I recently shared the reasons why I no longer attend annual doctor visits: in a nutshell, I can do better myself. And I have more convenient office hours.
It was a bit of a rant, which seems to have offended at least one presumed physician, Mitch Keamy (thanks for reading, by the way), who claims to “have practiced medicine for 48 years.” He dropped this comment in response:
“Physicians are much less likely to undertake high risk procedures and therapies than lay patients.”
Is that right?
That seems like a Freudian slip. Are you truly crazy enough to say out loud what each of us reads in the faces of our doctors, with the rolled eyes and smug condescension, as they patiently ignore what we say?
Dude, you just kicked the hornet’s nest!
You had better start running, because the stingers are heading your way!
You made a pretty bold statement, given that medical misadventures - such as medication errors, surgical complications, and hospital-acquired infections - are the third leading cause of death in this country. I’m pretty sure that patient-caused deaths don’t even make the top ten. Probably not even the top one hundred. So that would tend to negate your argument right up front.
If I were to rephrase Mitch’s comment somewhat, he’s basically saying that the average patient is more likely to be harmed by themselves in their personal effort to restore health, than by a physician who only attempts to manage his symptoms with chemicals, or by carving up his body to wage war on a random body part.
I’m certain that is not remotely close to the truth.
For instance, Vernon Coleman just wrote:
“In the US around 6% of 130 million patients admitted to [Accident and Emergency] hospitals are misdiagnosed - most are harmed, many are killed.”
That’s somewhere around EIGHT MILLION people. Annually. Harmed, or KILLED. By our medical system.
But I have no beef with most of emergency medicine in this country. It’s the one part of the system that is generally very helpful, and we’d all be worse off without it.
It’s mainly in treating chronic disease that our healthcare system fails miserably. That’s probably an area where the majority of insurance-reimbursed physicians should be fired outright. We need more healers, not more drug pushers and skilled butchers.
If they think that drugs or surgery is the answer to failing health, they clearly don’t even know what health is. They are in the wrong business. What they do has nothing to do with health.
But Mitch thinks we’re stupid enough that we’re going to hurt ourselves if we act without his profession acting as our brain crutch. How patronizing of him.
I wonder if Mitch believes the “horse paste” myth of five years ago? That stupid people were dropping like flies after ingesting animal-grade ivermectin. Instead of dying “with COVID” like they were supposed to (BAD patients!).
Someone ends up in the ER after ingesting ivermectin, and it’s headline news. Eight million people are hurt or killed in the ER every year due to misdiagnosis, and we never hear about it.
Can you say PROPAGANDA?
And I doubt the percentage of deaths among those eight million are a big contributor to the fact that medical misadventures are the third leading cause of death. I suspect it’s the treatment of chronic disease that clearly holds that honor.
The poly-pharmacy clogging up and clotting up our livers, kidneys, intestines, hearts and brains.
The barbaric cancer tumor exorcism rituals of burning, cutting and poisoning.
The questionable cardiac surgical interventions for easily preventable metabolic problems.
But Mitch insists any person who attempts to improve their health without a physician is likely to do MORE harm than a physician might do?
I guess Mitch has forgotten about the opioid crisis and all the deaths and suffering it caused.
Yeah, it was pharma that started that ball rolling, but only after doctors agreed to prescribe the stuff. Did someone forget to read the package insert before recommending that poison to anyone?
If so, what is informed consent worth, if the physician who is doing the informing is clueless about the harms?
And what about the thalidomide debacle back in the sixties? Women were suffering from anxiety, sleeplessness and/or morning sickness, and your profession prescribes a drug that induces serious birth defects. No harm there?
I’m guessing that the dramatic increase in our chronic disease burden that took place during Mitch’s tenure wasn’t his fault, either, or that of his former profession. I hear that it has increased around twenty-fold in half a century.
