Posts Tagged ‘allopathic medicine’

Americans are the Winner and Loser at the same time in the radiation department.

Americans Get the Most Medical Radiation

Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, more than citizens in other rich countries. We finally win at something. The U.S. accounts for half of the most advanced procedures that use radiation and the average American’s dose had grown six fold over the last couple of decades.

This is not looking at anything but medical tests. What’s amazing is not looking at airport scanners, power lines, cell phones, or microwaves.

Americans get the most medical radiation and still have lousy health. So the biggest myth buster is more radiation is going to ensure better health. In fact it raises the cancer risk and medical costs.

Reality Check

Using technologically advanced medical imaging hasn’t changed how allopathic medicine conducts business. Americans are over tested and over treated, and yet are still unhealthy. Now, we have another source of danger acquiring too much radiation from all the testing.

Radiation accumulates over time. Doctors don’t keep track of radiation given to their patients. Also, there are no federal rules on radiation dose. Children are going to have a lifetime to accumulate more radiation exposure than any previous generation.

Sometimes machines aren’t adjusted for the patient’s size. This isn’t non-toxic and it makes plain sense to realize this generation of super X-rays that give fast, detailed images should be used very selectively.

At this point in time it is used selectively, to avoid a lawsuit by misdiagnosis of a patient.

Danger

Too much radiation raises the risk of cancer. That risk is growing because people in everyday situations are getting imaging tests far too often. Like the New Hampshire teen who was about to get a CT scan to check for kidney stones until a radiologist, Dr. Steven Birnbaum, discovered he’d already had 14 of these powerful X-rays for previous episodes. Adding up the total dose, “I was horrified” at the cancer risk it posed, Birnbaum said.

When other radiologists tell him they’ve never found such a case, Birnbaum replies: “That tells me you haven’t looked.”

Another study by Columbia University researchers, published in 2007, estimated that in a few decades, as many as 2 percent of all cancers in the U.S. might be due to radiation from CT scans given now. Since previous studies suggest that a third of all tests are unnecessary, 20 million adults and more than 1 million children are needlessly being put at risk, they concluded.

Business as Usual $

At this time this is how allopathic medicine conducts business. Yes, these are business decisions as well as dumb choices for safeguarding the American consumer’s health.

Spotting health problems by using ultra sophisticated scanning machines is one thing, trying to avoid a malpractice lawsuit shouldn’t be at the expense of the patient.

Welcome to America’s defensive healthcare, with you getting bombarded with radiation so doctor’s can play it safe. Imaging that shows a problem doesn’t always mean that it will lead to effective treatment.

Medicine impending danger to the public is that it is going to take over every aspect of our lives.

Medicine

Medicine is the looming giant is our mists. There isn’t a human function that can’t be made better by a prescription. From pregnancy, ADHD, toenail fungus, erectile dysfunction, dry eye, pre-diabetes, pre-high blood pressure, pre-high cholesterol readings, behavior problems, bed wetting, pain relief, sleep aids, acid reflux, depression, addictions, constipation, and rashes.

The recent history of allopathic care is one that has evolved to define and treat everything as a medical problem. Most common conditions can be traced to lifestyle. As such are not meant to be treated as medical afflictions. The medical community is standing guard over every human function by introducing pharmaceutical solutions.

Research Into The Cost    

Researchers, let by Brandeis sociologist Peter Conrad, evaluated 12 conditions that have been medicalized by physical organizations, and for which there were medical spending data. The other conditions considered in the study were anxiety, and behavioral disorders; body image; male pattern baldness’ normal sadness, obesity, sleep disorders, and substance-related disorders.

Conrad and his colleagues analyzed medical spending on these types of problems. The payments to hospitals, pharmacies, physicians, and other health care providers, and discovered that they accounted for $77.1 billion in medical spending in 2005-3.9 percent of total domestic health care expenditures.  

 ”We spend more on these conditions than on cancer, heart disease, or public health,” said Conrad. “While medicalzation is unlikely to be a key driver of skyrocketing health care costs, $77 billion represents a substantial dollar sum.”

The Danger Of This Trend

The danger of this trend is in medicine’s growing jurisdiction.

Children can be taken away from parents and put into the states custody if the parents refuse certain treatments.

There is an increase in consumer demands for medical solutions for lifestyle generated problems. More Americans think that health is in an encapsulated, blister packed, shrink and cello wrapped substance. They want the fountain of youth coming from the latest technology. The new consumers think the right ingredients are in packaged cartons with label warnings. What’s in it  for the pharmaceutical company is unlimited opportunity to boost their bottom line. Novel approaches to health are not in a tube, pill, or formulation.

The pharmaceutical industry is expanding into the areas where they see a potential profit, and where there is the greatest opportunity for growth.

When $77 billion is considered unlikely to be a key driver of skyrocketing health care cost, than the spending is out of hand. Our dependence on a pharmaceutical solution is hands down one of the biggest threats to our physical and financial health.

A doctor squard will take on pharmaceutical ads. A new Federal Drug Administration program will urge doctors to blow the whistle on misleading drug advertisements.

The “bad ad program”

The “bad ad program” announced Tuesday, is “part of the agency’s latest effort to police the pharmaceutical industry’s multi-billion-dollar marketing machine,” The Associated Press reports.

The problem with this is program is The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) let the horse out of the barn quite awhile ago. The barn door is shut tight now, for any real opportunity to return to the way things should be.

Despite, this late and lame effort to curtail the pharmaceutical companies from reaching the TV audience with false and misleading adverisements, they still will have the lion’s share of sales through aggressive marketing.

Drug companies are legally required to present a balanced picture of a drug’s benefits  in promotions. That remains to be seen according to some critics.

Brands are aware of their marketing tactics, despite maintaining their compliance with the law. Drug companies make major investments in promotion drugs to doctors and layman alike.

Drug companies invested $12 billion on promoting drugs to doctors that is three times higher than ads aimed at consumers in 2008. That means they spent $4 billion on selling the consumer on the idea of using their drugs.

Drug Awareness

Drug awareness is really a war against time. The reason is that a pharmaceutical company has a certain amount of time to cash in on a drug. They have the intellectual rights for a certain period of time before it runs out. The other reason is drugs present dangers that will come out before they made their millions in profits.

The only guaranteed protection is consumer knowledge, which means that the citizens believe the only elements to good health is better living. The consumer is boss everywhere but in medicine. Positioning the consumer to emerge as the whistler blower is the best solution.

Doctors can report false advertising, but that will not help allopathic medicine climb up from the brink and make health care relevant.