Legalizing Medical Marijuana

A recent Letter to the Editor to The Berkshire Eagle

Your recent article about “Pot on Statewide Ballot” states; “the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), representing 24,000 doctors, also opposes legalizing medicinal marijuana without scientific proof that if would be safe and effective on patients.”

Really? Perhaps they never heard of Google. Or, they have some other motives

According to the government: the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (2009) Annual Causes of Death in the US: Cannabis/Marijuana ranks dead last, at ZERO deaths.

“Indeed, epidemiological data indicate that in the general population marijuana use is not associated with increased mortality.” Source:  Janet E. Joy: “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base,” Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), p. 109.

On the other hand:

1.      According to the CDC: “in the United States, tobacco use is responsible for about one in five deaths annually, about 443,000 deaths per year.

2.      Lack of health insurance and access to basic care kills 44,789/year.

3.      Preventable medical errors in hospitals kill 12,000/week = 624,000/year, a conservative estimate, responsible for 26% of deaths, making it the 3^rd leading cause of death.

4.      An article by Dr. Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, in JAMA: Vol.284, No.4, 07/26/2000: revealed that prescription drugs kill around 106,000 people in the US every year making it the fourth leading cause of death. “The data did not include fatal reactions caused by accidental overdoses or errors in administration of the drugs. If these had been included, it is estimated that another 100,000 deaths would be added to the total every year.” Furthermore, every year there are 2,216,000 serious adverse drug reactions (ADR’S). HMO’s spend more money treating ADR’s than they do on drugs.

When you understand that the MMS, like the AMA, are trade associations whose primary purpose is to protect doctors’ incomes, and have virtually nothing to do with improving patient safety and care outcomes, then the above starts to make some sense.

Why would they deny suffering and dying patients access to a benign, very helpful, inexpensive medicinal herb? As always, follow the money.

Clearly, the MMS and the AMA should be more concerned about the scientific proof, safety and efficacy of their doctors’ routine medical practices and prescribing habits.

The functioning of our democracy depends on an informed public given, as best possible, verifiable facts, not self-serving myths.

Peter May

North Adams, MA 01247

10-12-2012

Placebo & Research

Placebo & Research

It has been my experience that two of the most common questions asked of alternative health practitioners are:

1. What is the research?

2. Is it placebo?

These are excellent and appropriate questions. But, with that said, these questions are ingrained in us, like knee-jerk responses, to ask of all alternative therapies, serving as tools/weapons used by the prevailing medical paradigm to undermine alternative treatments and distract from the dangers of allopathic medicine.

Let me explain.

First, and most obviously, I am reasonably sure that most patients are not asking these same questions of their doctors about all prescribed drugs and recommended courses of care; from statins to anti-depressants, from chemotherapy to radiation, from cardiac catheterization to bypass, from mammograms to prostate screens, and on-and-on. It is assumed that the research exists and supports the treatment, and that treatment is, not only, not placebo, but better than placebo.

In the same way the knee-jerk response has been ingrained to ask alternative practitioners, it has been ingrained into us to trust medicine, and specifically not ask doctors.

Throughout their history, the AMA and its extension, the FDA, have suppressed and persecuted alternative treatments that challenge medical dominance. One of their most powerful tools has been controlling and denying funds to research alternative therapies. Their consistent justification has been: ‘just by looking at it gives it a level of credibility we don’t want to promote.’ The self-serving result has been their mantra ‘there is no research to support... (fill in the alternative therapy).’ How convenient?

At the same time, the quality and reliability of medical research and its peer review have been totally corrupted by their highly profitable incestuous relationship with BigPharma. It is corporate science, plain and simple. And, it has emphasized research on dangerous pharmaceuticals and invasive medical procedures to the willful exclusion of the empirical and scientific evidence of natural remedies that work.

