A reader of this blog wrote me to say…

“I do not believe in blacklisting either alternative or mainstream medicine in the good/bad debate of who is the best, etc. There is good and bad in both. Your message would be more powerful if you criticized less and focused on the integrative approach to mainstream and alternative medicine…”

Mainstream medicine performs wonders each minute of the day – saving people from life-and-death emergencies. But don’t confuse traumatic care with health care. They aren’t the same thing.

This sounds all nice and harmonious. Sort of how we all think the world “should be” versus how it “really is.” It doesn’t reflect a true understanding of the disastrous medical situation that is taking millions of lives and costing billions of dollars each year.

Not Really About Health

First of all… it’s hard to integrate what are essentially two totally separate fields. What we call mainstream “healthcare” really has very little to do with health. It’s traumatic care.

Drugs, surgery and other invasive treatments are for people on the verge of death – either because of an accident (e.g. jaywalking on the highway) or because they’ve allowed illness to progress to too late a stage (e.g. heart failure from a few too many McDonald’s drive-thrus).

In the area of emergency care, mainstream medicine performs life-saving wonders every single minute of the day. While emergency care could still benefit greatly from more natural therapies (like giving high doses of magnesium to ER patients) – emergency care is not where the big problem with modern medicine lies.

Somewhere Between Death and Health

Trouble started when they took this system of emergency care (i.e. “death prevention”) and applied it to healthcare (i.e. “life enhancement”). With a few exceptions, these methods don’t do much more than prevent death. They don’t cure. They don’t heal. They just keep the patient somewhere between death and health.

Drugs are the big one. They can do wonders at relieving life-threatening symptoms. But they come with three caveats:

1. The beneficial results don’t last long. (Which is why most drug studies don’t last long.)
2. They produce harmful side-effects that create more problems.
3. They cost a lot of money.

As a short-term fix, drugs are often appropriate for emergency situations. But as a long-term “solution” they only help make billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies.

Surgery can be even worse. It’s simply adding more trauma to the body. Yes, it’s very necessary at times. Other times, it could be avoided. Many common surgeries, such as bypass surgery, have not been proven to be necessary or to extend life.

Modern medicine kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, directly, via properly prescribed treatments (see Death by Modern Medicine: Seeking Safe Solutions). Let’s not even start to think how many people it kills by neglecting to give them safer and more effective treatments based on biology (and not corporate profits).

Traumatic Care Should Not Be Used

For Prevention and Healing

So to say there is good and bad in both – yes, that’s true. The greater problem with mainstream medicine is that it’s gone far beyond its respectful territory and is causing greater harm as a result. Traumatic care should not be used in the fields of prevention and healing. The drug-based approach to cancer has, for example, been proven a total failure. Cancer rates have only risen.

The same point would be true for natural medicine. If a man comes into the ER with four bullet wounds in his back – no amount of good nutrition, exercise, herbal remedies or supplements are going to save him. He needs a surgeon. He needs drugs. He needs advanced medical technology.

Natural medicine would be totally out of place as the chief method of traumatic care. It would be considered crazy. Yet, modern medicine does the reverse every single day.

The Integrated Medicine Myth

The reader suggested I should focus on a more integrative approach…

The whole farce of integrating alternative medicine into the mainstream is just to pacify the public to think they are getting the type of care they actually want. The “alternative medicine” divisions in most clinics are very superficial.

They did the same thing to the Doctors of Osteopathy years ago. They said: “We’ll work together and incorporate your training into medicine.” Now there are only a handful of osteopaths because they got homogenized.

So don’t think for a minute that mainstream medicine is not doing great harm. And don’t be pacified into thinking that any real integration is taking place.

Next post, I’ll follow up with a few more points on this delicate but important issue. See Death by Modern Medicine: Seeking Safe Solutions for extensive statistics and mind-boggling accounts of the true disaster North American healthcare has become.

drcarolyndean.com/2009/10/05/am-i-too-hard-on-mainstream-medicine-part-1/