Chapter 8 - What You Don't Know Can Hurt You, Even Kill You

There is a big distinction I am going to emphasize again. It is the difference between Emergency Medical Care, and Medical Symptom and Disease Care. Emergency Medical Care is exactly that. The type of care you would get if you cut yourself, had an accident, slipped or fell, etc. Something happened, you are hurt, and you get Medical Care. Medical Symptom and Disease Care is also exactly that. The part of Medicine that deals with trying, and I emphasize trying, to help people heal their symptoms and disease.

Emergency medical care is great. They are wonderful at saving lives during times of crisis. No one does it better. The problem is that the medical symptoms and disease care system has been lumped together with emergency medical care. When someone makes a negative comment about doctors, immediately people get defensive because they also think of emergency medical care. And everyone knows the emergency medical care system saves lives. And many people know someone who has directly been saved by the emergency medical care system.

I am sure that the medical symptoms and disease care system has also saved some lives. The time has now come to put the medical symptoms and disease care system in its proper place. And this can be done without changing emergency medical care. Emergency medical care can remain right where it is.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any place that sees medicine as these two separate parts, at least when it comes to statistics, studies, measures, and anything concrete. So I will talk about things that the medical system said and mainly this information is referring to the medical symptoms and disease care system.

Everyone knows that emergency medical care saves lives, probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives, each year in the US alone. This, I also know. I see the emergency medical care system as essential to part of health care. It is great, and they are making huge improvements in saving peoples lives.

The medical symptom and disease care, on the other hand, is the system I will be referring to any time I talk about medicine. And here is how what you don't know, might kill you.

The American Medical Association (AMA) admitted the medical system was the 3rd leading cause of death in the US; second only to heart disease and cancer. They used their own studies and published it in their own Journal, The Journal of American Medical Association, July 26th, 2000 issue. They themselves said that they were the 3rd leading cause of death. There is no study, no statistics, and no nothing to manipulate or play with. They, the AMA said this themselves.

I know, as well as everyone else, that you can prove anything with statistics. Like the studies, funded by tobacco companies, that proved smoking was safe, etc. We all know the tobacco companies have a vested interest in showing smoking is safe.
If the tobacco companies do studies, that actually show that smoking is not safe, it is a good bet to believe them. When the tobacco companies finally admit themselves, that smoking is bad for you, you kind of have to believe them, because that is not the result they want. In fact, it is just the opposite.

Now, let me ask you. Do you think the medical system wants to admit to a low number of people they kill each year, or a high one? Obviously, they do not want to kill any people. Most doctors on an individual level truly want to help people, truly want to do what is best for their patients. They do not want to harm them, cause injury, or kill them. I promise you. So when the medical system admitted that they were the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, even though this is not something they wanted to admit to, like the tobacco companies. And since the medical system used their own studies, and said it themselves, you kind of have to believe them.

Yes friends, the medical establishment themselves said they were the third leading cause of death in the US.

Dis-belief is the first thing that comes up for people here. They don't want to believe this.

If they really said this, how come you have not heard about it until now? Well, let me ask you. If you just killed 225,000 people, would you be out telling everyone? Would you be out putting it on the front page of newspapers? Or would you try and hide the fact and bury it?

And you don't have to believe me. Just look in the July 26th, 2000 issue of Journal of American Medical Association. You can read them admit to this, and see it for yourself. But in case you don't want to do that, I am putting the same thing they said, in the following pages.

Fear is going to come up for some people here. It is fearful to think that some group could kill 225,000 Americans every year, and get away with it, year after year after year.

There are some that will accuse me of doing exactly what the medical profession does, using fear to control people to do a certain thing.

What I am doing is giving you the information and facts. If you want to make an educated choice, instead of guessing and operating from ignorance or opinions, or responding out of fear, you have to be educated by having the information and facts. And that is what this chapter is doing. It is just that much of this information and these facts are scary.

On top of the 225,000 people the medical system kills each year, there is more. There are unnecessary procedures, unwanted negative effects, extra visits, extra medications, more hospital admissions, and billions of extra dollars for all the errors that do not end in someone dying.

If this is confrontational, if you don't want to believe this, neither do I. You must face that it is published referenced facts the AMA themselves said. In fact the very people I am talking about published these facts. If these are confronting, and you don't want to believe them, there are a couple of common reasons that I have found for this.

