Yes, a sad state of affairs but ripe for turning around – if allowed by our technophiles who wish to digitise all systems - as well as us!
I awakened about 40 years ago when discovering the absurdity and extent of animal-based medical research – inevitably leading to human experimentation and the conditioning of ‘researchers’ to be ruthlessly callous and thus open to other ethical compromises – useful to those whose motivations are not health and happiness for us.
Of course, the medical profession (business) has brilliant P.R. and has largely replaced religion in the hearts of the fragile and innocent. I live in the UK, where the NHS was, up until the pandemic operation, still viewed uncritically – the main talking point being the lack of resources. In fact, there are diverse problems – including a bullying culture whereby any whistleblower is punished, particularly when disclosing failures and evidence of danger to patients.
When I began trying to investigate the absurdity and failure of so many medical procedures/treatments it became apparent that there was an unbalanced philosophy as to the ‘cause’ of a particular condition - the factors that gave rise to and supported the ‘cause’ went unseen or were ignored. This tunnel vision is useful for a successful money-making industry like big pharma, who will promote a ‘cure’ for each condition’s ‘cause,’ they identify and promote. Unfortunately, because the context that gives rise to the ‘disease’ has been largely ignored, the poor patient will be subject to further manifestations of another ‘disease’ – and another opportunity for further interventions. You expressed the essence of what I’m trying to explain better than!
For some, at least, the evident sacrifice of ethics, science and humanity that characterised the pandemic operation, opened the eyes of many. But the transhumanists are determined to impose their agenda - we live in interesting times!
Personally, the best medical system for me i.e. one that had more advantages than disadvantages, was the medieval monastic system. The monks may not have had the anatomical knowledge to intervene heroically, so their help was limited. But they didn’t go beyond their abilities through ego, material gain and political pressure. They made their patients comfortable, nursed and nurtured them, prayed and reassured them demonstrating that their patients were important, honoured and loved.
The establishment of universal health care could and would address many of the issues mentioned here. This would eliminate the influence of big pharma, and reduce the cost of medications.
It would more likely increase the influence of big pharma, not reduce it (and I live in a country with compulsory universal health care). It only shifts the place and level where big pharma needs to exert its corruptive influence, it doesn't eliminate it. And because of the collectivist nature of universal health care, the number of 'nodes' in need of influencing (from their pov) decreases greatly, enabling them to concentrate, and by extension strengthen, their influence.
Not to mention the fact that the wider field of politics, which would include those setting, executing, managing and quality-controlling the practical standards and policies that would form the content of the universal health care, tends to attract the more corruptible among us, not the less.
Your argument is valid as long as there is otherwise a capitalist system. When society decides it wants to provide healthcare to everyone then in research and practice the focus is the treatment/cure of the individual and the support of society as a whole. While it is true that corruption can creep in in many ways and must always be guarded against when the goal is a better society drugs are not introduced entirely for profit.
True, but again I use my South Africa as example. Our Parliament has approved a national health system that aims at eradicating private doctors. It only awaits the President's signature, something he may do for this year's election value, but then it'll be he;d up in court for years. But the point is that corruption is our biggest health problem, and the bigger the access to the public funds, the bigger the crime. I sat with a relative for 2 of 3 days at a government hospital. Despite security, a priest was there for his regular routine of telling waiting patients he can cure their sickness, which included cancer, and to tell us covid never existed. After three days of waiting, including getting there as early as 4.30am, my relative was told that that despite being a heart patient, they would not refer him to the heart hospital unless he had a heart attack. He did, at least get a scan, and given an appointment to return in one month. He did, only to be berated by the doctor for coming back 'so late' because he won;t use month-old scans. he paid the value of a month's rental to see a private doctor who informed him his heart had 32% function. So what happens when 60 million people have that equal care? Now the USA may be a better ball game but corruption is still its heart.
Get rid of patents. The harebrained idea of "intellectual property" is what is behind much if not most pharma malfeasance. The research should be funded by parties with interests better aligned with patient's: insurers. They are interested in curing a patient rather than chronic maintenance of his condition. Even better, prevention. Pharmas should be reduced to manufacturing of the drugs, and the easiest way to get there is to declare all drug-related patents null and void.
In the end, all research is funded by consumers anyway.
Here are some of my suggestions of what could and should be done. Feedback welcome.
