Medical strike = patients' health

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The doctors' strike continues. There are already the first results - mortality among patients has decreased by 30%.

It was an anecdote. But not a joke.

“How deadly medicine is becomes apparent when doctors are on strike. When in 1976 in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, all doctors except emergency doctors disappeared from their jobs for 52 days, the death rate fell 35 percent. A spokesman for the National Association of Funeral Homes said, "It may be a coincidence, but it is a fact."

Los Angeles County saw an 18 percent drop in death rates when doctors went on strike in 1976 to protest higher costs of medical malpractice insurance.

The same thing happened in Israel in 1973, when doctors limited communication with patients to 7,000 appointments, up from the previous 65,000. The strike continued for a month. According to the Jerusalem Funeral Society, Israel's death rate has dropped by 50 percent. Such a dramatic drop in the death rate has not happened since the previous doctors' strike, which took place twenty years earlier.

(Robert S. Mendelssohn, from The Heretic's Confessions of Medicine).

This is what happens: when the sick are treated, they are in fact crippled. Not all, of course, but many. That is, there is such a medical phenomenon as iatrogenism (from the Greek iatros - doctor, genea - birth) - deterioration of patients' health as a result of the actions of doctors.

“In 2001, iatrogenic factors (fatal reactions to drugs, medical errors, unjustified surgical interventions) in the United States caused the death of 783,936 people. Thus, the most dangerous disease in the United States today is the medical system itself. For comparison, in the same 2001, 699 697 people died from cardiovascular diseases, 553 251 people died from cancer”.

(Walter Last, "Is Medicine Healthy While We Are Sick?").

So iatrogeny is perhaps the most common cause of death. And there are reasons for that:

Firstly, human factor … Doctors, like any other specialist, can be qualified and not very skilled. Unskilled people often make mistakes, so they learn from their mistakes. At the same time they are destroying people. But even qualified doctors are wrong. After all, the body is very complex, the symptoms of different diseases are similar, etc. Therefore, medical errors (misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, drug overdose) are objectively inevitable.

The negative impact of medications … People who tend to rely on pills should know that in many cases, medications are used inappropriately. And that the side effects of drugs are sometimes unpredictable. Even people in good health will suffer from severe medication side effects with drug treatment, although these may be mild.

Sometimes scandals flare up:

Pharmaceutical giant Bayer at the center of an international scandal. A scandal erupted in France. It turned out that Bayer's contraceptives can cause paralysis. These are the 3rd and 4th generation contraceptive pills. More than 13 thousand lawsuits have already been filed around the world, claiming that the pills are extremely dangerous and cause thrombosis and epilepsy. However, the drugs are still on sale.

(Source: www.1tv.ru).

Also, researchers from the Universities of Toronto and Harvard have identified such an iatrogenic phenomenon as the "prescription cascade." It occurs when doctors mistakenly interpret a side effect of a drug as a manifestation of a disease. For the treatment of this new "disease", another drug is prescribed, which in turn can cause a new negative reaction of the body, etc. Thus, using more and more aggressive agents in ever larger doses, doctors are planting strong "time mines" in the patient's body, which threatens to completely undermine his health.

Complications after vaccinations- another type of iatrogenic pathology. There are no vaccines without complications. “As a doctor, I know that what is injected into the human body unnecessarily should be classified as causing harm to health” (Wolfgang Wodarg, PACE epidemiologist, opponent of swine flu vaccination).

Commercial interest(both attending physicians and pharmaceutical companies). It is a very insidious and powerful iatrogenic enhancer. It is beneficial for doctors that society consists of sick people, otherwise they will be left without work, so doctors easily prescribe a bunch of unnecessary drugs to patients (again, not all, but many).

Many doctors do prescription work. Often you can find the following advertisements:

“We offer prescription part-time work at their workplace for doctors of all specialties and health workers who want to improve their financial situation. High percent. All drugs are approved for sale, have proper certification, as well as GMP certification."

(One of the many ads on the internet free classifieds portal).

What does it mean? Only one thing: interested doctors first of all prescribe what is beneficial for them, and not what helps patients.

Pharmaceutical companies are getting rich in the sale of pills and are striving to achieve universal vaccination against as many diseases as possible. In addition, non-existent diseases are invented, which "hang" on gullible patients. In short, when medicine is firmly commercialized, health care takes a back seat.

Etc.

In general, there are a lot of factors that worsen health in the process of treatment, so there is no escaping iatrogeny.

Doctors, of course, tend to hide their negligence and incompetence. As a rule, a careless doctor never admits his mistake, but blames everything on the circumstances (“we did everything, but the disease turned out to be stronger”). Therefore, iatrogeny is often hidden from the layman, but it still exists - remember this.

And do not forget: good mood and self-confidence are the best doctors and medicines.