Medical Model Blues

Rat Lung and the Medical Model Blues
A woman from our neighborhood is in a coma in the Hilo hospital from the ‘rat lung’ disease that has now made the front page in the papers over in Oahu. Short of going out into the field and removing every pair of lungs from every rat we are going to be living with this for a long time. In a nutshell this woman is in a hospital that will not admit her physician in to treat her. I have spoken with both Jackie Hahn N.D. and also to Alan Thal M.D. and both wanted to treat the patient with a starter dose of 50 grams of vitamin C. As this is outside conventional practice the door was shut and the ‘Go Away’ sign was put up. The Hilo hospital’s turf is closely guarded because otherwise somebody may come along with a better idea and that may put some people out of work. They are doing what they can to secure their jobs by not allowing anybody else’s medical model to infiltrate it. To be fair it isn’t the hospitals fault but the insurance companies. But who is making their medical policy; insurance salesmen?
According to several research studies in the last decade, a total of 225,000 Americans per year have died as a result of their medical treatment making the medical treatment themselves the third largest cause of death after heart disease and cancer! Okay you can stop laughing because it’s true. Now you can start crying because it’s true. At 225,000 per year the doctors and medical errors alone could wipe out the Big Island’s population. That would be about all of the 200,000 locals, tourists, haole’s, with another 25,000 to take care of the feral pig population. So help save the environment, “Bring a pig to you’re the hospital!” and savor these statistics with your barbeque sauce.
1) 12,000 deaths per year due to unnecessary surgeries
2) 7000 deaths due to medication errors in hospitals
3) 20,000 deaths per year due to other errors in hospitals
4) 80,000 deaths per year due to infections in hospitals
5) 106,000 death per year due to negative effects of drugs
Source: Starfield, B. (2000, July 26). Is US health really the best in the world? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284(4), 483-485
The politicians talk about how 40 million Americans don’t have access to health care. Just a cursory look at what is going on and you will consider them the fortunate forty million. I would rather cut open a chicken and reads its entrails that to get a medical diagnosis from the Hilo hospital. At least with the chicken I can make soup which will be good for me. The tragedy here is there are other ways to treat people but those in power will do everything they can to keep it, including letting a lot of innocent people die. Our friend who is a coma will more than likely die even though her primary physician, a naturopath, may have saved her life. Though nobody has died from acupuncture, ozone therapy, naturopathic medicine, homeopathic remedies or Vitamin C therapy, the pharmaceutical companies and the American Medical Association deem these treatments as being dangerous. That is like the stick of dynamite telling the balloon how dangerous it would be if it popped.
Let us put things into perspective because nobody can get anything in focus while looking down their nose at it. Since the war began in 3/19/03 the enemy has killed 3423 American soldiers in combat. (www.defenselink.mil) In that amount of time our own doctors, pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions have killed that many American civilians 330 times over, and we are paying them to do it! We rant and rave about how those insurgents and terrorists are killing Americans, but they haven’t even put a dent in how many people have died from our own medical workers. One million, one hundred and twenty five thousand (1,125,000) innocent American’s have died since 2003 at the hands the very people who they trusted to heal them. Soldiers don’t put their trust into insurgents so their guard is up and have body armor and maybe that is why the death toll is so much lower. So the next time you get sick enlist in the armed services and do a tour of duty in Iraq, your chances of survival will be greater than a stay in the hospital. (Unless you are wearing body armor and carry an assault rifle with you when you get admitted)
Michael Marlin©3/6/2009