Of course it doesn’t help that your former profession has made a lot of new chronic diseases out of mere symptoms - that certainly distorts the picture. And they did that to sell us drugs that build toxicity in the body, which eventually leads to REAL chronic diseases. Great business model, by the way. But no harm there?
Take for example the drugs prescribed by your ilk which can lead to cataracts (steroids, glaucoma meds, STATINS, thorazine, compazine and likely others). That can’t be your former profession’s fault. They are HELPING us with those drugs. Clearly, negative side effects are someone else’s responsibility (another physician’s perhaps?). Again, a great business model. And the more negative side effects per drug, the better the model. Wow! Pure evil. But no harm there?
I’m guessing that the members of the healing arts who advocate for removing tonsils, adenoids, appendixes and gall bladders and other “unnecessary” organs aren’t doing more harm than a patient could ever do to themselves?
Of course not. They are HELPING them, by correcting a body that has been poorly designed by a billion or more years of evolution.
“Yes, Mr. Physician, please, PLEASE, save me from Mother Nature’s stupidity!”
What about all those prostate roto-rooter jobs that can leave a lot of men incontinent and/or impotent? All to treat what is usually a slow growing cancer that most men will outlive. I don’t know any guys who would do that to themselves. No harm there?
I’m guessing Mitch missed the story about how all-cause mortality DROPPED in 2020 during COVID. And it did that just as soon as the hospitals closed to the general public.
That meant no more elective surgeries. And fewer people died.
That meant fewer hospital-acquired infections. And fewer people died.
That meant fewer medication errors. And fewer people died.
All while people were supposedly dropping dead on the street from COVID, because we were told there were no treatment options? Shouldn’t all-cause mortality have increased during that time period? At least a little?
It sure sounded as though closing hospitals resulted in a net benefit to humanity. And it did that by reducing unnecessary harms.
I know that Mitch wasn’t there when an oncologist basically disemboweled my sister-in-law, in a barbaric attempt at exorcising her colon cancer (it was clearly a religious ritual, not a medical procedure). That debacle greatly accelerated her death spiral.
But she had deep faith in the ability of those of his former profession. Science and technology was going to save her. “I’ve got the very best, super-deluxe insurance, so give me the platinum treatment!,” she proclaimed. “And if that’s not enough, I can afford to pay out of pocket.”
Such sweet music to an oncologist’s ears!
I’m pretty sure she couldn’t possibly have ever dreamt of a slow, miserable death so horrific, yet she got to experience it all the same. She got to live with being ping-ponged between her skilled nursing facility and the ER, because she needed more care than the nursing facility could provide, yet she wasn’t sick enough to get admitted back into the hospital. So the ER would kick her back out the door as soon as her vitals were stable.
She’d go back to the nursing facility, her vitals would crash, and so they’d pass her back, like a hot potato, to the ER.
And they kept doing that for a few months, even causing her to go septic at one point. Eventually, it was clear even to her that dying was a much better alternative than the continued struggle to survive institutional lunacy and greed. So she reluctantly went on hospice.
She could have lived longer and better in any SANE healthcare system.
But not the way she was treated. That was a process designed for failure. And profit. No harm there?
And I know you weren’t there when my friend’s brother was being treated for colon cancer, and the drug they gave him caused his jaw to disintegrate. Literally, it just started dissolving away. It was a clear side effect listed on the drug insert, but hey, it doesn’t happen to everyone! Let’s roll the dice and see if we get lucky this time!
I seriously doubt that, on his own, Johnny would have ever have been stupid enough to have taken a drug like that, for any reason. I mean, who the hell would? And having your jaw dissolved is better than WHAT other fate? I mean besides being dead, and then JUST BARELY. That’s INSANE! And what kind of quality of life is that? What net benefit was he getting from that horror show? And they never stopped his cancer, which was nowhere near his jaw. No harm there?
I know you weren’t there when my mother had her pacemaker implanted, but it failed to fix her rhythm problem. And rather than her cardiologist making it a priority to set things straight, she got directed to the end of the line, to start the process all over again.
