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Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients?

There is a sentence every American patient has heard at the dentist’s chair, the cardiologist’s office, the primary-care visit, and the pharmacy counter. It arrives in a tone of grave responsibility: We caught this early. What follows is a crown, an echocardiogram, a statin, a stress test, a referral, a follow-up appointment, and a copay. The word “preventative” has come to function as a moral shield around a billing code. To question whether the recommended intervention is necessary is treated as ingratitude toward a profession that, the implication goes, only wants to keep you alive.

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The Path of Anathema: First, Always Do Harm!

First, we had Unethical American Dentistry, and now — perhaps thanks to Obamacare — we have certain American physicians who are playing loosely with the truth when it comes to telling patients if they are “in-network” with their insurance plan, and providing the right, covered, care for their patients. “First Do No Harm” is not an oath to these doctors, it’s a cue down the path of anathema!

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Mugshots at the Doctor’s Office and Other Biometric Poisonings

The NSA scandal has me thinking a lot about how other PRISM identifying marks of us — on the biometric side — are, in fact, also poisoning our privacy.  Here’s a comment I made in a recent article thread concerning the loss of our biologic privacy:

Yes, we’re all stuck! The fact that they now want our weight is a new metric. Our height rarely changes, so once they have that number they have us in adulthood — but weight can fluctuate like crazy for some people — so having our weight “re-evaluated” and remarked down with every medical visit is an important identification portrait for them. All of our doctors now scan our insurance card and also take a photo of us — to prevent medical fraud — uhm…. riiiiight… so our MDs now have our mug shots, height, weight… quite a lovely new arm of the NSA, eh? Some doctors even want palm scans!

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MRSA Revisited: “Out, D-a-m-n-e-d Spot! Out, I Say!”

Four or five months ago when I was doing my routine self-breast check I found a small pea sized lump on my breastbone, nestled in my cleavage.

A quick check with our doctor at the time confirmed what I had first thought — a fatty lump or sebaceous cyst — nothing to be concerned about.

Continue reading → MRSA Revisited: “Out, D-a-m-n-e-d Spot! Out, I Say!”

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Stay Trim with a Trim Doctor

Since David W. Boles recently debunked the obesogen theory for us, I would like to caution you when considering your choice of doctors. It turns out that not all doctors are, so to speak, created equal when it comes to the subject of weight management. Specifically, if your doctor is overweight you will more than likely not be told that you are overweight.

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Always Confess. Unless, of Course, You Should Lie!

If you do something wrong, confess.  Don’t prevaricate.  Don’t excuse.  Above all, don’t lie!  The truth forms you as a human being.

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The Humanities Medical Doctor

Several years ago, I had the pleasure and the honor to teach the humanitarian side of Public Health policy at a major, East Coast, medical school.  My students were talented, trained, gifted, and unbelievably strong and well-educated.

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Can Eye Doctors Be Colorblind?

One of my blessings is the ability to expertly discern color even in the most complex variations of hues and tones.  If there’s such a thing as “Super Color Perception” — I have it in spades.  I always do extremely well on “What Number Do You See?” color exams like the one you see below.  Can you see the number 29 in the image?  If you have red-green deficiencies, you will see 70 instead of 29.  If you have total colorblindness you won’t see any numbers.

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Is Alternative Medicine a Placebo?

Sometimes a mother’s loving touch can heal a hurt better than a pill. Can breathing and positive thinking also make us well?

The public is far ahead of medical experts and politicians on alternative medicine. A Harvard Medical School survey done 10 years ago found that more than 40 percent of Americans used some form of alternative medicine. It’s probably higher today. The study found that Americans spent as much out of pocket for alternative treatments as they did for conventional health care.

Front-line doctors — those of us who spend all day seeing patients — are also interested in alternatives. An American Psychiatric Association official told me that when they asked their physician members what they wanted to learn, alternative medicine was high on the list. Your average doctor wants alternatives to drugs — as long as they’re backed up by good research.

How did we move from the medicine man, to shamanism, to the country doctor to the idea that a pill can heal everything? Did big pharmaceutical money ruin our natural, intrinsic, healing meme?

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Medical Fakery and the Intentional Placebo Effect

I have always claimed fibromyalgia is a fake disease of victimization invented by doctors to pad their bottom line by prescribing drugs to give hypochondriac patients psychological cover for a broken mind — that tries to adversely effect the body — but fails.

This week, the further proof of my argument was provided in a study indicating fifty percent of American doctors routinely prescribe placebos for their patients and similar results were reported for doctors in Denmark, Israel, Britain, Sweden and New Zealand.

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