It Was a Bad Week for Modern Medicine So National Institutes of Health Launches ‘Inquisition’ Into Use Of Dietary Supplements and Alternative Therapies

by Bill Sardi by Bill Sardi

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Oh, it was a bad week for modern medicine. But Tara Parker Pope of the New York Times didn’t think so. She wrote an article entitled "News Keeps Getting Worse For Vitamins." (Nov. 20, u201808 NYT) But then again, we could slip a fast one by Tara any day since she doesn’t know how to read the pseudo-science now being used to denigrate dietary supplements. Hey, Tara, you didn’t say whether YOU take vitamins pills. Never mind surveys show the most educated are more likely to take vitamin pills, or other studies which show the typical American diet leaves most Americans deficient in vitamins C, D, E, B12 and folic acid.

Breast cancer cooking machines

The zinger was the report showing breast cancers just disappear if you leave them alone, stop clamping breasts in mammogram machines, stop zapping women’s breasts with radiation machinery (mammography) and stop lancing breasts with biopsy needles. (Archives Internal Medicine Nov. 24, ’08). Yep, the body’s immune system just engulfs these developing tumors.

But modern medicine is not going to live this one down easily. To be sure, the human immune system is not greater than the best oncologist. Women need an oncologist to care for their breasts with treatment that befits a torture chamber.

The women who chose to pass up bi-annual mammograms had 22% less breast cancer! But, with all this dose of reality, thousands of gullible American women, driven largely by the greater fear of cancer than the fear of treatment, will submit their breasts to the torture arena, over and over.

A Chicago Tribune blog space revealed this: "In four Norwegian countries, breast cancer rates increased significantly after women there began undergoing mammography every two years." (Chicago Trib Nov. 28, ’08) Do you think American medicine is covertly cooking breast cancer in those radiation machines and naïve women never figure this out? Ah, come on, the doctors wouldn’t do that, would they?

The water pills create disease

Then there was the revelation by Johns Hopkins researchers that diuretics (water pills) used to treat high blood pressure induce diabetes, probably by washing out essential nutrients like potassium from the body. (Hypertension Nov. ’08)

Now here we have the perfect drug — it substitutes one disease for another. Say, how many diabetics are prescribed potassium? I can’t recall any that I know. Yet this study certainly reveals a low potassium level will induce diabetes.

The report didn’t mention that diuretics also wash out vitamin B1 (thiamine) and induce heart failure, and doctors frequently overlook this. But hey, who cares, the goal of modern medicine is not to cure but to create perpetual disease requiring perpetual treatment.

Will ANY American taking diuretics have the gumption to stop taking them? Probably not. The world still spins in the same wrong direction, regardless of what is reported.

Universal debt for universal healthcare

While the public has high hopes its doctor and hospital bills will now be paid by a rich uncle named Sam, who is secretly adding these bills onto their collective credit card called the national debt, pharmaceutical companies are jumping up and down with glee over the prospect of universal health care. Now they get cut into more of the public treasure chest and the public is no healthier.

Europe caught on this week, pinning the tail on the pharmaceutical donkey for the industry’s dirty tricks in Belgium.

The European Competition Commissioner noticed that it often takes months for a generic version of a drug to become available after a successful drug patent expires. The Belgium commissioner reports that drug companies apply at once for as many patents in as many European countries as possible. That way a single drug may garner as many as 1,300 patents. This keeps competitors busy a long time sorting it all out.

Another trick is to sue a competitor who is planning to bring out a cheap generic version of a drug. The maker of the generic drug is usually cleared of any wrongdoing. But the trial can take years. In the meantime, the cheap generic drug can’t be sold in the marketplace.

So what happened to the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. that is supposed to ensure competition in the marketplace? But, oh, OPEC (oil producing countries organization) does this all the time with impunity. They rig supply against demand to always create near shortages. So what’s to say the FTC is going to do anything to stop the drug companies? Government and industry are in league to gouge Americans, not create true competition.

In this very bad week, Pfizer also took it on the chin as Nigerian officials demand $8.5 billion for illegal drug experiments on Nigerian children. Pfizer is soon facing doom as its $12 billion Lipitor drug patent is soon to expire, so it didn’t need this public relations nightmare. Pfizer is offering $150 million in what really appears to be extortion money. Essentially, Pfizer continues to experiment on unwitting Americans since Lipitor has never been proven to lower mortality rates for heart disease. Americans submit themselves to the cholesterol-lowering liver-toxic drug emanating from their created phobia over cholesterol. Never mind the same number of Americans die every year from heart disease despite 25 million Americans taking statin drugs.

The inquisition over vitamin pills begins

In this turbulent healthcare arena, which can no longer proceed in the direction it is going, the government inexplicably wants Americans to "confess" to taking dietary supplements. Yes, this is a quiet inquisition, in the privacy of your doctor’s office. Herbal heretics will be routed out soon!

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has conducted a survey showing 60% of Americans take dietary supplements or submit to alternative therapies and most do not tell their doctors they are taking them out of fear their doctors will get mad or lose respect. The NIH, in league with the drug companies, doesn’t like Americans spending $40 billion a year on alternative care. (Prayer is at the top of the list of alternative therapies, and even though it is free, it looks like it is being belittled and banned as well.)

So the NIH is issuing its "Time To Talk" kits to doctors, encouraging patients to "fess up" as one news reporter described it. (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News, Dec. 1, ’08)

Real reform (have we heard this before?)

Meanwhile, there is mumbling of some major reform in health care, given the realization that the problem isn’t a shortage of money. Americans spend ga-zillions to braggingly produce "the best healthcare in the world," at prices no one can afford.

American medicine needs to see a shrink. A dose of reality therapy will do. The U.S. ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.

So, George Halvorson, Kaiser healthplan chief, concedes that "Not only is U.S. health care inefficient and wasteful, much of it is dangerous." (Washington Post Dec. 1, ’08)

A new President is taking office who promised he would reduce Americans health care bill by $2500 a year (Americans now pay about $7500 for health care or health care insurance annually.)

The stated idea is to realign financial incentives to reward success, and encourage prevention, says the Washington Post article, which goes on to say "the most daunting but perhaps most important, saying no to expensive, unproven therapies."

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