She aged about ten years during the three months it took to get back to the head of the line, and was really starting to circle the drain when they finally went back in and simply pulled out one of the leads from her pacemaker. Seriously, that’s all it took, pulling one wire out of her body.
That fixed the problem, and they, the heroic doctors who got her into that mess, gleefully patted themselves on the back for saving her life. Weren’t they so special and God-like? And it only cost her a serious loss of life-quality and several extra years of longevity.
Yet they got paid, TWICE!
You gotta love working in a system like that! There’s no harm in getting rich, right?
And of course, there are the mRNA shots. A technology that had failed miserably in animal trials for at least a decade, was never tested successfully in humans, and was then rushed to market uncritically. And which was so magical that people had to be coerced into taking it, especially after folks started witnessing firsthand the severe adverse reactions in people they knew. No harm there?
COVID infections in 2020 hadn’t increased all-cause mortality, but that all changed as soon as those magic shots rolled out at the end of the year. All-cause mortality spiked all over the world, except in the few places that mostly opted out - in places like Bolivia and parts of Africa. All while COVID had mutated into much less virulent strains, which meant that all-cause mortality should have DECREASED. But you say there’s no harm there?
HEY, but guess what?
The courts are now starting to rule that it was the individual physician’s fault for not giving adequate informed consent for those shots. You know, the physician who would lose their license if they didn’t give the shots, and bully their patients into taking them? It seems that if the powers-that-be need a scapegoat, it’s going to be you and your buddies, Mitch. Karma, baby! There’s DEFINITELY no harm whatsoever there!
Do you REALLY think that it’s possible for the average non-suicidal person to harm themselves to the extent that they can be harmed by a physician? That their innate survival mechanisms won’t kick in to stop them before things get that far? When the NUMBER ONE JOB of the human body’s is triage - directing resources first to those functions most critical to your survival? Mother Nature didn’t screw that up - she nailed it! No physician can come close to her handiwork!
But delegate the task to a physician, who has no connection to their patient’s inherent survival mechanisms, and all kinds of crazy shit can happen!
But, hey, what they did was one-size-fits-all standard-of-care, so they can’t be sued. And that’s all that matters. That, and that the physician remains minimally competent. Which means they haven’t had their license taken away by rocking the boat and thinking that they should actually help patients with treatments that truly work, as opposed to just using those that insurance will agree to pay for.
Given all that, is it any wonder that physicians are at a higher risk of suicide and suicidal ideation than the general population?
I mean, what doctor could sleep at night after even a few botched events like I’ve described? I wouldn’t be able to do it. At least not without brainwashing myself. Hell, I still even regret small things that I’ve done that hurt people emotionally. To my knowledge, I’ve never caused anyone physical harm, including myself.
So yeah, Mitch, my use of therapies that haven’t been “scientifically validated” (Doublespeak for being so safe, cheap and effective that they threaten your former profession’s existence) compares unfavorably to what your former profession has accomplished? Seriously?
Except, Mitch, there are two people and one small dog in my small household who have overcome several of their chronic diseases, when your former profession (and that of your cousins, the veterinarians) could at best provide symptom relief.
Symptom relief that wasn’t always very effective and often had nasty side effects.
Symptom relief that typically only adds to the chronic disease burden of your patients, by increasing the toxins that get trapped in their bodies.
Which inevitably leads to even more chronic disease, which means we need even more doctors. It’s an evil, vicious cycle. And a very costly one at that.
And I can tell you with great certainty that I’m feeling better now than I have in more than a decade. I have far fewer problems, way more energy (and I never thought that was a problem), and my jiggly subcutaneous fat is melting away faster than a glacier in a Mojave heatwave. All with absolutely no help from any front line doctors of your former profession (but with the help of several fantastic physician-authors and their decades of diligent research, including several here on Substack!).
And I’m doing it without some weird diet mantra or crazy exercise regimen. Health is our natural state, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to restore and maintain it.
