Winter Maladies: Natural Approaches
June Russell's Health Facts
America's Health Care Problem
Nearly half of Americans, 125 million among a population of 276 million, suffer at least one chronic disease, everything from allergies to heart disease. This is 20 million more than doctors had anticipated this year, researchers say. One-fifth of Americans have two or more chronic illnesses, complicating their care and making it more expensive. The nation is unprepared to cope with the growing burden of chronic disease, with annual medical bills alone expected to almost double to $1.07 trillion by 2020. While doctors have made major advances in treating certain chronic illnesses, they cause 70 percent of all U.S. deaths, reports the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
{Associated Press, Washington, Nov. 2000, www.amalgam.org - May 2002}
The public rarely questions the findings reported by medical science because it is perceived as helping to improve the public's well being. It will come as a surprise to many to find how many studies of diet and heart disease were poorly designed and conducted, how many did not produce the results that have been claimed, and how many have been quoted irrelevantly or misleadingly; and how many published studies exist whose results seriously question or contradict the diet-heart idea but are never acknowledged or quoted. Some of these tactics are not only just misleading but also sometimes amount to scientific fraud. Statins produce cancer in animals and we do not know if statin treatment will lead to an increased rate of cancer in the coming decades. The only groups that are willing to spend several hundred million dollars for trials are the drug companies. Supportive trials are cited with the tendency to exaggerate the trivial effects of their treatment and minimize the negative effects.
{from the book, "The Cholesterol Myths," Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, 2000}
There is a lot of expensive technology. Some provides benefit for only a tiny fraction of patients and at great cost to everybody else. Dr. Harold Sox, editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine, says 800 women must be screened for 13 years to prevent a single death.
{"Medical Journal Findings Often Overstated," HealthScoutNews - healthscout.com - June 2002}
According to Christopher Murray, MD, Director of World Health Organization’s Global Program on Evidence for Health Policy: “Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries.” Conventional medicine has yielded life-saving emergency care, and effective symptom relief, but our current system has significant limitations and problems: too often medical intervention only controls symptoms, while allowing the causes of the disease to progress (nine of the top ten selling prescription drugs only control symptoms, they do not cure the disease). This symptom-relief approach has resulted in 45% of adults and 82% of seniors being on at least one drug. An alarming 22% of seniors are on at least five drugs. Drug side effects are now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. According to experts, 50-70% of all diseases are due to nutritional problems or environmental toxins. The $1.5 trillion Americans currently spend on sickness is expected to more than double by 2010. Sixty-eight percent of consumers use natural health products (vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc.). The only effective solution is a true health care system that promotes wellness and reestablishes health.
{salugenecists.com - Sept. 2003}