in this way, rather than Deepak, as I have the highest regard for your medical expertise. In the early nineties, when I was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma cancer and given months to live, I read your book: "Quantum Healing." It inspired me to seek out the mind/body connection and train with a kung fu master in internal energy exercises to help heal myself. It took me three more tries in the subsequent five years, two stem cell transplants–but I finally beat it in 1996 and have been clear of cancer for 13 years. Bravo.
When I was diagnosed at the age of 32 I was in great physical condition–I worked out every day with weights or running and ate a very sound diet. Yet I still contracted cancer. At the time, I was wearing down from a bad disk in my back–sciatica kept me awake most nights yet I still kept going. I had two infant sons and a new house to pay for. I couldn't quit my corporate job.
According to some statistics, the cancer rate has risen in the past twenty years from one in four Americans to one in two. With the proliferation of chemical and radiation exposure, both from preservatives in our food and electro -magnetic radiation from our appliances, it's not surprising. The human form has never been under so much pressure from these influences in our entire history.
What is to be done? We can't turn the clock back to an earlier, simpler time. We need our electricity and cars. We need our convenience foods to keep our pace with the modern world.
Yes, we can meditate and eat a sound diet–as I do and so many others on this site. But it's no guarantee. Even Taoist and Buddhist masters die of cancer. You don't hear about this–you only hear about the ones who die of old age at 100, sitting upright in a meditation posture and transferring seamlessly into the Great Perhaps. But this blight affects everyone.
Best regards,
Bob
Dear Deepak
All of this is true, and as important as, and in conjunction with, prevention is patient accountability. We all must take responsibility for our health and for our health care choices. Gone are the days when it is appropriate to defer to medical "expertise" since such expertise is so greatly influenced by insurance payments, research dollars and drug companies. I remember a day sitting in my doctor's office waiting for her to come into the examination room, and I could hear information being delivered to the doctors from the drug reps who filed in and out of the office describing their respective companies' latest research and wonder drugs. Is this where our doctors are getting their continuing ed?
As well, we must research recommended treatment modalities and prescribed drugs prior to accepting them. We mus research physicians and other health care providers before surrendering to their care.
And we must be responsible for how we care for our bodies; what we eat, what we drink, what environments we subject ourselves to. We cannot eat boxes of chemicals and pesticide and hormone laden foods and expect our bodies to respond with glowing health and vitality.
Carry on your great work and let us all revere the awesome gifts our bodies are by treating them as rare treasures.
Debra
Dear Deepak, I so wholeheartedly support you on this!!
"but by finally waking up and taking charge of our own health. The cry for preventive medicine and inexpensive natural treatments isn
I too agree with Deepak and the President. The tentacle I personally am trying to empower is the mental health care system. Its the least funded and the least talked about. We have to deal with the stigma associated with just the name bi-polar, schizophrenia and many others.( too many to list). I believe with proper care and medication monitoring these conditions can be stabilized. This would be a relief to the social system, welfare and the overall economy. If stabilized , these people can become very productive employees, even just part-time employment would be in their best interest. Social Security Disability is important for the sake of the health care that goes with it,but it was never intended to be enough to live on and that just makes the stress level of someone already stressed by their illness , to escalate into a near crisis mode! No one may understand what my point is,but in plain talk, HELP!
Some people do not understand the term mental illness and would not think of hiring some one who openly admits that they are on disability for one of the many illnesses in that category. Yes, there is a back to work program by social security. It is scary! To many "what if" and "if I do this" to do more for yourself. I also know we have the non discrimination laws to help but, I speak from personal experience when I say "ignorance of most of society" stops a mentally ill person from moving forward with their lives. I hide my diagnosis from friends and family as do others in my condition.
Just think, if I and thousands of others could bravely put our disability on a resume or job application, being open about mental illness and we actually got the job by being honest, there would be more money flowing in our economy and country!!!
Paul,
Thanks for the jokes. I like them.
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Blessings X 10,
Ed
Thank You For This Post Deepak,
The best care argument for the medical monopoly stakeholders has been invalid all along, as is their monopoly. The best care is usually just a tiny fraction of the monopoly allopathy charges. But there is a conspiracy to prevent people from finding the best care and a major brainwashing campaign to keep them from looking. It goes right back to one of your previous posts on corruption. When the corruption is great enough, the corrupted organism dies.
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Blessings X 10,
Ed