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General Disclaimer

The information provided here is for educational purposes only.
IT IS NOT INTENDED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR
EVALUATION OR TREATMENT BY A HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.

| Alternative Medicine | How the FDA Works | Immediate Actions |

Meaningful Health Care Reform

Streamlining administration and providing widespread insurance coverage are necessary goals, but this article suggests that these measures by themselves don't sufficiently address two critical parts of the equation: 1) achieving effective means to wellness and 2) greatly reducing the extraordinary cost of medical care. Current proposals for reform will not achieve the improvements in safety, effectiveness, and cost that are possible with meaningful reform, as proposed below.

Scenario 1: A car accident sends smashed bodies to the emergency room; a skilled staff clamps, operates, sets, and sutures its way out of mortal chaos.

Scenario 2: A child with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, condemned eternally to a breathing apparatus, is returned to normal with craniosacral therapy, a gentle healing art, which has also reversed stroke syndromes, long-term speech deficits, central sleep apnea, and blood pressure anomalies.

These scenarios suggest a structure for meaningful health care reform: conventional medicine is useful for most trauma and crisis intervention; wellness should be left to Holistic approaches, which must have third-party support.

Mainstream discussions about reform never question conventional medical concepts and methods, but suggest only how to get everyone insurance and drugs. Health statistics (the medical track record) suggest that the conventional approach—the routine use of drugs and surgery—is dangerous, often ultimately ineffective, expensive, complex, and even deadly. On the other hand, cultivating wellness Holistically is safe, effective, much cheaper, and comparatively simple.

Medical Track Record

After a solid century of conventional medical philosophy in practice, America's overall health is deplorable. So is that in most nations dominated by Pharma medicine. The number of catastrophically ill people is increasing. Infant mortality rate is shameful. Statistics for the overall rate of illness and overall death rate from illness are never seen, but a sense of it can be gotten from considering that roughly four Americans die every minute from the two major killers: heart disease and cancer—both of which are already curable outside the mainstream (and preventable).

But the third-leading American-killing 'disease' should slap us awake: even using 'forgiving' (very conservative) figures, it's conventional medicine itself. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association Vol 284, Jul 26, 2000, following up on a report from the Institute of Medicine, confirmed this. Sources vary, but prescription drugs alone kill between 106,000 and 130,000 per year; hospital infections (which numbers are kept under wraps) take around 90,000 lives, while total kills by medicine approach 230,000 to 250,000.

An 'unforgiving,' but detailed analysis by wellness advocate Gary Null arrives at a figure in the 780,000 range.

Everywhere is seen political correctness about street drugs, handguns, seat belts, drunk driving, etc.; but even taken together and including terrorism, these don't remotely approach medical mayhem. The 'unforgiving' figures mean that our primary source of health information and care for over a century has easily become our number one killer—at a cost of many hundreds of $billions in research and treatment. This societal disease is curable and preventable.

In the Holistic view, health is essentially balance and harmony in our internal environment. It's sound ecology—inside the body (also ON the body, in the form of bacteria; and we must not forget our intimate connection to the wider planetary ecology). This basic, proven wellness principle is alien to conventional medicine (and this major deficiency in medical philosophy deserves serious attention). Thus, the basis for the medical track record is disarmingly simple: diseases aren't drug deficiencies.

There is more detail to the overall picture than discussed below, which focuses mostly upon influences considered to be "physical." For example, the human psyche, as well as life- and health-negative artificial energy fields play major roles, although utlimately result in physical effects.

Fundamentals of Disease

As an analogy, the roots of a plant exist in a complex soil environment that influences results above the surface. Insects attack unbalanced plants more readily than healthy ones. An intense insect attack is thus symptomatic of imbalance in the soil/plant, or wider, ecology (monoculture tends to exacerbate this). The conventional way is to poison these symptoms, worsening the imbalance signaled by them. Similarly, medical aggression against the results, or symptoms, of human inner ecological imbalance ignores that imbalance, perpetuating illness. For example, if we regard germs as causes, rather than ecological opportunists, and the killing of them as the cure, we perpetuate susceptibility—to all forms of illness.