Gee, Mitch. When I think of all the harm that your former profession has done, I’m wondering what SANE, intelligent person wouldn’t take things into their own hands? The odds are clearly in their favor that they won’t do any worse. And it HAS to be a whole lot cheaper and more effective!
But I don’t hold those failures against you personally, Mitch. You were indoctrinated from day one into a failed healing paradigm, at an age when your critical thinking skills weren’t fully developed. Nobody blames you for that. Or for believing your profession’s relentless propaganda, over your entire career, in defense of their failures. For a long time, we ALL believed that pile of horse manure. Until at least some of us woke up, once the COVID debacle unfolded. Though plenty of others are still happy being just another happy mushroom in the manure pile.
Your profession has done it’s darndest during my lifetime to make sure nobody ever learns that there are existing healing paradigms that actually work. You guys label anyone who threatens your failed paradigm as a quack. And you actually have a dedicated website for that sole purpose, quackwatch.com.
“Quack, QUACK, quack!” You people sound like a gaggle of unhealthy, choleric geese! Perhaps if you all got healthy you’d shut the heck up! But no, it’s easier to bellyache than to be healed.
Everybody who exposes your epic failures is a QUACK!
No wonder there is such a constant cacophony in the air, the media, the internet, as there is no end of epic failures to be exposed.
It’s the rare physician who finds the time to self-reflect, and sees that they may be doing more harm than good. Kudos to them for their awareness.
Those few will often change course and teach themselves how to help their patients heal. Or at least they try. They open their minds and listen to the quacks. And they quickly learn that most aren’t quacks - they are genuine HEALERS. Healers who have discovered gentler, simpler ways of helping the human body do what it was designed to, while you and your cohort wage war against our bodies, like old Blood-and-Guts Patton!
And it’s the rare physician with the misfortune of contracting one of any number of life-threatening diseases that your profession has absolutely no idea how to treat. Those few who survive such an ordeal invariably step outside of your failed healing paradigm and discover what truly works. And those guys become some of the best doctors ANYWHERE. THEY are the guys who should be teaching the future generations of physicians. Not the people who maximized insurance reimbursements, in order to have the glitzy sports car, house with a view and the late-life trophy wife or husband. Those folks aren’t healers, they are parasites: parasites who deserve to be starved.
Once a doctor has been in their patient’s shoes and experienced the epic chronic disease failures of your profession, they are acutely sensitive to doing harm. I doubt any of them would fault me for taking control of my own health, or for advocating that others do so as well.
Mitch, if your profession had gotten rid of the standard-of-care liability shield I might have returned to the fold. That’s just legal protection for corporations to exploit medical care for maximal profit, while avoiding nearly all liability. The result is that their income takes priority over our outcome. And that’s why acting for ourselves promises far more BENEFIT than harm.
But it’s too late now. I’m never coming back.
Your profession’s house of cards is slowly starting to collapse. When a good, strong breeze comes along, the final failure will be catastrophic. Good riddance!
I’ve discovered that healing is something each of us can do, and we don’t need a physician, lab test or x-ray to do it. We just need to figure out who the true healers are amongst us. And to learn to listen to them, and to our own bodies.
You say that by treating myself I’m being foolish. That’s it’s only a matter of time before age makes some dire calamity, such as a hemiplegic stroke, a very real possibility. Surely, anyone as irreverent as me is just tempting the Gods of Medicine to smite me, greatly amplifying such risks.
I say, smite away. There are no guarantees in life, and no certainties.
Taking your antihypertensive medication is no guarantee you won’t suffer a stroke, while at the same time it is pretty much guaranteed to clog up your liver. So go ahead and rob Peter to pay Paul. If that’s the best you can do, then that’s the best that you can do.
I know that I can do better.
And in a free country, it’s my right to do so, and my responsibility to accept the consequences if I happen to fall flat on my face.
I accept both my freedom and my responsibility, despite your industry’s fear mongering and patronizing.
I wish you the best of health, Mitch!
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