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        "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
                                            --Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

        A recent survey of 12,000 primary care physicians found that 66 percent of them were either less-than-satisfied or unsatisfied with the practice of medicine. Sixty percent said they would not recommend medicine as a career. Approximately one third of those who participated said they planned to stop seeing patients in the next 1-3 years and another 14 percent planned to cut back on patient care to part time. Tying in with this lack of job satisfaction, MDs also suffer from the highest rate of suicide among professionals. Many others are saddled by drug and alcohol addiction.

        For many, it may seem odd that people who’ve dedicated their lives to helping others, who cared so much about humanity that they were willing to spend a hundred thousand dollars and eleven or more years of grueling education to learn a job that most would assume to be highly rewarding and high-paying, would be so dissatisfied. But the realities of practicing medicine are far from what’s depicted on TV medical dramas. Besides never-ending piles of paperwork, loads of stress, and utterly ridiculous insurance games, there’s the shocking reality that for the most part, medicine does little for its patients other than mask symptoms. If you’ve ever gone to the doctor and been disappointed with the service you received, imagine how your doctor must feel, knowing s/he’s dedicated his/her life to that dog and pony show.

        You may also think, “well, that’s just the way it is. Healthcare sucks the world over. Too many sick people; not enough doctors.” But that’s not really the case either. Shockingly, the World Health Organization reports that we in the United States spend more on healthcare per capita than any other country, by far, and yet they rate our healthcare system 37th in the world – out of 37 industrialized countries. So we spend the most, but fare the worst. In fact, it appears that the more we spend on medical care the worse our health gets.
 

        Despite all this spending, chronic diseases of all sorts are on the rise and they’re occurring in younger people all the time. Children are obese. They’re being diagnosed with adult onset diabetes and high cholesterol and put on meds for life. Children are also being diagnosed with neurological disorders at an alarming rate. They’re being declared autistic, learning disabled, or ADHD and put on psychiatric drugs. Genetic and autoimmune diseases are also on the rise. Though the American Cancer Society claims we’re "winning the war on cancer," more people are diagnosed and die from cancer every year. In fact, cancer recently replaced heart disease as the nation’s number one killer disease. And as the rates of all these diseases continue to rise, sperm counts and fertility are on the decline. Clearly, what we’re doing is not sustainable. A few more generations of heading in this direction and the human race could be done for.
 

        Sadly, not only are Western medicine’s attempts to treat these diseases ineffectual, their efforts often prove deadly. Using very conservative estimates, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) actually admits that MDs kill well over 280,000 people per year—more than all other accidental deaths combined! But when more realistic numbers are used, we find that MDs are actually killing around 786,000 people every year! That’s the equivalent of more than 7 jumbo jets crashing into the ground, killing everyone on board, every day. This puts Western medicine at the top of the list – killing more people every year than any disease, including every type of cancer put together. Amazingly, most of this isn’t even due to medical mistakes. In fact, according to another study in JAMA, “properly prescribed drugs” by themselves are the 4th leading cause of death in America, killing an estimated 106,000 people per year! (And that study only included the drugs given in the hospital.) In other words, these are the expected “side effects” of using this type of healthcare system, if one can call such a system “healthcare”.
       

        Findings like these have led the Institute of Medicine to say, “The American healthcare system is in need of a fundamental change.” The National Roundtable on Healthcare Quality stated in JAMA, “Our present efforts [to improve the system] resemble a team of engineers trying to break the sound barrier by tinkering with a Model-T Ford. We need a new vehicle, or perhaps many new vehicles.” In other words, we need a whole new healthcare paradigm.

        Western medicine is one healthcare paradigm. It’s not the only healthcare paradigm, but it is the most dominant one in this country right now. Unfortunately, it also happens to be a paradigm that doesn’t work for the kind of diseases we’re currently plagued with. While it works fairly well for certain problems, such as bacterial infections, and extremely well for emergency situations, surgeries, and the like, it’s all but useless for handling the chronic diseases we now find ourselves plagued with. Most shocking of all, Western medicine, with its “all for drugs and drugs for all” approach to healthcare, is actually causing many of the diseases it’s charged with curing. Using more drugs to treat these new diseases is like throwing gasoline on an already raging fire.
 

        And playing around with who pays for such a system is not healthcare reform; this is merely re-arranging deck chairs. While the insurance system certainly needs an overhaul it’s not the insurance companies causing all this death and disease—it’s medicine. It’s time to get off this sinking ship and find a new vessel—one that can actually take us to the destination of our choosing—health.