The financial incentive system must be turned upside down for insurances, doctors and treatments (meaning the (pharmaceutical) companies/universities/groups/individuals responsible for them in research, development, manufacturing and distributing). As a long as a patient is healthy and prospering, physically, mentally, psychologically etc. doctors/therapists should receive financial rewards and good payment. As soon as sickness comes creeping in they have to perform expert work in curing, otherwise they lose their payment (and reputation, possibly job). Treatments must be independently verified as safe, effective and curing, only then insurances will pay for it. Every harmful side effect acts as a possible banning cause for a treatment. There's an (possibly) individualized spectrum of each patients current health state and financial incentives to improve it as well as financial and possibly job-endangering penalties if it decreases caused by anything else than natural aging and accidents.
What do you think about this attempt at a better system and how could/would you improve/change it and where do you see its possible downfalls and problems?
Very good point and I encourage everybody to answer and speculate.
The incentive system in the medical complex is absolutely insane and geared toward exactly the opposite of what the goals should be. It is certainly a major part of the problem, particularly in drug development. Does anyone really think a drug company would sell a drug which would reduce their market - even if they happen to develop it? I have my doubts.
Well, with enough public and federal pressure, control and possibly force to get them to genuinely act for the health of society in general (which would serve the economy in various ways, societal harmony & much more of course in return) this should be possible to achieve from my perspective. If needed, sort out the greedy, sadistic psychopaths profiteering from the suffering of their fellow human beings, give them duties where they can do no harm and recruit the real healers of all kind with pure intentions to help patients and advance the field and with it take hugs steps of healing humanity from all kinds of suffering, from sicknesses of the body to the psyche (think of all the traumata and wounding from sickcare, war rackets, poisoning and so on...) and elevate them to unknown levels of health incorporating transformative new flexible-effective-impactful kinds of consciousness to serve humanity and nature in profoundly impactful and revolutionary ways.
Here's a suggestion: fail med students who don't know. And before that teach them, so they would know. That should, all by itself, solve about 60%-80% of the problem. Since I don't want to out myself, I can't go into details, but at one point a political decision has been made (apparently at the level of EU) to have X doctors, and from this decision a further decision followed to reduce the standards of education for doctors. I haven't been involved in the deliberations but I was present when the quality of medical education crashed through the floor. The "political decision hypothesis" is the only one which makes real sense in explaining this crash.
In South Africa, medical education places black economic empowerment over meritocracy yet none of us gives a damn what colour the person helping us is, only hoping that they're the best.
You missed that the whole pharma-driven drug pushing is critically dependent on patents.
If drugs and medical devices cannot be patented, pharmas lose incentive to do drug discovery and research, and are forced to focus on reduction of costs in drug manufacturing.
The research then will be funded by insurers - and focused on prevention and cures rather than mainenance drugs. In the end insured pay for that research anyway. Risk of loss reduction is a good proxy for health of insured.
Excellent 💯, 90% or more of medical research is wrong because variables like iodine deficiency/halide excess and undiagnosed Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism were not screened for from the experimental and control groups. Magnesium deficiency is also inadequately screened for or diagnosed and would be an unidentified variable. Retinoid Toxicity, an excess of activated vitamin A is causing a lot of chronic illness but is also not well understood or screened for in studies. Any study with a control group or "normal health" people might not be that healthy after all.
The problem is that the culling seems to have been in play for decades and bad doctors and bad science and bad academics is on purpose so that the bad care/the poisonous culling strategies will continue with full support and endorsement from all the well paid and awarded bad doctors.
Excellent article, with lots of accurate & impactful insight. The methodology is the most crucial part of a research paper, while the conclusion is the most subject to potential bias. No surprise, then, that most readers skip over the methods section and go straight to the conclusion, sacrificing critical thinking for convenience. You do a masterful job of explaining a few of the reasons how science & data can lead to misleading & erroneous conclusions when they are not properly applied.
When I was in my final year, one of the professors whom I greatly admired held a candid discussion amongst the students regarding suggestions for improvement. He listened as a wide variety of proposals were made - some feasible, some fantastical, some farcical.
Personally, I had been yearning for just such an opportunity, and my hand shot up in eagerness. With the system in place at the time, student doctors accumulated credits for various procedures, and graduation required a certain number of each. Whether or not the procedure benefited the patient, sadly, was completely irrelevant. In this way, it was reminiscent of the common "fee-for-service" model of payment used in the US, which leads to clinical notes that read things like, "The operation was a success, unfortunately the patient did not survive." (yes, this was a real note written by a real doctor!)
