Alternative medicines, university degree's for complementary medecine under fire...

[Anchor]

MORE than 400 doctors, medical researchers and scientists have formed a powerful lobby group to pressure universities to close down alternative medicine degrees.
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The groundswell of protest from medical professionals comes after a decision in Britain that means from this year it will no longer be possible to receive a degree from a publicly-funded university in areas of alternative medicine, including homeopathy and naturopathy.

German and British medical insurance providers are also in the process of removing alternative therapies from the list of treatments they will cover.

Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/scientists-urge-unis-to-axe-alternative-medicine-courses-20120125-1qhtm.html

[sunflower]

Definitely not good news.

[WhiteFeather]

They don't want to lose a good thing the Dr Frankensteins of today. The luxurys of expensive cars, huge mansions, tee times. These pieces of feces like their lifestyle making trillions off the weak. Why ruin a good thing. The answer to cancer and disease grows from right under our feet, they do not want this to leak out. Guess what its starting to leak, open the floodgates.

[Carmen]

The alternative practitioners will just form their own academies. Universities are more and more about control of thought through how they are funded.

[Alie]

For anyone who is interested ... Southwest Institute of the Healing Arts is an accredited college (online & offline) in Tempe AZ.

[Dennis Leahy]

The key phrase in the article is the new catchphrase, and it is not coming from the doctors (they are pawns.) It is coming directly from Big Pharma.

The catchphrase: "evidence based medicine." I wrote a bit about this topic in the The Reset Button revision I'm working on.

In a nutshell, this is Big Pharma dictating to medical (MD) practitioners the sneaky notion that medicine in the past has been a combination of some hit-and-miss diagnosis and treatment, each doc treating the same malady a different way - and of paying attention to published studies that clarify the nebulous. At first glance, it sounds like responsible medicine, and as if docs are comparing notes to see what treatments are working the best, so they can give their patients the best treatment, the best outcome, statistically.

However, it really is a sneaky way for pharmaceutical companies to inject the meme that only a published study shows evidence - the anecdotal "evidence" of the past is being brushed aside. What does it mean? It means that thousands of years of healing arts will be ignored - because no one was willing to pay for a multimillion dollar study to provide the evidence that the pharmaceutical houses insist is the only real evidence.

I know several doctors very well, and they are run ragged by drug companies releasing more and more medicines that the docs need to know. The docs have to take continuing medical education (CME) courses, and be tested in their specialty (which is medical "trivial pursuit") - with plenty of knowledge of current pharmaceutical knowledge required to pass the test and stay board certified.

The drug companies sponsor every medical magazine, and fill the magazines with their ads. They have started advertising their drugs on TV, which forces the doctors to either learn the drugs, or look like an idiot when they can't answer questions about how it compares to every other drug on the market...

The pharmaceutical houses contribute greatly to medical schools, and bounce personnel (the same way as the revolving door between Monsanto and the FDA and USDA) between research institutions, medical textbook writers, and medical school staff. They are not just in bed, the drug companies supply the condoms too.

There are some specialties where the docs make a lot of money for every hour they work. It's the exception, not the average. If you take the actual number of hours worked a year and include the required CME and self-study time and divide their salary by the actual number of hours involved, then subtract the medical malpractice insurance they must pay, you'll find a salary per hour not too far away from a skilled trade such as an electrician.

A lot of what you think of as paying too much for the doc is actually paying too much for tests that docs now routinely order so they won't get their asses sued off. When I was a child, I had appendicitis. The diagnosis was made by the doctor laying his hands on my belly pressing, thumping, watching and listening. Cost for test: $0. In modern medicine, there will routinely be a blood test plus an X-Ray, ultrasound, or even a CT scan. This has nothing to do with the lack of skill of modern doctors; it has everything to do with the skill of modern attorneys who can easily nail a doc to a cross if they did not perform every possible test in the arsenal, and something happens to go wrong in the treatment.

There is a villain in the story. Well, there are three. Oh, and other than some private clinics that do overcharge, generally speaking, hospitals are not making the amount of profit you may suspect. The villains are the medical insurance companies, "ambulance chasing"-mentality attorneys that have scared the bejesus out of most docs, and the pharmaceutical houses (that are among the most profitable enterprises on Earth.)

If you want to make an impact, when you talk to your doctor, let them know that you appreciate the lineage of their knowledge base, including the anecdotal evidence which you consider as real evidence. Tell them some docs are getting buffaloed by drug companies into abandoning all anecdotal evidence in favor of drug company whitepapers as being the only evidence in "evidence-based medicine." (If they give you an additional 30 seconds, mention turmeric - it has 4000 years of anecdotal evidence.) Mention that aspirin originally came from willow bark. Mention that no drug company has ever made a burn ointment that compares with aloe vera - and that they spent over 10 million dollars trying. I'll bet you a dollar you're the first person that your doc heard it from. The drug companies will never tell them what the insidious plan is. You can plant the seed so they will understand that the phrase "evidence-based medicine" came from drug companies to support drug company profits.

Dennis

[Anchor]

Dennis, that post was superb. In fact, its worth at thread in its own right.

[Mike]

evidence based medicine! ha! i love it! let's have a look at the evidence then, shall we...

The Times analysis of 2009 death statistics, the most recent available, showed:

-for the first time ever in the US, more people were killed by prescription drugs than motor vehicle accidents.
-37,485 died from prescription drugs, a rate fueled by overdoses from prescription pain and anxiety medications, vs 36,284 from traffic accidents
-prescription drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000-2008, and more than tripled in people aged 50-69.

again, these drug-induced fatalities are not being driven by illegal street drugs; the analysis found that the most commonly abused prescription drugs, like oxycontin, vicoden, xanax, and soma now cause more death than cocaine and heroin combined!

[Mike]

the true thugs of the 'war on drugs'....

Merck: a long list of deaths to its credit, and more than 5.5 billion in fines and judgements levied against it. was 5 years before the 30 billion recall of the killer drug vioxx; meanwhile 60,000 people died.

Baxter:dozens of recalls that caused death and injury. at least 11 different guilty pleas to fraud and illegal sales. more than 200 lawsuits, most from selling AIDS tainted blood to hemophiliacs. how nice!

Pfizer: in the largest health care fraud settlement in history, ordered to pay 2.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company illegally promoted alternative uses of 4 of its drugs


....and this is just the tip of the iceburg folks