Is Medicine Advancing, Or Are We Being Fooled?

http://www.lockergnome.com/greaterworld/2011/01/16/is-medicine-advancing-or-are-we-being-fooled/

As I was looking at some health-related stories this morning, I became more aware of something I have been thinking over for the past 10 years, at least.

Is medicine in general making strides, or are we being fooled by a medical establishment that includes far too many who are driven by greed, instead of a desire to serve humanity?

What prompted this so long ago was the number of medical ads on television, mostly advertising prescription medication, which is of dubious efficacy, and full of deleterious side effects.

The side effects possibly caused by a properly administered medication, for a properly diagnosed condition, should not be a larger problem than the original condition. That is a lay opinion, but a thoughtful one, and I’d say logical as well.

How many times in the last 10 years have you seen advertisements on television for medications where a possible side effect is death?  Oh, the announcement is usually at the end of the list of possible side effects, and the voice is usually trailing off, so as to be less heard, and leaving the audience presumably less horrified.

The story this morning that began my thought process once again about this is a CNN Health piece about the implantation of defibrillators that were not needed according to the factors used for determination. Since this is an expensive device, part of an expensive procedure, and followed by a lifetime of costly checkups, one can easily see why there would be reason to push for the implantation if the situation arose. Greed makes the world go around, some say, and for those benefitting from this sort of procedure, a lifetime of padded income is available.

Still another piece today from NewScientist speaks about the drugs that are being used for many things that they were not originally developed to treat.

The news that antipsychotic drugs are being prescribed at twice the frequency of 15 years ago says more about the pushing of medication to so many, than it does about a sudden rash of psychotic breakdowns in the United States.

Expensive antipsychotics were originally approved to treat schizophrenia. They are now also prescribed for conditions including anxiety disorders and dementia, even though the Food and Drug Administration has not approved these off-label uses. The side effects of such drugs can include diabetes, weight gain and an increased risk of heart disease.

With these results readily available to many, it is surprising that more are not looking at the reasons why medicine is such a big business, and why costs are rising, yet the rates of cure for many conditions are no better than in years before, and treatments for secondary disorders, such as those caused as a side effect, are higher than ever before observed.

While the possibility exists that the causes for these things are not all the result of greed, caution would suggest that some of these reports be studied in a manner which could qualitatively show that the changes are not deliberate, and merely coincidental.

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