An early version of the Affordable Care Act attempted to introduce results-based care to the third-party payer system, which would have compensated doctors based upon how quickly patients returned to work as well as other functional rating indices & questionnaires. Sadly, the AMA successfully lobbied against this initiative - knowing, perhaps, that the performance metrics of most pharmaceutical & surgical interventions would be abysmal.
My proposal was simple: allow interns to select any objective outcome assessment method they wanted - as long as it was sufficiently valid & reliable, and relevant to the patient's condition. Then, allow them to treat the patient using whatever methods they desired - anything & everything they had been taught during their schooling, they would be free to apply as they like. Then, grade the student based upon the degree of improvement achieved by the techniques they used as measured by the assessment they chose.
(personally, i believe many interns would be shocked by the ineffectiveness of many standard treatments - still, best for them to discover this early on in their career)
Such a system would mimic the idea of results-based care, rewarding competent & innovative future practitioners who were attentive & engaged in their patients' care, and link the scores to something that actually mattered to patients in the real world.
in terms of health insurance, I always thought France had the right idea. They have basic universal healthcare and privatize cutting edge services. Although patients are responsible for maintaining their own health records rather than the doctor. This has the effect of encouraging personal responsibility. Everyone knows they are covered for the basics, but they also know if they want to see a specialist they're expected to pay out-of-pocket. If they misplace their healthcare records, they are responsible for going back and getting all the tests redone. By making the patient medical record their property, it also encourages them to stay involved with their healthcare, understand, and ask questions.
I would also opine that any restructuring of healthcare also needs to re-evaluate healthcare licensing. Currently, it's more of a form of state-sponsored extortion, tyranny, & oppression than a safeguard of the public health. When less than one-quarter of every disciplinary action is even remotely related to patient care or doctor competency, and doctors can literally get away with killing patients without sparking any sort of investigation but find themselves under scrutiny for attending any sort of mental health therapy - even marital counseling - it is undeniable that something is very wrong with the system. Kernon Manion has some great articles here on Substack that dive into the numerous issues with medical licensing boards across the nation.
Thank you.
Yes, a sad state of affairs but ripe for turning around – if allowed by our technophiles who wish to digitise all systems - as well as us!
I awakened about 40 years ago when discovering the absurdity and extent of animal-based medical research – inevitably leading to human experimentation and the conditioning of ‘researchers’ to be ruthlessly callous and thus open to other ethical compromises – useful to those whose motivations are not health and happiness for us.
Of course, the medical profession (business) has brilliant P.R. and has largely replaced religion in the hearts of the fragile and innocent. I live in the UK, where the NHS was, up until the pandemic operation, still viewed uncritically – the main talking point being the lack of resources. In fact, there are diverse problems – including a bullying culture whereby any whistleblower is punished, particularly when disclosing failures and evidence of danger to patients.
When I began trying to investigate the absurdity and failure of so many medical procedures/treatments it became apparent that there was an unbalanced philosophy as to the ‘cause’ of a particular condition - the factors that gave rise to and supported the ‘cause’ went unseen or were ignored. This tunnel vision is useful for a successful money-making industry like big pharma, who will promote a ‘cure’ for each condition’s ‘cause,’ they identify and promote. Unfortunately, because the context that gives rise to the ‘disease’ has been largely ignored, the poor patient will be subject to further manifestations of another ‘disease’ – and another opportunity for further interventions. You expressed the essence of what I’m trying to explain better than!
For some, at least, the evident sacrifice of ethics, science and humanity that characterised the pandemic operation, opened the eyes of many. But the transhumanists are determined to impose their agenda - we live in interesting times!
Personally, the best medical system for me i.e. one that had more advantages than disadvantages, was the medieval monastic system. The monks may not have had the anatomical knowledge to intervene heroically, so their help was limited. But they didn’t go beyond their abilities through ego, material gain and political pressure. They made their patients comfortable, nursed and nurtured them, prayed and reassured them demonstrating that their patients were important, honoured and loved.
The establishment of universal health care could and would address many of the issues mentioned here. This would eliminate the influence of big pharma, and reduce the cost of medications.
It would more likely increase the influence of big pharma, not reduce it (and I live in a country with compulsory universal health care). It only shifts the place and level where big pharma needs to exert its corruptive influence, it doesn't eliminate it. And because of the collectivist nature of universal health care, the number of 'nodes' in need of influencing (from their pov) decreases greatly, enabling them to concentrate, and by extension strengthen, their influence.