In what I believe is one of the most damning statements ever made, in September 2001, the editors of the 12 most prestigious medical journals published a unified message titled Sponsorship, Authorship and Accountability:

“We are concerned that the current intellectual environment in which clinical research is conceived, study subjects are recruited and the data analyzed and reported (or, not reported) may threaten (scientific) objectivity….In light of that truth, the use of clinical trials primarily for marketing makes a mockery of clinical investigation and is a misuse of a powerful tool.”

And yet, they continue to print and disseminate what they know to be fraudulent research that results in widespread use of unsupported and lethal treatments. At the same time they propagate skepticism, doubt and fear about alternative therapies.

As for the dreaded placebo…

The fundamental principle and underlying effect of placebo is as a catalyst that activates the mind/body’s innate capacity for self-regulation and self-healing. Placebo pills alone have been 30 to 90% effective. And, the placebo effect for successful outcomes has been estimated to occur in 30 to 70% of all therapeutic treatments. That is, that the patient got better because of the placebo effect, and not the specific treatment. In addition, “A paper published in the October 19 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine – entitled “What’s In Placebos: Who Knows?” calls into question the foundation upon which much of medicine rests (comparative testing to placebo), by showing that there is no standard behind the standard – no standard for the placebo.”

It is sad and emblematic of the major problem of the medical model that it denigrates the placebo effect and uses it in a pejorative manner to undermine and cast doubt on other effective forms of therapy, up to and including alternative treatments for cancer. And while patients routinely ask alternative practitioners whether or not their treatment is placebo, the patients are distracted from asking their medical doctor critical questions regarding their medical treatment:

1. What are my absolute risks verses benefits of treatment?

2. What is the NNT? the number of patients needed to treat to see the outcome you are saying?

Bearing in mind that hospitals are killing 12,000 patients per week (624,000/year), as a result of the care they received and not because of what brought them to the hospital in the first place, one can see the supreme importance of these questions!

In my opinion there is no better treatment than placebo to activate the mind/body’s life-force capacity to heal itself. The question then becomes not if the therapy is placebo, but (with, or without, supporting research) how often does it succeed in improving the health of the patient?

Tribute to Jack LaLanne

My Tribute to Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne, ‘the founder of the modern fitness movement,’ died at the age of 96. He was a showman and a salesman. He was passionate in his message, and his message was spot on correct. It was a message of health.

In 1936 Jack LaLanne “opened the prototype for the fitness spas to come — a gym, juice bar and health food store — in an old office building in Oakland. The Jack LaLanne Show made its debut in 1951 as a local program in the San Francisco area, and then went nationwide on daytime television in 1959.”

Had Americans heeded his advice back then, and ignored the advice of their doctors and the AMA, we would have been a much healthier nation and tens of millions of lives would have been spared the devastation and death of the chronic lifestyle degenerative diseases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and more.

According to Jack LaLanne, “the doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” Oops. What an amazing, glaring, costly (in terms of disease, death and money) and self-serving ignorance of health that turned out to be a financial bonanza for the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex.

And this was far from the first, or last, time they have been so wrong. In fact, I refer to it as ‘creating the next generation of users’ (of medical/pharmaceutical care and insurance).

“Back in the 1930’s, the AMA played a role in establishing cigarettes as a popular product. The AMA helped develop, and then accepted in its journal, advertisements that made cigarettes appear to be a physician endorsed product.” In fact, in the 1940’s, cigarette makers regularly used ‘science’ and physicians in their ads to sell cigarettes. “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette,” "cool and soothing to the back of the throat"…fueling the rise of lung disease and death from emphysema and cancer. Oops.

The 1950’s brought the cholesterol scare. The combination of food industry and medical science and doctors began to scare people away from eating natural animal fats in favor of the synthetic trans fats vastly contributing to the rise of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and death over the subsequent decades. Oops.

And now, doctors are scaring people out of the sun in favor of the full-body application of chemical sunscreens for life, creating a pandemic of vitamin D deficiency. “Individuals with low levels of vitamin D appear to have a higher risk of death from all causes, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.” Oops.