The biggest reason is that Emergency Medical Care (EMC) saves lives. The lines are blurred between the EMC and medical symptoms and disease care.

You want to believe that someone else out there is looking after your best interest; the government, someone, anyone. You don't want to believe that money and corruption could go on that long and kill that many people. With things being that bad, why would the government or anyone else not stop it, or expose it.

Another common reason goes back to one of the benefits of not being healthy. You get to avoid responsibility. And if the above were true, which it is, then you would have no one else to make responsible for your health, you would be forced to be in charge of your own health. Many people do not like this.

All I am saying right now, is this is what the medical system admitted to themselves. It is very scary that it has gotten this bad, and yet, no one has done anything about it yet. I want to answer the question of why? Why has no one done anything about it? For one simple reason, The American Medical Association.

See, medicine is a touchy subject. They have the courts and laws on their side right now. Let me give you some examples.

If someone came to me and wanted me to naturally help them heal, and they died, I would probably lose my license and be fined. If someone went to the medical profession and they were treated, and they died, that would just be a person that could not be helped. And nothing would happen to the medical professional.

If I recommend something for you to treat your symptoms or disease and it doesn't work, I am responsible. But if you do what the medical symptoms and disease care system wants you to do and it doesn't work, you are responsible. They are not. Isn't that interesting.

The medical symptoms and disease care system has a magical veil of protection. And it is time to get rid of the veil of protection, because they are killing 225,000 people a year with the license to kill given to them by the laws and courts.

If I told you to take X thing to cure your cancer, The AMA could, and probably would, sue me, especially if I got many people to take X thing. Even if a Medical Doctor did the same thing, they would probably sue him. And if someone took X thing, and ended up dying, there family would sue me or the Medical Doctor for sure, and win. Why?

Medicine has the home field advantage. The laws state that you cannot do anything that is not reasonable and customary and is not proven to be more effective than medicine. Now, what is reasonable and customary? Everything the Medical Profession currently does. And this is where the catch comes in. You cannot do some form of treatment, unless it is proven. But how can you prove it, if you cannot do it? Exactly. That is why the same treatments for cancer that were done in the 60's are still being done today. Chemotherapy, Radiation, and Surgery.

It is not exactly true, that you cannot do treatment unless it is proven. You can get money, get grants, and special permission, and then do a controlled clinical trial, etc, etc. And, guess what the price tag of all this is? Minimum, again, I repeat, minimum of 100 million dollars. Then, you will not get your X thing approved from one study, you must do more studies. Pretty much only the drug companies can come up with that kind of money and resources to make it happen. Or getting funding from the government. And the government only gives 5.4 million dollars a year to study natural health care. That is not even enough for 1/10th of one study. That is one reason why the medical system still maintains control and still has their magical veil of protection.

So if you told someone to take X thing for their cancer, and you were licensed, no matter what your license is, you could have your license taken away from you. If the person ended up dying, whether or not you were licensed, you could be sued and the punishment could include fines and jail time.

But, if the Medical System does chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and the person ends up dying anyway, there were no laws broken, and nothing out of the reasonable and customary was done. So everything is fine.

This is how the medical symptoms and disease care has been able to maintain their monopoly for so long. How they have the courts and laws on their side. And this is true in all areas the medical symptoms and disease care system has their hand in. They get the benefit of the doubt even if their ideas and theories are less tested and validated than someone else's.

Not only do you have to do studies, you have to do it their way, the 100 million dollar way. And often, they do not have to do any studies, because they automatically get the benefit of the doubt. They make what reasonable and customary is. I will talk more about this in the next chapter.

How have they been able to hide the fact that they kill 225,000 people per year? Because they have the money, laws, and courts on their side.

I first found out about this great admission of harm on Dr. Mercola's website, www.mercola.com. It is the number one rated natural health care website in the world, with a great free natural health newsletter. His site is an excellent place to go if you ever have any questions about health. I highly recommend his website.

The information and statistics on the following pages were published in the Journal of American Medical Association, July 26th, 2000 issue. The most prestigious and well respected medical journal in the world. Said another way, when something is in there, the medical symptoms and disease care system has given their endorsement it is true.