Not to mention the fact that the wider field of politics, which would include those setting, executing, managing and quality-controlling the practical standards and policies that would form the content of the universal health care, tends to attract the more corruptible among us, not the less.
Your argument is valid as long as there is otherwise a capitalist system. When society decides it wants to provide healthcare to everyone then in research and practice the focus is the treatment/cure of the individual and the support of society as a whole. While it is true that corruption can creep in in many ways and must always be guarded against when the goal is a better society drugs are not introduced entirely for profit.
True, but again I use my South Africa as example. Our Parliament has approved a national health system that aims at eradicating private doctors. It only awaits the President's signature, something he may do for this year's election value, but then it'll be he;d up in court for years. But the point is that corruption is our biggest health problem, and the bigger the access to the public funds, the bigger the crime. I sat with a relative for 2 of 3 days at a government hospital. Despite security, a priest was there for his regular routine of telling waiting patients he can cure their sickness, which included cancer, and to tell us covid never existed. After three days of waiting, including getting there as early as 4.30am, my relative was told that that despite being a heart patient, they would not refer him to the heart hospital unless he had a heart attack. He did, at least get a scan, and given an appointment to return in one month. He did, only to be berated by the doctor for coming back 'so late' because he won;t use month-old scans. he paid the value of a month's rental to see a private doctor who informed him his heart had 32% function. So what happens when 60 million people have that equal care? Now the USA may be a better ball game but corruption is still its heart.
Get rid of patents. The harebrained idea of "intellectual property" is what is behind much if not most pharma malfeasance. The research should be funded by parties with interests better aligned with patient's: insurers. They are interested in curing a patient rather than chronic maintenance of his condition. Even better, prevention. Pharmas should be reduced to manufacturing of the drugs, and the easiest way to get there is to declare all drug-related patents null and void.
In the end, all research is funded by consumers anyway.
Thank you, excellent article!
Here are some of my suggestions of what could and should be done. Feedback welcome.
The financial incentive system must be turned upside down for insurances, doctors and treatments (meaning the (pharmaceutical) companies/universities/groups/individuals responsible for them in research, development, manufacturing and distributing). As a long as a patient is healthy and prospering, physically, mentally, psychologically etc. doctors/therapists should receive financial rewards and good payment. As soon as sickness comes creeping in they have to perform expert work in curing, otherwise they lose their payment (and reputation, possibly job). Treatments must be independently verified as safe, effective and curing, only then insurances will pay for it. Every harmful side effect acts as a possible banning cause for a treatment. There's an (possibly) individualized spectrum of each patients current health state and financial incentives to improve it as well as financial and possibly job-endangering penalties if it decreases caused by anything else than natural aging and accidents.
What do you think about this attempt at a better system and how could/would you improve/change it and where do you see its possible downfalls and problems?
Very good point and I encourage everybody to answer and speculate.
The incentive system in the medical complex is absolutely insane and geared toward exactly the opposite of what the goals should be. It is certainly a major part of the problem, particularly in drug development. Does anyone really think a drug company would sell a drug which would reduce their market - even if they happen to develop it? I have my doubts.
Thank you!
Well, with enough public and federal pressure, control and possibly force to get them to genuinely act for the health of society in general (which would serve the economy in various ways, societal harmony & much more of course in return) this should be possible to achieve from my perspective. If needed, sort out the greedy, sadistic psychopaths profiteering from the suffering of their fellow human beings, give them duties where they can do no harm and recruit the real healers of all kind with pure intentions to help patients and advance the field and with it take hugs steps of healing humanity from all kinds of suffering, from sicknesses of the body to the psyche (think of all the traumata and wounding from sickcare, war rackets, poisoning and so on...) and elevate them to unknown levels of health incorporating transformative new flexible-effective-impactful kinds of consciousness to serve humanity and nature in profoundly impactful and revolutionary ways.
Here's a suggestion: fail med students who don't know. And before that teach them, so they would know. That should, all by itself, solve about 60%-80% of the problem. Since I don't want to out myself, I can't go into details, but at one point a political decision has been made (apparently at the level of EU) to have X doctors, and from this decision a further decision followed to reduce the standards of education for doctors. I haven't been involved in the deliberations but I was present when the quality of medical education crashed through the floor. The "political decision hypothesis" is the only one which makes real sense in explaining this crash.
Very interesting.
In South Africa, medical education places black economic empowerment over meritocracy yet none of us gives a damn what colour the person helping us is, only hoping that they're the best.