Why is none of this surprising? What would you expect from an industry that focuses on, and profits from, disease and disease care; generating $2.6 trillion dollars in 2006 ($86,000/second), projected to be $4.3 trillion ($136,000/second) by 2017?

Jack LaLanne was a chiropractor. His message was/is the message of chiropractic health; that health is the innate set-point and possible throughout our lives if we safeguard and nurture it with proper exercise and nutrition…a simple, elegant, and irrefutable message. Why is it so hard for people to believe?

Worth watching. As they say, it harks back to a more innocent time.

Redefining Quackery

Redefining Quackery

“Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.” A noble standard, if only it was true.

Medicine, like so much in our society, has lost its way. And, in its wake, like that of the financial institutions that rig the markets and steal, and corporations that pollute our environment and our bodies, there is a very human toll.

But medicine, a business purportedly centered on ‘maintaining and restoring human health,’ as such, and unlike financial institutions and corporations, requires higher standards.

But, sadly, so much of its practice has devolved into pure ‘quackery’ (to borrow a word so often brandished by the AMA, in their never-ending war for market dominance).

“Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe the promotion of unproven or fraudulent medical practices. The word "quack" derives from the archaic word "quacksalver," of Dutch origin, meaning "boaster who applies a salve." In the Middle Ages the word quack meant "shouting". The quacksalvers sold their wares on the market shouting in a loud voice.”

On TV, on any given evening, on any channel, the drug companies are ‘boasting’ their life-saving health elixirs that promise anything from safe 3+hour erections to thicker and longer eyelashes; from legal uppers and downers, to sleep aids, from prescription skin rejuvenators to prescription fish oils, to fast-acting pre-meal heartburn and upset stomach pills that encourage us to eat whatever we want, especially foods our bodies would otherwise reject.

All of these elixirs and more have several things in common: little, to nothing, to do with ‘restoring health or preventing disease’, all have side-effects, ranging from mild to lethal, all are generating huge profits for Big Pharma, and all require a prescription and a visit to the pharmaceutical companies’ sanctioned retailers and legal drug dealers, doctors.

Add to that medical quackery in the form of cosmetic surgery: lip and breast augmentations, vaginal labia reductions, hair implants and laser hair removal; not-to-mention, abdominal implants and ‘sketching’ for men.

Clearly these are drugs and procedures in search of markets and have virtually nothing to do with medicine, ‘as the art and science of healing.’ It is all part of a far broader problem, the medicalization of life: the expanding of diagnoses and narrowing of the definition of normal, using constant repetition and playing on our fears and insecurities, to convince us that our bodies are inadequate, and that every possible symptom, from headache, to shyness, sadness to stomach ache, anything and everything, are conditions that require cure, instead of say, introspection and change.

Combine all of that with the fact that only an estimated 15% of everything that doctors do is backed by hard scientific evidence. Most of the rest is supported by anecdotal evidence, perpetuated mythology (ie: chemical imbalances in the brain, cholesterol), or self-serving, fraudulent corporate-sponsored science fiction. Consider only the field of invasive cardiology: “the data from clinical trials are clear: Except in a minority of patients with severe disease, bypass operations don’t prolong life or prevent future heart attacks; nor does angioplasty.” And yet, as of 2005, cardiologists performed about 400,000 bypass surgeries and over 1 million angioplasties per year. In fact, the evidence, by far, supports lifestyle changes of a healthy diet and exercise to significantly decrease the risk, not only of heart attack, but of all diseases. But, doctors, hospitals and drug companies do not make money on patient health.

A model of health that shamelessly promotes disease and passive medical consumerism, creating lifetime career patients, is not only quackery; it is dangerous to our health, producing untold numbers of patient victims of that care.

First Do No Harm

First Do No Harm

On August 24^th, 1987 US District Court Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA (American Medical Association) and its officials “instituted a boycott of chiropractors. The purpose of the boycott was to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession. This conduct constituted a conspiracy among the AMA and its members and an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of Section I of the Sherman (Anti-Trust) Act.”

