The Iatrogenic Condition

Herb, a subscriber from Atlanta, who is a medical doctor, also tries to keep me honest. Herb asks why I seem to be down on Western medicine and pharmaceuticals. My answer is that I do not oppose Western medicine and pharmaceuticals. On the contrary, I think they have fantastic diagnostic capabilities. I oppose the blatant use of cut, burn, or poison treatments. And, I recommend that people take more control of their own bodies, because one half of all maladies are iatrogenic.

Iatros means healer in Greek. Iatrogenesis is almost exclusively used to refer to a state of ill health or adverse effect or complication caused by or resulting from medical treatment. There are many sources of iatrogenesis: medical error, negligence or faulty procedures, doctor assisted suicide (e.g. Euthanasia ), poor prescription handwriting, prescription drug interaction, adverse effects of prescription drugs, underestimating potentially negative drug effects, over-use of drugs leading to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, radical treatments, misdiagnosis, nosocomial infection, mental, nervous, sensorial or muscular disease in physicians (very rare), medical torture, blood transfusion, coercion.

Patients tend to go from one specialist to another and each specialist has very little knowledge of the previous healer's efforts A iatrogenic cascade ensues. Cascade iatrogenesis is a series of increasingly more severe effects on the health of patients, caused by medical interventions which were applied to solve the previous one. A good example is a real case of a patient who had severe arthritis. Cortisone therapy at a high dose was instituted and was effective for a while, but prolonged use caused the first iatrogenic effect in the cascade: diabetes. Chronic diabetes increased the patient's susceptibility to infections and activated a latent pulmonary tuberculosis with hemoptysis. Cortisone treatment was suspended and substituted by ACTH therapy, which provoked adrenal insufficiency and severe osteoporosis, with painful spontaneous bone fractures (including fracture of ribs caused by an external cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempt. Generalized organ failure and infection followed, with death.

Could this cascade have been avoided? I don't know but I am avoiding it. For my arthritic knee, I use tumeric. I control my diabetes through diet, cinnamon, kriyas and exercise. I maintain my adrenals and pineal glands and lungs with simple breathing exercises. I am 63 years old and at last year's' complete medical exam, I was told by the cardiologist that I had the cardiovascular system of a 20 year old athlete. The only pharmaceuticals I have taken in the last forty years is the antibiotic, doxycyclene, which was necessary for the three times I caught lime disease while paddling through North America and as a prophylactic against malaria, when paddling through Africa.

Iatrogenis is the third leading cause of death. In the US, that means 225,000 deaths last year.

To answer Herb's next question, before he asks - How many deaths are caused by natural medicines? Again, I don't know. But you can read the opinion of New Zealand's coroner, who has studied the subject - Natural medicines – the safest way to avoid death

Any questions??