Dread Dangers of Western Medicine

[Barbara]

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/09 ... ve-health/

Excerpt conveys the angle of the article.
None too reassuring, for all those visiting Western - allopathic - medical practitioners.
2 comments below by same poster fill out the devastating picture with decidedly unalluring highlights :

"This means that presently in the US medicine kills between 250,000 and 310,000 US citizens per year, every year.

These deaths are entirely avoidable, since they are caused by the practice of establishment medicine. This means that halting the practice of medicine would save the lives of over one quarter of a million US citizens every year. Approximately 1000 lives would be saved each day that medicine is not practiced in the US. This is equivalent to the death rate from a large skyscraper collapsing every day."

Chandler
September 10, 2013

Physicians spend the least amount of time with patients in the hospital, yet have the most authority over the patients. Millions upon millions are spent on needless blood tests, and wasted procedures. Have a simply headache, you will probably get an MRI of the head. Get a cramp in your calf, you’ll get a venous doppler study checking your blood flow. What once was a mere bump on the head, now has a 2000 dollar CAT scan bill tacked on.
Got a complaint, we got a procedure, or a test so a doc can cover [himself or herself legally] at your expense.
The more test or more procedures order and done, the more money the doctor makes.

Specialties get a consult, so they can get in on the take and get their cut. Come to the ER for chest pain, and your blood work shows a mild elevation in white blood cells that show an infection a consult is made to the infection control physician. He then comes in sees the patient, charges and enormous consultation fee, spends all of 30 minutes with a patient, and gets his cut. The antibiotic ordered the original physician could’ve ordered in the first place.
When a physician of any specialty who is on call refuses to come to the hospital a human being could suffer irreversible damage or death.
Happens all the time.
What goes on behind those closed doors would alarm many. The stories I could tell from personal experience. The human misery in the wake.

Chandler
September 10, 2013 -

Physicians are good, and bad, like nurses, like lawyers, like plumbers. Few plumbers have the arrogance carried by a physician or surgeon. There is nothing more special about a physician than the man who works at the sewage plant. Both could kill people if they don’t do their jobs. They sewage plant operator makes a less than average hourly wage, and drives an old clunker, but he could kill thousands in one mistake. The physician is held up as a god, well paid, high society lifestyle. The hypocrisy lives on.

[Barbara]

I was reading through some Xerox pages i just found which I had copied 10 years ago about the life of the little known St Tikhon of Kaluga, as told
by Archimandrite Gerasim [Schmaltz] of Alaska.

One cure cited struck me as pertaining to this subject of the futility of so much of what passes for "medicine" today.
In the early 1900s, a young girl was dipped in the healing spring known to be miraculous at the St Tikhon of Kaluga Monastery,
a major one at that time [not too far from Optina, I guess, since Optina is in Kozelsk, near Kaluga too].
So-- she was completely cured of whatever ailment it was - doesn't really add to the story to identify which one.

The point is that Archimandrite Gerasim wrote that this case was deemed incurable by all the brilliants minds of medicine at the time.

Therefore, it's really the same as today ; little has changed in 100 + years.

Western doctors often imagine they are infallible in their assessments.
But God and His Saints can reverse any and all judgments of Western doctors in a jiffy !
Just remember the girl cured at St Tikhon of Kaluga's spring [one among countless cases], which would not
be even known today at least in the English-speaking world if not for the recorded memoirs of one cell-attendant to
the Abbot of this monastery, the later pioneer tender of the grave of St Herman of Alaska half a world away, Fr Gerasim [Schmaltz].

[jgress]

I think you're being unfair to a lot of doctors by insinuating that they're just out to gouge you. Firstly, it makes sense that they earn more because their skills are hard to acquire, and therefore rare, and therefore command a higher price. We're not Communists; we don't believe in equality in all things and that all wealth should be shared equally.

We DO believe that all men have equal worth before God, so you're right that, in this sense, a doctor is no better than a sewage plant worker. It doesn't mean they should be paid the same.

Many saints have been physicians, so there's nothing wrong with practicing medicine in itself (and I'm not saying you said that there was). Physical medicine should definitely be accompanied by prayer, and it's certainly possible for miracles to happen in spite of medical knowledge.

A lot of the problem with our healthcare isn't to do with doctors' greed; it's the distortion of the market caused by government subsidies to the insurance companies that inflates prices. Also our culture of litigation, which forces doctors to take out expensive malpractice insurance.

[Barbara]

That was "Chandler" who compared doctors with plumbers !
Not I.
I copied her remarks which followed the article because I thought they were pithy.

---

Funny that I just pulled out my Icon that I got in Greece myself of St Panteleimon, speaking of Saintly physicians.

However, most of the early Physician-Saints were Unmercenaries, like Cosmas and Damian, and St Panteleimon himself .

So this was a completely different view of medicine.

[jgress]

Sorry. It wasn't clear from your post who wrote what. It helps to include quoted material in quotation marks to make clear what are your own words and what words belong to someone else.

[joasia]

Sorry. It wasn't clear from your post who wrote what. It helps to include quoted material in quotation marks to make clear what are your own words and what words belong to someone else.

Seemed pretty clear. Barbara wrote the name and date so it looks like it came from someone else. Unless you scroll down the webpage and see the posted comments, you might know that it was a poster on that website. I didn't know who Chandler was until I read the link.

[joasia]

I think you're being unfair to a lot of doctors by insinuating that they're just out to gouge you.

Most are.

Firstly, it makes sense that they earn more because their skills are hard to acquire, and therefore rare, and therefore command a higher price.

They earn more because it's all about status. There are plenty of incompetent MD's. A country doctor with 50 years experience would not earn so much. But, he would have just as much knowledge or even more because he cares about his patients. . My brother and his wife had experienced much suffering because of them until they went to an ND and got their health back.

We're not Communists; we don't believe in equality in all things and that all wealth should be shared equally.

No we're not. We're Capitalists. Why do NFL players make more money than doctors?

We DO believe that all men have equal worth before God, so you're right that, in this sense, a doctor is no better than a sewage plant worker. It doesn't mean they should be paid the same

.

Man defines worthiness by jobs. God judges the soul. If a doctor is an atheist but discovers the cure for cancer and heals 10 million people, does he get into God's Holy Kingdom because he's a great doctor?

Many saints have been physicians, so there's nothing wrong with practicing medicine in itself (and I'm not saying you said that there was). Physical medicine should definitely be accompanied by prayer, and it's certainly possible for miracles to happen in spite of medical knowledge

.

True that there are saints who practiced medicine, but, when still alive, they entered the state of theosis and the healings occurred by God, not their medical knowledge. You see, the medical aspect is at the lower physical level, but when a person is in complete communion with God as the saints were, all they needed was the power of God to heal. We are such sinners that we are surrounded now by physicians and not saints.

A lot of the problem with our healthcare isn't to do with doctors' greed; it's the distortion of the market caused by government subsidies to the insurance companies that inflates prices. Also our culture of litigation, which forces doctors to take out expensive malpractice insurance.

It is a big mess. But, even if a doctor is getting paid well, I would hope that he/she could also care about the patient. There are some that do care. I don't deny that. But, if there is such an injustice concerning the system then why don't these good doctors stand up to it?