Does this represent an isolated case of the AMA’s persecution to ‘contain and eliminate’ a competing profession and/or effective alternative treatment outside of the medical drug paradigm? No way!

Case closed: has the AMA stopped this type of persecution? No way! It is woven into the very core of their history and their ongoing mission; a medical-pharmaceutical monopoly.

The history of the AMA is a compelling read of personal and political power and corruption entwined with corporate interests, profits and greed; the usual suspects.

In 1909, Abraham Flexner, a teacher ( with no other qualifications), backed by the corporate interests of the Carnegie Foundation, with personal family ties to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Education, issued The Flexner Report. This superficial and prejudiced opinion paper launched a kind of “paradigm coup. It declared and established an orthodoxy of healing dominated by the medical, allopathic, model based in modern chemistry and the prescription of drugs by doctors.

All other modalities were to be shunned (and labeled as quackery), especially the vitalistic approaches that talked about working with the energy or structure of the body, rather than its chemistry. From the manipulations of chiropractors or osteopaths, to the use of energy devices in connection with the body, any healing approaches based on physics were rejected. In the new medical realm, chemistry was king.” (HP of LENS 335)

The goal was to eliminate the competition.

Along the way it inextricably linked medical practice and research, for better and worse, with corporate-sponsored science. Together, they made medicine/health-care an ‘industrial mass-market phenomenon’ and empire.

Along the way they betrayed their Hippocratic Oath: First, Do No Harm by subverting, in so many ways, any other possible effective treatments, or even cures, for anything from back pain to depression to cancer, sacrificing untold numbers of lives.

But the irony of it is laughable. Modern medicine uses the body’s energy and physics in almost all realms of diagnosis, including x-ray, CT, MRI, EKG, EEG, Ultrasound, functional MRI, PET Scans, chromatograpy, lasers, the electron microscope, etc,. At the same time, they continue to condemn, marginalize, and ridicule any treatment or modality that uses the body’s own energy/physics to restore homeostasis and health. All but one that is; the rather medieval EST (electroshock therapy) now known as ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). That one they like. It fits their paradigm that treatment requires ever more potent and powerful interventions; that the body needs to be shocked, drugged or operated on; that more subtle energy techniques could not possibly work.

They deny funding for research into other healing modalities, supporting their claim of the absence of evidence. Yet, of all they do in diagnosis and treatment, it is estimated that only 15% has the standard of scientific evidence that they hold all other alternative treatments to. Not to mention that ‘the absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. The fact that there are few rigorous studies of an idea doesn’t mean the idea isn’t powerful; it may mean that science refuses, for whatever prejudices, to study the concept.’ (symp p xii)

This is not meant to condemn all of medicine. Some drugs, emergency and surgical interventions approach the miraculous. It is simply a condemnation of their arrogant quest to maintain a disease-oriented, chemical-based medical monopoly at the expense of other efficacious health-nurturing, physics-based alternative therapies such as chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, bio and neurofeedback, among others.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction

In the last 50 years or so a new science emerged that now dominates and influences almost all, if not all, fields of research: corporate science. The name itself exposes the obvious conflict of interests between the corporate profit motive and scientific independence and integrity. This bottom-line driven science leaves little, to nothing, to chance, let alone real science.

Perhaps, the only real and accurate corporate sciences are their self-serving studies on population demographics and human motivation/psychology as they affect profit, i.e.; consumerism.

Corporate profit-driven science, as endorsed by the government, and glorified and broadcast by the media has created a through the looking glass reality that has us believing incredible non-science, non-sense; selling us spin as science that is literally making us sicker, and killing millions annually as profits soar.

We have come to rely on their science, disguised as television and media news, informative ads and magazine articles, patient advocacy groups, etc., as our prime source for health and nutrition information. More so than any other source. And then, conveniently, they sell us the cure.

Could the atmosphere be any more conducive to manipulation and corruption? Yes.

Our belief in science has been carefully cultivated and nurtured to elicit a knee-jerk, hypnotic-type, unquestioning and accepting response to key words, phrases, visual and auditory cues that drive our buying habits.

