Diagnosis of Greed

I didn't dream that an innocent decision to study healthcare reform would make me feel this angry. (I'm trying to remember the "Be ye angry and sin not" injunction from Scripture.)

Unlike the students at Pilgrim, I didn't actually have to prepare both a written and an oral report on the subject, so I'm not upset over having to do any assigned task. I guess I'm just upset with the way things are, especially with what I see more and more as being a system that is broken because of greed and thirst for power on the part of some of the principal players in the healthcare drama. If I hadn't done so much reading and thinking on this, I'd be more comfortable and quiet. And more ignorant.

"Principal players" here does not refer to most healthcare practitioners, and not to politicians particularly. I don't even know the names of the people I'm angry with, and they probably don't look like monsters. Certainly they do not know or fear me--or care one whit about me, or you. But I hold them responsible for the death of some of my friends, and for the suffering of many others I've known. They have done this by several nefarious means.

Chief among the offenders, as I see it, are people in the pharmaceutical industry. Simply put, they have little to gain from finding cures for disease, and great wealth to gain from chronic illnesses for which doctors will prescribe drugs that never quite do a good enough job to make taking them unnecessary. "Cures" found in nature are anathema to these people because they can not be turned into profit for them. So they do their best (or worst) to keep them off the market. And they keep on offering expensive medicines to those of us who don't know any better, while they go off to Germany or elsewhere to have their own cancers treated.

Drug manufacturers have no law enforcement powers, but they have very good friends who do. In the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are many people who used to work in the pharmaceutical industry, and vice versa. It's a cozy arrangement where people try to take good care of their friends. Everyone else "loses" while these people are looking out for each other. Deliberate disinformation campaigns have been reported by former agents. They also report having been told to participate in suppressing damning evidence that their own approved products are ineffective or harmful. The more effective the competing product, the swifter and harsher the retribution.

The bottom line is that if the FDA has not approved a substance, it is against the law to assert that it has any effect on any disease condition. All manner of evidence may have been documented, but no one has a right to talk about it or sell as a health aid any of the substances involved. People who have done so have had their offices raided and all their records and possessions confiscated or destroyed. Some of them have been financially ruined while paying to defend themselves in court. They have paid fines, gone to jail, or been murdered. Many of them have left the country. Meanwhile prescribed poisons are regularly foisted on many who have no clue how slender is the thread of beneficial effect and how certain is the matter of deleterious side effects. But in the pocketbooks of pharmaceutical company executives and shareholders all is well as long as this situation continues.

I really don't want to think about this, but things seem to have gone awry too at some of the organizations that are big names in cancer research. One former researcher at Sloan-Kettering tells about his delight at having been hired there--to do a job he had always dreamed of. He loved his work and was genuinely excited when he saw evidence of an effective cancer treatment--a natural product. He prepared a press release on the findings, and then could not believe what happened next. Not only could the news not be publicized, but new "research" was done to disprove the effectiveness of the product. He saw up close how the results were manipulated in preparation for publishing Sloan Kettering's version of the product's efficacy. What was finally released was news that the product had been tested and found to have no effect.

Before he was fired, however, he did a lot of research, and discovered that people on the board of that highly regarded institution had many ties to media venues, pharmaceutical companies, and regulatory agencies. He saw clearly that many people had a lot to lose if cancer could be cured quickly, and they were very careful to protect themselves against such losses. The market for many currently prescribed chemotherapy drugs would dry up, as would the need for thousands of people who work in cancer research and drug delivery jobs.

Interestingly, many officially discredited natural products have actually been patented. In order for a patent to be granted, the product must be proven to work as the patent applicant says it does. A lot of work goes into preparing documentation that a product does what the applicant claims it does. So the patent office, by granting a patent, often directly contradicts what is being publicized elsewhere. In other words, while the FDA or Sloan Kettering are saying something doesn't work, the patent office is saying the evidence shows that it does work.

This is possible because many of the limitations at the FDA do not apply to the patenting process. For example, a single product that reportedly alleviates arthritis pain, protects the heart, and relieves headaches can be patented if the effects can be proven. But if the FDA approves a drug, it will be labeled for treatment of only one condition, unless the whole million- dollar-plus testing process is undertaken for another disease condition. And it's against the law to prescribe it for an off-label use. The side effects must be listed, the LD50 must be determined, and the one-product/one-disease connection must be established. These three requirements for FDA approval hardly ever can be determined for any natural product that people want to use therapeutically, so it's a moot point to consider a natural product suspect if the FDA has not approved it. It might simply mean that it has no side effects, it will not at any dosage kill half of the research animals(the Lethal Dose for 50% of the research subjects--LD50), and it alleviates more than one health problem.

I won't go into how lawyers enter into the villainous "principal players" equation. They are not all alike, of course. However, those who file dubious malpractice lawsuits in hopes of being paid a hefty share of any money awarded are as guilty of greed as anyone.

In recent weeks I've learned that a friend who has breast cancer plans not to seek conventional treatment. Not surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation--only natural means. I'm a little afraid for her. But I've heard recently too from another friend who made the same decision a number of years ago. She is well today. I remember too the husband of my former student who has lived for years with prostate cancer. His wife told me that they are using natural means to address the problem. I haven't heard recently how things are, but I do know that he has survived so far.

I have always thought it wisest to seek conventional cancer treatment, as well as adding whatever natural remedies that seem prudent. But I know now that I will need wisdom beyond what is offered through "official" sources to know what is really driving the treatment recommendations I hear from those sources. Granted, following the money trail is not always easy to do, and discerning the motives of those who make a lot of money is even more difficult to do, and I would have to commit to a "due diligence" process to sort things out. If I came to understand that greed, in fact, is hidden behind an offer of a high-priced drug with questionable benefit and certain side effects, I might have the courage to look right past the prescribing doctor to the greedy supplier and say politely to the doctor, "Thank you for your help, but I'd like to consider all my options before I decide what to do."

Who knows how many more prayers I would offer, how many more 80 minute documentaries I might have to sit through, how many more medical school textbook chapters I would have to examine, and how many more 483 page books I would have to read? People who have gone the natural route for cancer treatment have felt more than a little beleaguered by the decision-making process involved. I'm sure I would feel the same way. But, from this vantage point, I think I would rather be inconvenienced in that way than blindly trusting my well-being to people who have shown themselves to be more concerned about profiting from my disease than finding a cure for my disease.