All of this is what the medical symptom and disease care system admitted to. I am going strictly with what the medical profession directly admitted to, with no doctoring, no adding, no NOTHING. Just simply re-stating what they said.

The number of people the medical system Kills each year

• 12,000 - unnecessary surgery
• 7,000 - medication errors in hospitals
• 20,000 - other errors in hospitals
• 80,000 - infections in hospitals
• 106,000 - non-error, negative effects of drugs (Drugs given correctly, taken correctly, but the unknown side effect was Death!)

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!

What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially for a complication of treatment.

Said another way, 225,000 people killed by doctors and hospitals and what they do! 225,000 deaths per year makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer.

Between 4% and 18% of the time people go to the hospital and are not killed, they experience things like this;

• 116 million extra physician visits
• 77 million extra prescriptions
• 17 million emergency department visits
• 8 million hospitalizations
• 3 million long-term admissions
• 199,000 additional deaths
• $77 billion in extra costs
• We put up with these numbers, because we think it is a "casualty of war", that these numbers are necessary for all the good that medicine does and for all the lives they supposedly save. It is part of saving lives and making our health in America better.

This would be great, if that were actually true. If the medical symptoms and disease care system actually saved lives and produced better health for us. But do they?

Of 13 countries in a recent comparison the United States ranks an average of 12th or almost the worst. This was also published in the same article of JAMA.

Here are the actual number the medical system admitted to:

• 13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages
• 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall
• 11th for post neonatal mortality
• 13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes)
• 11th for life expectancy at 1 year for females, 12th for males
• 10th for life expectancy at 15 years for females, 12th for males
• 10th for life expectancy at 40 years for females, 9th for males
• 7th for life expectancy at 65 years for females, 7th for males
• 3rd for life expectancy at 80 years for females, 3rd for males
• 10th for age-adjusted mortality

The World Health Organization confirms this as well. They used data from more countries and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries.

There is a perception that the American public "behaves badly" by smoking, drinking, and being violent. But if you look at the facts, it just isn't true.

This is the Ranking of the same 13 countries from above, where we were second to last in health care results.
Females who smoke ranges from 14% in Japan to 41% in Denmark; in the United States, it is 24%, the fifth best

• For males, the range is from 26% in Sweden to 61% in Japan; it is 28% in the United States, the third best.
• The US ranks fifth best for alcoholic beverage consumption.
• The US has relatively low consumption of animal fats (fifth lowest in men aged 55-64 years in 20 industrialized countries) and the third lowest average cholesterol concentrations among men aged 50 to 70 years.

Even though we spend more money per capita on health care than every other country except Germany, and we have healthier lifestyles than most other countries, we still rank almost last with regards to our actual level of health.

Our medical system kills 225,000 people per year, and we still have almost the worst health. This goes to show the medical system does not give us health. Because they attempt to treat symptoms and disease does not mean that leaves you with health.

The number of deaths that the AMA said happens, 225,000 each year, are not worth the results we are getting for health.

Now, I want to put this into a little different perspective. I did some research, because I wanted to know. There are about 600 million to 1.2 billion people traveling per year on an airplane in the US alone. Depends on whose numbers you use. There are about 600 million to 900 million visits to a medical doctor each year in the US.

Let's say roughly the same amount of people step on a plane that step into a doctors? office. A Jumbo Jet holds roughly 250-300 passengers, depending on the airline and how full it is. If the Airline industry was killing 225,000 people every year, it would be the equivalent of 1,000 Jumbo jets worth of people (225,000 people divided by 225 passengers total). Divide 1,000 planes worth of people by 365 days in the year.

Comparing the two (it is uncanny how well the numbers work out) and you get two Jumbo Jets Crashing Every DAY! And everyone on board is killed.

Imagine, you wake up today and all over the news: Two Jumbo jets Crashed, and Everyone On Board is Killed! Then the next day: Two jumbo jets crashed today, and everyone is dead. Then the next day, two jumbo jets crashed again today, and everyone was killed. The next day, two more jumbo jets crashed today, no survivors, everyone dead. The next day, Two jumbo jets crashed today, and all passengers, Killed, everyone dead. You think to yourself, you are supposed to go on a flight next week. Do you cancel? Then the next day, again, two jumbo jets crash, killing everyone on board. The next day, Two jumbo jets crash, no survivors. When is it you decide to not fly? How many days does it take of two jumbo jets crashing Every Day before you decide not to fly? How long before you start talking to your family about not flying? How long before you decide it is worth your time to do what it takes to be well?