We have been indoctrinated to respond to unsubstantiated words such as: studies show,

scientists say, doctors agree, FDA –AMA-American Heart Association or American Cancer Association approved, low-fat, cholesterol-free, high fiber, vitamin-fortified, omega-3, heart healthy, calcium-enriched, anti-oxidant, osteoporosis, acid-reflux, etc.; visual cues such as actors in white coats, a stethoscope, a clogged artery, an acid-filled stomach, a gurney, an ambulance, an ER, an MRI machine, a ‘Healthy Heart’ logo, and now, a ‘Smart Choice’ logo, etc.; and, auditory cues such as a heartbeat or the electronic sound of an EKG, and the never-ending drone: "ask your doctor if you need."

The mere fact that most people even know these scientific words, phrases, visual and auditory cues is testimony to the extent and effectiveness of the indoctrination. Why else, but for marketing reasons, would your average person even know words like cholesterol, anti-oxidant, osteoporosis, trans-fat, etc.?

How else could you possibly explain the labeling of non-food chemical concoctions such as:

vitamin-fortified, high-fiber, low-cholesterol, fat-free Froot Loops and Popsicle with anti-oxidants, as ‘Smart Choice’ healthy foods?

We are willing, if not unwitting, participants in this science of deception. We continue to allow ourselves to be duped and manipulated by corporate science to the extent that we have lost our most basic understanding of our own health and how to nurture it.

Sadly, as we have listened to corporate science over the past 50 years we have gotten only sicker. All of their scientific non-food products have led to skyrocketing rates of the chronic degenerative diseases: diabetes, heart disease, obesity, osteoporosis and cancer. We then seek salvation from corporate run medical science and pharmaceuticals taking us through the looking glass to a place where drugs, tests, and procedures supposedly equal health, but in reality only equate with profits.

Political InAction

Political InAction

Whether or not you are paying attention to, and engage in, the health care reform debate the outcome will be determined by the most vocal and influential voices in Washington.

Take heed, the vested interests of the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex are geared up and out in full force.

“The big guns are out and they're firing. All major lobbying firms in Washington - many of them brimming with ex-members of Congress - are now crawling all over the Hill. Lots of money is on the table. The AMA's political action committee has contributed $9.8 million to congressional candidates since 2000, and its lobbying arm is one of the most formidable on the Hill. Meanwhile, Big Insurance and Big Pharma are increasing their firepower. The five largest private insurers and their trade group America's Health Insurance Plans spent a total of $6.4 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year, up more than $1 million from the first quarter last year, and are spending even more now. United Health Group spent $1.5 million in the first quarter, up 34 percent from the $1.1 million it spent in the first quarter last year. Aetna spent $809,793 between January and the end of March, up 41 percent from last year. Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, spent more than $6.1 million on

lobbying between January and March,more than double what it spent last year. It also spent nearly $3.3 million lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2008. Every one of them is upping their spending.”

Theirs’ is a no-holds barred attack to secure their profits. They straight-out buy politicians, former ones like Dole and Daschle, to lobby the current ones, their former colleagues. They buy air-time and endlessly broadcast self-serving public media, news/propaganda, and advertising campaigns based on distortions and outright lies to propagate fear. They fear-monger with buzzwords like socialized medicine, rationing of care, long waits, and compromised quality of care, as if they cared about any of that, or your health. As if we don’t already have rationing of care, long waits and compromised care. As if the current unfettered corporatocracy/plutocracy is better for the American people than socialized medicine, if it came to that.

President Obama is holding town-hall type meetings on the subject to drum up public support for the public option. He knows that as rich and powerful as the special interests are, in shear numbers, there are more of us than them. And, because we can vote we can speak with a unified voice to force the hands of our corporate-owned politicians. We can have our say, and we can win, but only if we participate en masse.

Everything in life is political, especially politics!

What have you done today to make your voice heard so that your interests are protected, over those of the corporate giants?

