SVEN   SONNENBERG

 

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE/Focusing on Cancer

        Why do we have this term, this entity? Why are we talking about it and turning to it in increasing numbers?

Don’t we have the government sanctioned official medicine system with the medical doctors, graduates of state accredited medical schools? We also have a huge bureaucracy behind powerful drug companies raking in billions. Each section of this overwhelming system is protected by laws enacted by our ill chosen and corrupt legislators.  On top we have law enforcement, which does not hesitate to raid, imprison and confiscate. All this is supposed to guard our health, protect us from harm by unqualified charlatans and heal us when we are sick. Why then are we talking about holistic practitioners, Chinese healers, Ayurveda medicine?

       Let’s go briefly into history, and see how did it all happen? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia.

 

       …Prior to the nineteenth century European medical training and practice was ostensibly self-regulated through a variety of antique corporations, guilds or colleges. Among regular practitioners, university trained physicians formed a medical elite while provincial surgeons and apothecaries, who learnt their art through apprenticeship, made up the lesser ranks.[12] In Old Regime France, licenses for medical practitioners were granted by the medical faculties of the major universities, such as the Paris Faculty of Medicine...

 

       …Outside of these formal medical structures there were myriad other medical practitioners, often termed irregulars, plying a range of services and goods The eighteenth-century medical marketplace, a period often referred to as the "Golden Age of quackery", was a highly pluralistic one that lacked a well-defined and policed division between "conventional" and "unconventional" medical practitioners…

 

       To illustrate the situation. In France in 1700s during the reign of  Louis XIV, to mind comes the fate of the King’s dynasty. His children and family one by one got sick many with measels. All the foremost doctors of that time knew were bloodlettings. One by one the children and family died from it or lack of proper treatment. The King's five year old grandson, the only heir, also became ill. His nanny barracked the door and did not let the doctor near him. He alone survived. (Peter the Great, Robert K. Massie)

 

      Slowly through the years, since the golden time of quackery, governments, out of a noble goal to protect their people, took central control and outlawed practicing medicine without formal licensing. To practice without a license meant persecution and prosecution.  Thus, a monopoly with an ostensibly scientific basis was created. Drug manufactures under that umbrella grew mightily with a main interest in only making money. Since the government, being in total control has to approve anything the drug companies come up with, a symbiosis developed between them. The doctors became obligated to use what was approved and not only drugs, but procedures worked out by the pharmaceutical giants.  The exasperated expression from one of my doctors I heard was, “We are totally in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies!”  In addition, doctors being now watched, became afraid to go outside guidelines, they would not go “on their own,” and use their wisdom and judgment. Anyway, medical schools forgot anything other than the drugs produced by those pharmaceutical giants, whose sales representatives have become the real doctors.

 

         The age old remedies which obviously worked, quacks aside, have been forgotten, shunned, declared nonsense without any impartial checking or insight and made dangerous for doctors to approach, lest they became ostracized or outright punished. Thus, we have now a one-sided, corrupt, fossilized system, Government presiding.

 

        Fortunately, but difficult for the general patient, we have the following situation now. A number of MD’s being conscientious and courageous, did go away from the mainstream medicine to practice ALTERNATIVE medicine, or HOLISTIC medicine. They became mighty frustrated not to be able to use their own judgment and age proven remedies or ongoing studies to heal patients. Since they are licensed MD’s, they are able to use both fields, so, these are the doctors to turn to. Unfortunately, most of them do not have hospital privileges, and have difficulty in using modern equipment. So, the task for the patient is to maneuver between the two worlds. How to financially afford this is the key question, insurances most often do not pay for alternative remedies. Because the “official” doctor will either refuse to use anything but Gov. prescribed meds, or pretend that he does not know anything about magnesium or hawthorn, or any natural remedy for high blood pressure − to use as an example.  Never mind that his prescribed meds in this case have bad side effects that require other meds. I can hear the big Pharma guys counting the money. The calamity is that the insurances will not pay for those alternative practitioners.

 

         These alternative docs cannot afford to fall into the claws of the prescribed bureaucracy; it would defeat their whole effort. Unfortunately then, instead of the quackery of centuries ago we have another monster facing us - the system controlled by a orrupt bureaucracy, the “mechanical” robot-like doctor - over him the government control.

 

The sad and ironic situation, which is developing, is an attempt of the official medicine to hijack the alternative methods, hitherto so maligned. This is because people with bitter experience, often seeing the ineffectiveness of the official medicine, or suffering one side effect after another from it, are turning en mass to Alternative practitioners.  For example, the famous Mayo Clinic has now a section under ALTERNATIVE approach. Why is it sad? Because in the hands of those people it will become corrupt.

 

Want to see evidence of hijacking?

Alternative medicine

By Mayo Clinic staff

Although diet and exercise are the best tactics to lower your blood pressure, some supplements also may help decrease it. These include:

• Alpha-linolenic acid

• Blond psyllium

• Calcium

• Cocoa

• Cod-liver oil

• Coenzyme Q10

• Omega-3 fatty acids

• Garlic

 

The above, a long time alternative approach is listed after a constellation of dangerous pharmaceuticals.

 

 It would be ideal to be able to reform the present official medicine to free the doctor from all these mandated constrains. After all, he was educated under stringent requirements for many years, so let him think for himself. The other indispensable step is to have the medical schools teachings taken out from under the pharmaceutical industry spell.

This obviously is not going to happen. What is left for the patient is to educate himself in the choices available beyond what his official doctors offer and seek out competent holistic practitioners, preferably with a MD degree.