Science demonstrates that germs cause disease, but this dangerous half-truth rests on a manipulation of definition. Germs produce, or cause the body to produce, effects that are defined as diseases. But germs don't create the preconditions that allow their proliferation. We do! In other words, you can't grow palm trees in Alaska; and germs simply don't like a balanced environment. In preventing infection, ecology precedes even antibody-mediated immunity. But we are told instead to vaccinate the kids and live in mortal fear of the kitchen sponge, both situations involving the use of ecologically unbalancing products.

(The foregoing paragraph refers to organisms naturally evolved in Nature. Strong evidence shows, however, that 'bugs' are also created in biolabs, and that those may be more difficult to resist by the body's inherent means.)

Another central misconception is the specific-disease doctrine and its attendant victim mentality. Diseases are defined by sets of symptoms (symptomologies), such as cancer or diabetes, which medicine targets. But the routinely ignored ecological imbalances--toxicity, nutritional deficiency, water deficiency, for example--are what give rise to so-callled specific 'diseases.' Essentially, there are no specific diseases, only specific imbalances.

Victim Mentality We are also conditioned to see ourselves as helpless victims of diseases. Whereas, symptomologies are, in part, messages from our body's self-regulating intelligence that an imbalance is present and needs to be corrected.

Victim mentality distracts us from the root of the problem. Taking environmental responsibility empowers us to cultivate wellness, which is not as complicated as we are often led to believe. Yet even the new wave of 'complementary medicine' seems so far to be little more than a move from the fire to the frying pan.

The Central Truth: the same common, internal ecological imbalances underlie almost all symptomologies (so-called specific diseases).

Which symptomology appears depends greatly upon individual predisposition. Symptom manipulators, such as drugs, sometimes produce impressive effects, and may even be necessary in a crisis. But drugs usually worsen imbalances because they are toxins (too often deadly) that have a masking effect. It's like painting over rust. Therefore, disheartening as the statistics are, they represent only the tip of a mountain of disease (imbalances) hidden by a cloud of misperception.

The specific-disease doctrine also underlies the misleading idea that medicine has conquered some diseases. Suppressing a symptomology, even permanently, is not equivalent to establishing wellness: other problems replace the 'solved' ones. The classic infectious epidemics (typhus, smallpox, polio, etc.) have been supplanted by waves of chronic degenerative symptomologies. This is because ecology has been ignored over the decades.

Correction of Imbalance--removal of toxins, for example--usually allows the body to withdraw the symptoms that arose from that imbalance.

Maintaining balance prevents further illness, because the body's innate intelligence (that which heals a cut without you thinking about it) handles the details. Therefore, the lucrative complex of disease descriptions, diagnostics, invasiveness, and drugs becomes much less relevant. Safe, effective and lower-cost approaches, proven in practice for centuries by ancient healing systems, would end our cost-multiplying nightmare of revolving illness, which is: You're cured--until a 'different disease' arises.

As one whose life was saved as a child by pioneering medical treatment, I know the value of conventional medicine in crisis intervention. Yet, medicine's flawed guiding philosophy plays a significant role in the appearance of many crises to begin with.

Having studied Holistic health for 25 years and practiced for 15, I've concluded that, although there are many caring people in the rank and file of medical practice, the overarching corporate/Pharma-controlled system is not about health or caring. One example is this well-known situation: A CBS "Inside Story" report December 2003 revealed the largest U. S. customer of Canadian pharmaceuticals: the U. S. government. The Department of Defense and the Veterans' Administration are just two government agencies allowed to purchase drugs from Canada, while citizens cannot. States are beginning to stand up to this insult. Further evidence of disdain for the ill is the incurable-disease canard.

