RUSSIAN ROULETTE?

From:WC Douglass realhealth@healthiernews.com

"Daily Dose-Is Your doctor killing you?

"The American healthcare system is starting to resemble a game of Russian roulette, right down to the stakes: your life.

The National Academies' Institute of Medicine estimates that there are 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries every year. Another study found a 1-in-30 chance that your prescription will be filled out wrong.

And those aren't even the most appalling numbers.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I read "Dead by Mistake," an investigation by Hearst newspaper and TV reporters that found some 200,000 preventable deaths caused by medical injuries and accidents each year.

It's nearly 10 percent of our deaths overall. That's more people than are killed by diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia combined.

In one tragic and inexcusable case, two pregnant women in a Florida hospital were accidentally given drugs designed to force dead fetuses out of the body. One of the women was pregnant with twins, and lost both babies. The other gave premature birth to a girl who suffered severe brain damage.

The hospital blamed poor handwriting on the doctor's prescription, which led to a mix-up in the drugs.

Enough's enough. I'm tired of all the stupid jokes about doctors and their terrible handwriting. Until doctors learn to write legibly, they have no business prescribing drugs.

Computerized systems, where doctors can order meds by typing rather than scribbling, can help prevent these mistakes, but most hospitals are still in the digital Stone Age. A paltry 10 percent of them have these systems in place.

That's outrageous and unacceptable. Fast-food restaurants are more technologically advanced than our hospitals.

This is just one more reason you should hammer your doctors and nurses with questions, especially when they give you meds -- and don't swallow anything until you're satisfied with the answers.

Ask what you're being given, what it does and if there are any side effects (you can bet your bottom that there will be). Then ask to see the label. It's your right, and if they can't or won't show it to you, refuse to take it.

And if you're not in any condition to check up on these things yourself, have someone with you who can.

It's inexcusable that it has to be that way. But the alternative is that deadly game you can't afford to play."

Best advice: Stay healthy and stay away from the medicos and their nostrums whenever possible.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

THE DUMBING DOWN OF OUR DOCTORS

There are no more diagnosticians. There only remains lab report, 'Ct Scan or Magnetic Resonance film readers.

Today's medical procedure is test, test, test.

The tests are necessary-- sometimes. but shouldn't they be used to verify a diagnosis when there is doubt or confusing and contradictory symptoms. Not a substitute for informed diagnosis.

Who are we as mere simpletons to question the gods in the white smocks? Just shut up and do as you are told, when you are told.

Today's 'physician-scientist' is all knowing and unapproachable. He reads and speaks a language indecipherable to most of us. Is there a need for this?

Before Medicare and/or health insurance, doctors made house calls They stopped doing this excused by the more efficient use of their valuable time, so we could wait in a germ transfer place called a doctor's waiting room, clinic or hospital.

These modern day charlatans would be lost without the germ theory. How better to indiscriminately push their favorite pill :the antibiotic. If you as an individual should object to the prescribing of these sometimes toxic chemicals, you would be ridiculed and dismissed as a nuisance, while the doctors proceed to prescribe these heavy meds for a sneeze , runny nose and what not. If a bacteria or "germ" is exposed to an antibiotic on a continual basis, the bacteria 'learns' to be immune to the drug. Do the doctors know

this ? You bet they do!

But aren't germs dangerous, to be feared and killed if possible? We have largely ignored the miracle of our own immune system, and through the miracle of modern drugs , food processing and environmentally dangerous practices damaged our natural resistance to pathogens.

Cipro ,Levaquin, Avelox and Floxin , known as the flouroquinolones the latest "wonder drugs" that are now linked to debilitating side effects. These drugs contain fluoride a known toxin that those responsible for our health determined it should be placed in our water supply. And what abut the largely useless chemotherapy chemicals? And detrimental use of radiation for cancer treatment?

Who is supposed to be responsible? Answer: That un-transparent federal behemoth called the FDA, who protects us from ourselves. This agency was created to protect us all from unsafe food and drugs, which in the beginning they did very well, but have since been corrupted by the by big pharma's money, and their own self patronzing empire- building character.

Our doctors all march in lock step. To get out of the protocol is to be ostracized .

Since the dumbing down of the profession, no doctor is supposed to know it all, so we have specialists--those who know a lot about something, but little about all things. Since each doctor relies upon referrals from others, it is not thought wise to alienate other doctors and speak out against abuses and non-scientifically proven practices.

Unfortunately, they are all linked with the AMA, an association that demands compliance with the latest agreed upon medical dictums, whether or not that have been scientifically proven.

Our point: Health care reform should begin at the bottom, not with how we finance a broken and fraudulent system.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN