The Decline and Fall of American Medical Authority

[muppetdog]

I just read this article "The Decline and Fall of American Medical Authority," and it seemed pretty relevant to this board. Most of use will never get a definitive answer for what is going on with us and most likely no one - outside of maybe someone processing our specific symptom group with the drive, resources and the qualifications to do so - well ever study these types of ailments in depth. I know there are many on the board with the "just ignore it" policy and for good reason; some folks just can't mentally handle thinking about their symptoms and it ends up making them worse. However, I am the type of person that is both fascinated and intrigued by the underlying process, even if I don't currently possess the knowledge to understand it.

This article expresses the view that modern medicine might be morphing into less of a process where we as patients are dependent upon the expertise of the doctor, and more towards a future were, using available resources, and by working together with self designed experiments, might be able to further mans understanding and solve some of the medical problems we all face.

Enjoy, tell me what you think. The future is always bright if we work together

http://willandreason.com/2013/05/26/the-decline-and-fall-of-american-medical-authority/

Oh, and watch some of those Ted Talks he mentioned in the article. The are also fascinating.

MD

[Xina535]

Thanks - I read a little in the article and mean to read the whole thing in my upcoming vacation. But I just posted today about psychosomatic illness and my thoughts, one being how standards of care have changed, and how it just contributes to my anxiety. I read in the article that people are buying their own diagnostic tools....so that might aligned with my thoughts about how doctors do not take all diagnostic measures and they once have. Still have to read the whole article though...

[German2]

I can contribute with a small anecdote, in the same direction, hoping that it fits here: Today I talked with the GP of my children about the medical sector/ pharma sector as a selfish industry which is just monetary and not contributing to our health..
He told me that there is a medical psycho drug which is also used for children and youngsters, from which he knows that a professor in the USA was bribed to counterfeiting the studies to bring this drug to the market. The med itself would be very dangerous with many nasty sideeffects, especially for children.

I told hime vice versa, that I was given a psycho drug, from which is now revealed that some hospitals in Germany are bribed to prescribe their patients. And that there was a big article about this drug in a GErman leading political magazine, that the effect of this med is very negative and contraproductive on the long run. And nevertheless, it is prescribed and is one of the cash cows of that pharma company. I had got this med with an off label use, but it is not allowed as off-label drug by the way. I have got it to calm my nervous system. Well, it worked for a while.

In the end we found out, that we talked about the same psycho drug!!

There is already a "red hand" letter for this med. Saying that it can cause sudden death under certain circumstances (for older people for example). And in the instruction leaflet I found that this med can shorten your life up to there decades (!!) due to serious muscle deseases. That was exactly what I needed

I had certain side effects, I can hardly describe. Then I tried to taper it. First I phoned the prescribing hospital how to do...They laughed at me on the phone and told me....ok. You can just try...After reading a lot about it I found out that a high percentage of patients never manage to taper it. Because the detoxification is so hard. Well I managed. And I am still here...With all of my problems I had before.

Hope this is not too much heavy stuff for this board. But in general I think that this is no new story. All I want to say is, look at the manual (I do normally but did not in this case). Many things are helpful. But some make our problems even worse..

German

[muppetdog]

I completely agree. You have to check out what you are taking. It sucks that people have no relief or side effects from some of these psychoactive drugs that doctors prescribe for pain and other strange undiagnosable nervous problems. When they play the guessing game with potent drugs and they ether don't work or make you worse, you stop trusting the system and start to wondering if they really do know what they are doing.