Let me first make it clear what is NOT the goal of this blog. I am not here to discredit the whole profession of western/main stream medicine (allopathic medicine). I am a pharmacist of western medicine. I have worked more than three decades in my profession. Western medicine has come a long way to evolve into the way it is today. There have been many great discoveries in western medicine, such as antibiotics starting with penicillin which marks the beginning of antibiotic era. Countless lives have been saved since Second World War because of the availability of penicillins and newer antibiotics we know today. Anesthesia is another great discovery of western medicine. Since 1846 with the first successful surgical procedure performed with anesthesia using ether by Dr. W.T.G Morton, known as the father of modern anesthesia, the use of anesthetics enables major surgeries to be performed. In this area, western medicine has made huge strides in alleviating pain and suffering and saving lives. Much knowledge has also been gained in areas of human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, nutrition and more. New drugs, especially synthetic drugs are discovered or synthesized faster and faster than the medical professionals can keep up with. New technologies are being invented at a fast pace in the area of screening and diagnosis. These all sound good, right? But are we paying enough attention to the downsides?
I want to make myself clear that I do not hate western medicine. However, you will discover that this blog will focus on the dangers and negative aspects of western medicine. Why should I do that? From my experience of being in the medical profession for decades, I realize that the positive aspects of western medicine are already well known. Doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other healthcare professional were educated in school about them along with the negative aspects except that the benefits are often exaggerated and emphasized and the hazards are downplayed if not hidden. After school, healthcare professionals are educated about the new drugs and new devices mainly by the sales representatives of pharmaceutical and device companies. You should be aware that the main goal of sales representatives is sale, not education. When I first graduated from pharmacy school, the pharmaceutical reps were pharmacists. Today, they can come from any educational background, many of them from marketing backgrounds. I also noticed over the years, more and more sales reps are good looking young females. Take a wild guess why that is.
Patients are bombarded with advertising with subliminal messages about the effectiveness of new drugs or devices. Doctors are often too busy to educate their patients even if they are aware of the dangers themselves. As a result, patients are given false hopes or harmed at the expense of our over-burdened national healthcare budget.
The purpose of my blog is to expose the dangers of main stream medicine. These dangers include hidden dangers and dangers in plain sight but not recognized and or acknowledged by lay people and even many healthcare professionals due to many reasons, which will be elaborated in various articles in this book. These dangers include, but not limited to, overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, unnecessary screenings, unnecessary tests, unnecessary surgeries, drug side effects that affect most people but not being recognized due to inadequate patient education, unnecessary treatments as a result of bias and corruption in medical research, unethical medical malpractice, drug abuses and lack of empathy, ethics and commitment to patients’ interest by certain healthcare professionals.
My goal is to empower people to avoid being the willing victim of these dangers. There are many books on the market that address the negative sides of modern medicine. However, many of them are too focused on one or two subjects, over filled with information from clinical studies not well understood by lay people, but lack information on the financial burden these hidden dangers have created and will continue to create for our healthcare system. If we can increase the awareness of healthcare consumers and manage to eliminate the abuses and unnecessary treatments, perhaps we can change the paradigm of healthcare being a ‘disease business’ to ‘wellness business’. The road to healthcare for all will be much smoother for United States of America.
I will focus on presenting my information on as many subjects as possible in a concise manner with as little scientific mumbo jumbo as possible. After suffering a lengthy intestinal infection due to water shortage in Hong Kong when I was a teenager, I decided to pursue the profession of pharmacy. When I first entered the pharmacy profession, I intended to be the ‘angel of life’. I naively thought there is a drug or solution for every illness in western medicine. Unfortunately, after decades of practice in pharmacy, I realized that was just a wish. Not only we do not have a solution for every illness, I discovered in many occasions, I felt I was doing the work of the ‘angel of death’. By writing articles for this blog, I hope to enhance my role as the ‘angel of life’.
I want to emphasize here that this blog is not meant to substitute for the medical advices your doctors gave you or will give you. All articles in this website are intended to increase your awareness of the dangers so you can be better equipped to evaluate the advice and care you receive from your doctors or other healthcare professionals throughout your journey as a patient from doctors’ offices, in hospitals, or in long term healthcare facilities. Hopefully you will survive the minefield of healthcare unharmed. Any change of decision you make regarding your healthcare after reading any article in this blog is solely your responsibility. You are encouraged to do further readings and obtain second or third opinions preferably from healthcare professionals not related to each other before you make any healthcare decisions.
Author: Diana Chan
References
1. A Brief History of the Antibiotic Era: Lessons Learned and Challenges for the Future https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109405/
2. History of Anesthesia: https://www.woodlibrarymuseum.org/history-of-anesthesia/