What Is "Incurable?" Some symptomologies are deemed incurable, but are they? If we can't fix a watch with a pipe wrench, is the watch 'incurable'? Generally, the challenge is not to find a cure, but to choose from many that already exist--outside legally monopolized convention and, ipso facto, most insurance coverage. Among other misdirection, expensive and polluting research (like biotech/stem cell research), looks for exotic solutions to problems of poisoning or neglect, such as autism and diabetes. We're spending $billions to find miracle cures for the effects of our way of life. This is enormous waste, as well as the establishment of economic dependence on widepsread illness.

People struggle needlessly with unpleasant symptoms. Often, loved ones are lost unnecessarily. The hard truth is, there's far more money in disease research and perpetual treatment, aka 'disease management,' than in cures (game over).

Futility and Scam of "Research" Perennial rounds of walks, runs, and rides for multiple sclerosis, breast cancer, et al demonstrate public good will and generosity, but also exploit them. Research based on a faulty doctrine only thwarts success. Therefore, just 'say no' to such campaigns. Curtailing the corporate feeding frenzy is a major preliminary component of meaningful reform. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. And campaigns for research money should be separate by law from drives for local aid. Two stories, of many, epitomize the situation, and both have a local (Massacusetts) twist.

1) In April, 1990, Charles A. Brusch, MD, internationally known, respected, and loved Cambridge, MA doctor, and JFK's personal physician, signed a legal affidavit that an herbal remedy is a cure for cancer. He had used it in clinical research to cure thousands of cancer cases, including his own colon cancer. The medical establishment's response to this distinguished physician? Silence. He was ignored.

2) In 1991, I was assistant editor of an internationally circulated Holistic magazine. Our June cover featured Stanislaw Burzynski, PhD, a Houston-based cancer research scientist. At Baylor College of Medicine in 1977, with National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding, Burzynski's highly promising, but unorthodox, work was scuttled by NCI as he was about to go to human trials. He left Baylor, and by mid-1990, on his own, while withstanding repeated attempts by the medical establishment to destroy him, Burzynski completed human 'phase-two clinical trials,' an advanced level meaning virtual proof of efficacy and safety.

On June 27, 1991, a front-page story appeared in the Sentinel & Enterprise (my local newspaper) about a Fitchburg, MA boy, Cameron Gardner: "Brave youth defies odds." Around 12 years old, he had outlived medical prediction of his demise from terminal brain cancer (astrocytoma). Thus, when Cameron was diagnosed terminal, Burzynski was safely curing such cases in six to eight months, with complete tissue restoration. Many patients, including children, have daily functioning restored in six WEEKS. Treatment is so simple and safe that most are treated outpatient.

The American Medical Association was well aware of Burzynski prior to Cameron's diagnosis—after all, they had relentlessly tried to destroy him. Cameron's mother told me she was not informed by the doctors about him. By then, Cameron was too weak to go to Houston.

On 7/24/91, Cameron Gardner's obituary appeared. Cause of death: greed-driven information deficiency.

Two similar stories have more recently appeared in the paper. In Sept '04, it reported the death of a local girl, Jennifer Talley who died at 24 years of age of glioblastoma—another form of brain cancer safely cured by Burzynski. In Feb '05, a story about a 2-year-old with 'medulloblastoma' appeared. The family was not informed of Burzynski by doctors.

Thus, in sixteen years, nothing seems to have changed in AMA policy. We are apparently obliged to die rather than derail the medical money train.

Here is the primary question: Of what interest is widespread wellness to an industry whose financial health depends upon rampant illness? Disease is now more than a trillion-dollar/year industry, tying America's economic health to a sick population. Where does this fortune accumulate (while hospital staffs are cut)? How long should we obediently tolerate this avarice?

Getting Off the Roundabout It's possible for most of us to get off the merry-go-round of illness and live in essentially healthy condition until death, whereas programming tells us we must 'die of something,' meaning a named disease. However, a comfortable old age would seem to be much preferred.

Genuine health care reform means transforming symptom manipulation into wellness promotion, with freedom of choice and third-party support.