The next day, two more jumbo jets crash and burn, and everyone on board is killed. It has only been 8 days.

I want you to pause and think here for a moment. Do this for real. I want you to get, imagine, what would it really be like if every day, two jumbo jets crashed killing everyone on board, leaving no survivors. How long before the airline industries would be out of business? How long before the Government would step in and do something? What would the news media be like? What would people be saying and talking about?

Now, things are a little different because air travel is mostly for convenience. And supposedly doctors are saving peoples lives. And the emergency medical care system is. The medical symptoms and disease care system isn't. That is why I make the distinction between the Emergency Medical Care System and medical symptoms and disease care. Medical symptoms and disease care does not save tons of lives. Does not prolong masses of people's lives. Does not make the quality of life better for most people. I can even show you they do not save more lives than they kill.

If the doctors quit working, and they saved more lives then the number of people they killed, the death rate should go up, right? If doctors help more people then they kill, more people should die, if doctors quit working. That is common sense. And if doctors quit working, and the death rate went down, that would mean they are killing more people then they are saving. I mean, if less people died, and there were less doctors working, that would mean, overall, the helped less people then they hurt. Because if they helped more people, when they quit working, the death rate would go up.

But how can you test this theory out? How can you get doctors to quit working? Well, have them go on strike. There are many countries around the world, where the doctors have gone on strike. And interestingly enough, you know what happened? The death rate went down. Yes down. Less people died, when there were less visits to doctors. This would imply that doctors actually hurt more people then they help.

In Israel, this is exactly what happened. The doctors went on strike, and the death rates went down "considerably" said the British Medical Journal. BMJ 2000;320:1561 (10 June) Also, in the book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. wrote: "In 1976 in Bogota, Colombia, doctors went on strike during a 52-day period. The death rate went down 35% during that time. In Los Angeles in 1976, doctors went on strike to protest the increasing costs of malpractice insurance. The death rate decreased by 18%. When the strike ended, the death rate returned to pre-strike proportions. In Israel in1973, during a month-long strike, the death rate dropped 50%. The last time the death rate had been that low was when there was a doctors strike 20 years before."

Doctors go on strike, and the death rate goes down, over and over again. This seems like a pretty good indicator, doctors hurt more people then they help. And I will show you how true this really is, with more later.

I want to remind you here again that I make a distinction between Emergency Medical Care, and medical symptom and disease care. Medical symptoms and disease care is about whom I am sharing the information.

I want to go back to the tobacco companies for a moment, to point out something else here. If the tobacco companies would admit that smoking causes X amount of damage, what do you think the real amount of damage is that is done? A lot more, that is for sure. They do not want to admit that smoking causes a lot of problems. If they did, they would be liable for a lot more money.

The medical system admitted to killing 225,000 people per year. What do you think that actual number is? What is the real number? More or less? If this is what they admitted to. I definitely think it is more.

How statistics are tracked, is that everything gets a code. For every diagnosis, there is a standard code that everyone goes by. For every surgery and treatment, there is a standard code that all doctors use for the same thing. For most deaths, there is a code. Everything in medicine is standardized in this way. So when people die, it is up to the medical doctor, to give an appropriate code for why they died. That is how we know that X number of people died in car crashes, or from drug overdose, or from heart attacks, or from cancer. They all have separate codes. Then the medical system just adds them up.

Let's say someone was given a medication, and it caused their liver to fail, and they died. There is a different code for liver failure, than there is for medication error causing liver failure, than there is for doctor error.

There is a person dead, because their liver failed, and there is nothing that can be done to bring them back. Nothing. Now the doctor has to put down the cause of death.

Imagine yourself in the doctor's shoes. You screwed up, a person is dead, and if it is really your fault, you might get sued, and lose your license. What code would you be tempted to put down? Liver failure due to medication error? Or that it was your fault? The person is dead. Nothing can be done to bring them back. You can learn from your mistakes either way. What do you chose?

