Beating up on prevention

Is nothing sacred?

It would seem not as traditional medicine now is taking aim at prevention.

Now I can understand how they might lambaste the supplement world. Big Pharma sees a potent, all-natural, over the counter supplement that works wonders and has no side effects and of course they want to crucify it.

It's eating into their precious profit margins. So throw some ad dollars to a few major medical journals and publish something that wouldn't pass a 6th grade critical review and bang, you've struck a blow for the big boys in the boardrooms.

But now they are taking aim at prevention.

Why?

Business as usual.

If you prevent disease then you can't sell more drugs.

In a recent article of the Archives of Internal Medicine (which is slightly lower on the "head up the butt scale of Big Pharmacy" than The Journal of the American Medical Association), an article was published stating that the enormous time, effort and cost we expend on prevention is really not justified by the literature.

Ah yes, the "literature", the euphemism for drug company sponsored evidence, in other words.

I had to pinch myself.

I went to Med School in America and had the same exposure to preventative medicine that most med students get.

Zero.

I don't remember one course or even one lecture devoted to "the prevention of heart disease or stroke"

All I remember is 'here is the disease; here's the drugs or surgery you use to fix it'.

The lay press does a better job of educating the public on prevention than most doctors do.

Here are a few of their arguments:

First, they cite the use of hormones in postmenopausal women. They state that the observational evidence led to the widespread recommendations that these hormones be used.

Then it was found that there were no real trials that backed it up and when you did those trials it was found that the hormones were bad for women.

So what you are saying is that there were not any "evidence-based trials" done for 30 years and the drug companies got a free ride to sell women over priced horse piss that contains 30 different estrogens, only a few of which remotely resemble human estrogen.

Interestingly enough, Wyeth pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of this horse piss derived prescription drug, filed a citizen's petition against the sale of bioidentical hormones for women.

Bioidentical hormones are just that, the same kind of hormones a woman's body makes instead of horse piss.

Wyeth says it's bad because there are no studies to support it.

What they should be saying is bioidentical hormones are an unpatentable form of relatively inexpensive treatment that is cutting into their profit margins.

And since when does a drug company qualify as a citizen!

I can't think of any organization with less interest in citizen's needs than a drug company.

Next up for targeting is the fact that we can significantly impact on diabetes and other illnesses with diet and exercise.

The article sites the economic impact of such measures.

Hmm let's see, less dollars in the food industry's pocket for highly process, high profit margin foods.

Better deals for farmers, especially organic farmers.

The sugar lobby takes a pounding because people will want to avoid all the sugary foods that are associated with diabetes.

And finally, our friends the drug companies can't pedal as many drugs because there are not as many sick people.

Yep, we sure can't afford that now can we?

In my opinion, we can't not afford it.

Finally, the article sites the failure to be able to actually put some of these things into practice. For instance we have an initiative to treat high blood pressure but we can't get people to take their blood pressure drugs as often as they're supposed to.

Darn those pesky people.

Can you imagine they don't want to take expensive, side effect laden drugs?

They'd rather take things like fish oil and Super Omega 3 and work on preventing the problem.

How dare they!

Yep, folks, step right up for the latest drug with the latest list of hidden side effects.

And while you are at it, don't take an interest in your health because you really can't do anything about it.

Just be ready to pony up your retirement for those drugs 'cause we've got 'em waiting and they've got your name on them.

I think I'll just say a quiet 'no thanks' and keep trying to push prevention as a viable alternative to sickness anyway, thank you.

Now it's time for me to pop some fish oil and Monster Multi and get on with being healthy.

Hope to see you on the way!

Dr Dave