Immediate Actions That Should Be Taken By States

1)
A crucial interim step in state health care reform, would be to 'unshackle' conventional doctors by means of a statute regarding treaments approved and unapproved by the FDA/AMA. The proposed law change below may need elaboration and refinement of expression, and some terms may need detailed definition; but the general idea is:

"The Board of Registration in Medicine, or other regulatory body, may not rescind a doctor's license to practice medicine for utilizing a modality unapproved by the FDA or AMA, as long as there is a signed agreement between the physician and patient or/and patient guardian, which attests to the patient's or/and legal guardian's awareness of the approval status and particulars of the treatment option(s).The Board may not otherwise disrupt, or allow the disruption of, this relationship between the physician and an informed, consenting patient."

Such a law would allow progressive-minded doctors to expand their ability to help patients, while allowing others to remain conventional. It would also begin the necessary process of making wellness management primarily Holistic, without necessarily affecting current methods of crisis and trauma intervention.

2)
It should be a requirement of any organization that solicits funds for medical research, and that also provides local/home assistance with solicited funds, to offer a means for the donor to earmark the funds for aid or research, or a percentage of each.

It will be instructive to note wherein $resistance to such $meaningful health care reform will $arise.

How the FDA Works

Consider this statement by Herbert Ley, former FDA Commissioner, at the 1965 Edward Long US Senate hearings and reprinted in the Jan. 2, 1970 San Francisco Chronicle:

People think the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day. First, it is providing a means whereby key individuals on its payroll are able to obtain both power and wealth through granting special favors to certain politically influential groups that are the subject of its regulation.

This activity is similar to the 'protection racket' of organized crime: for a price, one can induce FDA administrators to provide protection from the FDA itself.

Secondly, as a result of political favoritism, the FDA has become a primary factor in that formula whereby cartel-oriented companies in the food and drug industry are able to use the police powers of the government to harass or destroy their free-market competitors.

And thirdly, the FDA occasionally does some genuine public good with whatever energies it has left over after serving the vested political and commercial interest of its first two activities.

Pretty damning stuff. It's quite safe to say that the decades-old statement still holds true. All he omitted was noting that "free-market competitors" include anyone who comes up with safe and effective answers to illness of which FDA "subjects" do not have financial control. This especially covers all degenerative symptomologies, including heart disease, cancer and AIDSyndrome.


Alternative Medicine: Really?
(supplement to Meaningful Health Care Reform, above)

The terms 'alternative medicine,' 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM), and 'conventional medicine,' although widely used, don't always convey an informative impression. Some background may help to clarify.

The term 'convention' means general agreement or consent, without regard necessarily for validity. In late 19th century France, a half truth was adopted by convention as the whole truth: the germ theory of disease. This reinforced a major, crucial corollary--the specific-disease doctrine. The latter politically displaced another scientific view emphasizing the ecology of our body's internal environment. That view suggested that inner ecological imbalance underlies the symptoms, including the proliferation of germs, that convention defines as specific diseases. It can be called ecological medicine (ecomedicine).

The rise and dominance of conventional medicine (conmedicine) near the turn of the last century was based mainly on a waltz of the law with vested interest. Prior to that coup, American medical practice was widely homeopathic--a Holistic, energy-based approach, as opposed to the chemical one.

The question remains whether named illnesses are specific diseases or just symptom pictures from conventionally ignored, but universal, underlying imbalances, like toxicity and nutritional insufficiency. However, the specific-disease mindset is pervasive. Many practitioners in the CAM venue share this belief and will often mimic conmedicine in a targeted "prescriptive" sense--with herbs and vitamins, for example.

Our body's coordination of infinite physiological variables is humbling and awe inspiring--especially when its interrelationship with the external environment and energy fields is considered. A supecomputer might attempt it, yet would fail. But we don't have nearly enough information for programming anyway. There is a certain arrogance in conmedicine, thinking it does know and then plowing ahead. One consequence may be rampant illness.