Or what if it is borderline. Did you screw up or not? It is a grey area. You followed standard protocol, and there was something that had you known, you could have prevented the person's death. BUT you didn't know. And there was no reason why you should have known, because standard protocol did not pick up on it. What code do you put down? Liver Failure from medication error, or your fault?

Or even greyer, the patient had a weak liver. You know this, and they knew the medication might cause liver failure, but the patient didn't want to change, and wanted to take the medication. There liver failed and they died. What do you put down for the code? Liver failure? Or liver failure due to medication error?

Now many errors don't even have codes for them. Even if the doctor wanted to report the real cause of death, he couldn't. Because the medical symptoms and disease care has not created codes for all the ways the system can kill you.

Again, these are the numbers the medical system admitted to that they said they caused. I wish I had a clue what the real numbers were. I don't. But I can promise you one thing, they are higher.

The emergency medical care system is EXCELLENT at helping people who have had or been in accidents. If I needed emergency care, you can bet your life that you will see me at the ER of a hospital.

This is where, undoubtedly, they save lives. The unfortunate part is, so far, the two separate systems have not been separated. They do not separate accident and trauma related care, from medical symptoms and disease care, when reporting statistics. They are all grouped into the same category.

The rest of this chapter is my opinion. I have not done all the research (finding all the sources, and adding up all the numbers, etc, as it would be a lot) and I am going to give my opinion on the information I do have, starting right now, the following section is my opinion only, based on logic and what seems to me, common sense.

I was able to find statistics on individual hospitals, and it seems they averaged 20%-50% of their admissions were due to trauma. The difference I noticed seemed to be that some hospitals specialized in trauma where others did not. It is a total guess, but logic would say that the percentage of traumatic out patient visits would be less. So taking an average of say 20%, that is the number I come up with as to how many doctor visits are trauma related.

Let's assume that the mistakes, and errors, and such are equally made as well. This would mean you would take 20% of the numbers reported for people they killed, in my opinion, for the number of useless deaths. This would bring the overall number of people the medical symptoms and disease care establishment kills each year to about 200,000 people, but the percentage, when compared with plane crashes, would remain the same because you also take out the number of visits for trauma care when coming up with the figures.

That being said, maybe trauma care kills a higher percentage of people, or maybe there is a higher percentage of outpatient trauma visits. Even if we take the best case scenario for arguing the medical symptoms and disease care side, here is where we would be.

Let's say 50% of all visits to the medical profession are trauma related, and they actually make twice as many errors than regular visits for symptom and disease care. This would put the number of people needlessly killed by the medical symptoms and disease care at 75,000 people killed each year.

Again, doing the math, means 75,000 people are killed by the medical profession not trauma related. 75,000 people to half of the visits, still leaves one Jumbo jet Crashing Every day. Every Day, another jumbo jet crashes. Next day, One Jumbo jet Crashes, everyone on board killed. Next Day, one jumbo jet crashes, everyone on board killed, no survivors. And on and on. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, one jumbo jet crashes every day, killing everyone on board needlessly.

Apart from emergency care, medicine does NOTHING, absolutely nothing to help people improve their health. They only treat symptoms and disease. They do nothing to help people prevent sickness, symptoms and disease. And in my opinion, they actually are counter productive to increasing health and preventing disease. So these 75,000 deaths are at the cost of no gain, nothing. Completely just senseless deaths. When it comes to health, the medical profession does nothing to help people heal. I will get into why, a little later, in a factual way, where you will understand this for yourself as well.

For now, my major point with this chapter is to wake you up to the reality of the medical profession, sharing information with you, so you can make a more informed choice about who is going to do something about your health.

And in case you missed it, you are the person who has to do something about your health. The medical profession is not going to create a magic pill, or potion, or lotion that is going to magically give you health. You will either add to your health, or lose your health. It is that simple.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The medical symptoms and disease care system has been trying to treat symptoms and disease for almost 100 years, with no real results. They still have essentially no cures or treatments for most things. The very fact that 1.25 million people die every year in America from heart disease and cancer alone is proof of that. Not to mention all the other thousands of diseases that people still die from.

The medical symptoms and disease care system has made no real progress in curing symptoms or disease.