This issue is too critical for you to sit by and do nothing. It demands your attention and political action. You must call your Senators, Congressmen and the White House repeatedly to voice your support of a public option. If they are not hearing from YOU, they are most certainly hearing, and feeling the pressure, from special interest lobbyists and major corporate campaign contributors.

Ultimately, the future landscape of health care will be whatever we let happen during this debate.

Political inaction is an action. It is to allow the special interests to prevail.

Get involved.

Act as if your health, and the health of your loved ones, depends on it!

Call your Senators, Congressmen and The White House today, and get everyone you know to call as frequently as possible.

Misconceptions About Corn Syrup? NOT!

Talk about vigilance. Kudos to Audrae Erikson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, for spotting a single negative reference to high fructose corn syrup in a four page local newspaper (The Transcript: Elf Parlor Pouring Local Brews: ”We want everything to be as fresh and as healthy as possible. We don't use high-fructose corn syrup.")

But that is what lobbyists and political action committees are paid to do- protect the financial and political interests, and public perception and image, of their clients, huge Agra-businesses such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, etc.

Erickson’s response, in my opinion, is misleading. The AMA stamp of approval has nothing to do with either public health or safety, and high fructose corn syrup is not benign.

Contrary to popular belief, the AMA is not a benevolent group of wise grey-haired doctors looking out for the health of Americans. The AMA is a political action committee dedicated to protecting the financial interests and political influence of its members.

Their history is rather appalling and finds them on the wrong side of many public health issues.

Working with the tobacco industry, they actively endorsed cigarettes and smoking, contributing to untold disease, subsequent medical interventions and deaths related to COPD and lung cancer. In another mega-boon to Agra-business, they advocated the use of margarine and vegetable oil products associated with trans-fats, over butter and other natural animal fats, contributing to untold diseases, medical management and deaths related to cardiovascular disease and cancer. And, most recently, they have frightened the public out of the sun and advocated massive use of sun block  largely contributing to the current pandemic vitamin D deficiency, that according to recent studies is associated with an increased risk ‘in all-cause mortality (deaths of all causes).’

Among other things, the AMA also vehemently opposed Medicare coverage for Americans over the age of 65, and all attempts at health care reform to date. The AMA has been found guilty in the Supreme Court, on at least two occasions, of violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act for restraint of trade, trying to monopolize the field of health care. And more.

I suspect their recent endorsement of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) will be found to be yet another misguided AMA position statement detrimental to public health leading to diseases requiring life-long medical management.

At sweetsurprise.com, ’the site devoted to answering your questions and providing factual information about high fructose corn syrup,’ one can access studies with titles and conclusions such as: “Frequent soft-drink consumption does not lead to higher obesity rate.” (And my 87 year old mother is poised to win the Tour de France)

First of all, in terms of studies, there is a great saying: “Tell me who’s asking the questions, and I’ll tell you what answers they want.’

This study includes such stunning statements as: “In consideration with other factors that potentially influence obesity occurrence as indicated in the risk analysis, the noted frequent SSB (sugar-sweetened beverages) intake in obese adults was not sufficient to be a significant factor for elevating obesity risk.” In other words, if you are obese and frequently drink soda, it does not increase your risk of obesity.

This type of non-science, non-sense study only serves the interests of its sponsors (Regulatory, Nutritional and Scientific Affairs Group, James R. Randall Research Center, Archer Daniels Midland Company) at the expense of scientific truth and public health.

Even if we were to accept the notion that high fructose corn syrup is ‘generally regarded as safe,’ the fact that it is ubiquitous in processed foods and soft drinks makes it dangerous. Consumption of high fructose corn syrup has gone from a half pound per person in 1970 to 62 pounds per person by 2003. This is consistent with the skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and cancers in both adults and children. 

While there are other associated factors, such as sedentary lifestyle, smoking, etc., it is purely a self-serving distraction and a lie to suggest that high fructose corn syrup is safe and has not contributed hugely to the increased incidence and deaths associated with all of these diseases.