A common principle among the various CAM disciplines is that reliance upon the body's innate intelligence to establish wellness is preferable (safe and effective) to being invasive and forceful (using surgery and chemical drugs). Many CAM practitioners also share the understanding that wellness is not achieved by aiming at symptoms.

However, something reminiscent of symptom-targeted drugs has appeared in CAM, called 'neutraceuticals'--quite often plant isolates or molecules found in human metabolic pathways. Kinder, gentler, non-toxic 'drugs.' This somewhat obsessive trend can be seen as a move from the fire to the frying pan, but not out of the heat, of arrogance. It's a reflection within CAM of the conventional mindset. Basic ecomedicine more simply nurtures inner/outer balance and harmony, relying on body intelligence to handle the complexities.

A recent report reveals that cancer, our number one killer, is now increasing at twice the rate of population in Canada: 44% of men and 38% of women will be affected. A cancer specialist, Dr. Dominique Belpomme, says that 70% of cancers are of environmental origin. The Canadian Cancer Society highlights the urgency of prevention, but only in terms of individual behaviors, as though no outer environmental influence exists.

But the link between pollution and illness is quite clear, alarming in fact. Between 1980 and 2000 among the same age groups in France: 50% increase in lung cancer, 100% in breast cancer, 400% in prostate cancer.

Recognizing that a cancer tumor is not the disease, but a symptom, ecomedicine internally detoxifies, hydrates, nourishes, and balances energy (pH), among other things. Conmedicine attempts to cut out, or irradiate and poison to death, the symptom of poisoning. Thus, the "cure" evades convention, and symptoms frequently return.

The strength of conmedicine is trauma and some crisis intervention. The strength of CAM/ecomedicine is maintaining and restoring wellness. A deadly error in our mainstream system is the routine application of the methods of crisis intervention (drugs) where time-tested wellness principles should prevail.

Many people are turning to CAM--a concern that has prompted two major reports, one each by the CDC and Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM report says folks are spending $27 billion annually--impressive, considering that most is out-of-pocket.

A striking part of the IOM report is the suggestion of "how much we don't know," implying that CAM is short on knowledge. We're told that "alternative" methods don't undergo the rigid clinical trials of conmedicine. This is misleading at best: Quality research exists on many non-drug items. For example, hawthorn has been extensively researched and used in Europe for its cardiovascular benefit.

Based on existing research, large numbers of supplements should already be acknowledged for specific benefit. The tiring suggestion that "more research" is needed is essentially an evasion. I have a booklet of quotes from the United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook for 1939 ("Food and Life") about the specific efficacy of vitamins, and the deficiency of popular diet (too many refined foods). 1939.

Ulterior criticism notwithstanding, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act is sufficient as written. Its purpose was to increase FDA powers. Patent-hungry, greed-driven pharmas; MDs with pharma stocks getting kickbacks from sales; and the World Health Organization (a virtual pharma subsidiary) are most threatened by it, and certainly pressure Congress and the FDA (which, history shows, has often been derelict).

Ephedra is sometimes mentioned as an example of the failure of federal law to preempt dangerous supplements. But only synthetic ephedrine alkaloid (a pharma product) caused trouble. Ephedra (or the herb ma huang), safely in use for centuries, was demonized by association.

In any case, 130,000 people killed annually by medical drugs, and (conservatively) 250,000 total killed annually suggest where the greater danger lies, and that the proposed 'safeguards' aimed at supplements are mainly competition beaters. Imagine the outcry from conmedicine and industry/pharma fronts like QuackWatch.org if CAM practitioners killed even one person a year.

The overall safety track record of CAM/ecomedicine, food supplements, and herbs so outstrips that of conmedicine, there's no competition (however, one should pursue understanding and use caution). And "diseases" otherwise advertised as incurable or needing perpetual drugging are being cured every day outside the mainstream. It's just that, by law, no claims can be made--or you get arrested.

So, what's the alternative?

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Peter Tocci is a Holistic wellness consultant and health writer dba Associated Health Services in Leominster, Massachusetts.

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