You missed that the whole pharma-driven drug pushing is critically dependent on patents.
If drugs and medical devices cannot be patented, pharmas lose incentive to do drug discovery and research, and are forced to focus on reduction of costs in drug manufacturing.
The research then will be funded by insurers - and focused on prevention and cures rather than mainenance drugs. In the end insured pay for that research anyway. Risk of loss reduction is a good proxy for health of insured.
Excellent 💯, 90% or more of medical research is wrong because variables like iodine deficiency/halide excess and undiagnosed Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism were not screened for from the experimental and control groups. Magnesium deficiency is also inadequately screened for or diagnosed and would be an unidentified variable. Retinoid Toxicity, an excess of activated vitamin A is causing a lot of chronic illness but is also not well understood or screened for in studies. Any study with a control group or "normal health" people might not be that healthy after all.
The problem is that the culling seems to have been in play for decades and bad doctors and bad science and bad academics is on purpose so that the bad care/the poisonous culling strategies will continue with full support and endorsement from all the well paid and awarded bad doctors.
Why do you insult bus drivers?! 😏
I really shouldn't have. They do honest work, unlike most psychologists I know - and have more common sense. :/
I came across you stack by chance and am really amazed at its quality, depth and insights. Thanks a lot for your work.
Excellent article, with lots of accurate & impactful insight. The methodology is the most crucial part of a research paper, while the conclusion is the most subject to potential bias. No surprise, then, that most readers skip over the methods section and go straight to the conclusion, sacrificing critical thinking for convenience. You do a masterful job of explaining a few of the reasons how science & data can lead to misleading & erroneous conclusions when they are not properly applied.
When I was in my final year, one of the professors whom I greatly admired held a candid discussion amongst the students regarding suggestions for improvement. He listened as a wide variety of proposals were made - some feasible, some fantastical, some farcical.
Personally, I had been yearning for just such an opportunity, and my hand shot up in eagerness. With the system in place at the time, student doctors accumulated credits for various procedures, and graduation required a certain number of each. Whether or not the procedure benefited the patient, sadly, was completely irrelevant. In this way, it was reminiscent of the common "fee-for-service" model of payment used in the US, which leads to clinical notes that read things like, "The operation was a success, unfortunately the patient did not survive." (yes, this was a real note written by a real doctor!)
An early version of the Affordable Care Act attempted to introduce results-based care to the third-party payer system, which would have compensated doctors based upon how quickly patients returned to work as well as other functional rating indices & questionnaires. Sadly, the AMA successfully lobbied against this initiative - knowing, perhaps, that the performance metrics of most pharmaceutical & surgical interventions would be abysmal.
My proposal was simple: allow interns to select any objective outcome assessment method they wanted - as long as it was sufficiently valid & reliable, and relevant to the patient's condition. Then, allow them to treat the patient using whatever methods they desired - anything & everything they had been taught during their schooling, they would be free to apply as they like. Then, grade the student based upon the degree of improvement achieved by the techniques they used as measured by the assessment they chose.
(personally, i believe many interns would be shocked by the ineffectiveness of many standard treatments - still, best for them to discover this early on in their career)
Such a system would mimic the idea of results-based care, rewarding competent & innovative future practitioners who were attentive & engaged in their patients' care, and link the scores to something that actually mattered to patients in the real world.
in terms of health insurance, I always thought France had the right idea. They have basic universal healthcare and privatize cutting edge services. Although patients are responsible for maintaining their own health records rather than the doctor. This has the effect of encouraging personal responsibility. Everyone knows they are covered for the basics, but they also know if they want to see a specialist they're expected to pay out-of-pocket. If they misplace their healthcare records, they are responsible for going back and getting all the tests redone. By making the patient medical record their property, it also encourages them to stay involved with their healthcare, understand, and ask questions.
I would also opine that any restructuring of healthcare also needs to re-evaluate healthcare licensing. Currently, it's more of a form of state-sponsored extortion, tyranny, & oppression than a safeguard of the public health. When less than one-quarter of every disciplinary action is even remotely related to patient care or doctor competency, and doctors can literally get away with killing patients without sparking any sort of investigation but find themselves under scrutiny for attending any sort of mental health therapy - even marital counseling - it is undeniable that something is very wrong with the system. Kernon Manion has some great articles here on Substack that dive into the numerous issues with medical licensing boards across the nation.
Very good! Thank you. It seems that more and more we are pushed toward standing personally free and responsible. There are no other way.