Sometimes I am frustrated with my profession. Other times it is worse and I become disheartened about medicine and health care in general. The good thing is that when I get really upset, I get angry and then take action. Here I go.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are a US governmental organization purposed to collect and analyze information about diseases and, WITHOUT BIAS, create guidelines for physicians and the community. The British Medical Journal has discovered that the CDC has been “partnering” with private financial interests. We aren’t getting a handle on the corruption within industrialized medicine. We can’t even claim the pretense of ethical oversight in medicine any longer.
This BMJ investigation once again confirmed that there are foxes in the chicken house. The BMJ uncovered several instances where the CDC “partnership” with companies led to recommendations that not only supported the drug company interests, but ones that were also at odds with scientific consensus. Once more we learn that most of the panelists creating the treatment guidelines are employees of the drug companies and device manufacturers who stand to benefit from the “expert recommendations” the panels are empowered to create.
This is probably the most depressing medical news I have come upon lately. It is another nasty example of how doctors are blinded by the drug industry. The CDC is considered to be the ultimate, completely reliable, source of important information about disease risk, prevention and treatment. It is not.
My colleagues are already too easily deceived by drug company propaganda. The editors of three of our four most highly regarded medical journals have each stated that those publications have become marketing arms of the medical drug and device industries. The problem in those instances is largely the consequence of industry-funded research, practice guideline creation and advertising.
Now we know that the “independent” US governmental agency, “the nation’s health protection agency” according to their mission statement , is not protecting us from companies whose misdeeds have led to catastrophic drug pricing even when those companies have earned criminal fines for their misdeeds. Instead the CDC has joined the chorus of miscreants.
Tell your physicians that you don’t want to take medications unless you REALLY must. Take responsibility yourself by practicing the health habits that are better than medicines, thereby reducing your need for medications or crisis-oriented medical care.
Another unpleasant reality propelling this cycle of ignorance is economic. When you go to a doctor who is cranking patients out the door every 8-10 minutes, that doctor will only have time to listen (briefly) to your concerns and then give you a prescription as he or she walks away. He or she will not have the time to learn more about your problems. He or she will not learn from your experience. Your experience of what helped or didn’t help you can be used to help others, but only if the doctor listens to your story. In 8-10 minutes, he or she will not have the time to teach you how to change your health habits (even if the doctor knows how to coach you).
It does not have to be this way. To be perfectly honest, that doctor could take personal responsibility, and refuse to participate in treadmill medicine. That choice, made by too few of us, would thereby compromise his or her income, and eventually get the doctor fired for not bringing enough money into the practice or institution.
It is a mess. I can’t say that this cycle has to stop, because it doesn’t. It hasn’t. For the sake of patients and doctors it SHOULD stop, but it is only getting worse.
You need to take action. You need to inform yourselves about your health and the biased information unwittingly regurgitated by most well-meaning, but overworked and under informed physicians. The CDC does not dispense truth. All of us have to think for ourselves and have the courage to ask questions.