Suzanne Humphries, MD
May 15, 2010
Do doctors swear an oath to the CDC? The FDA? The AMA? Just who are doctors responsible to anyway?
Most doctors do swear an oath upon leaving medical school and it is named after an ancient physician named Hippocrates, who practiced medicine around 400 BCE. The Hippocratic Oath is known to most for its promise that doctors will “do no harm”, a phrase found in its original Greek version. Over the millennia, the Hippocratic Oath has been rewritten several times in order to suit the values of different cultures. The version most commonly used in medical school graduations today was written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University(1). There are four parts of the oath that are worth discussing in relation to today’s medical environment:
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
How often can this type of medicine happen within the walls of medical centers today, with their pressured sick-care construct? Doctors will be the first to tell you that there simply isn’t enough time. They can’t give this type of attention to the sick people in their waiting rooms with only 15-30 minute office visits.
If this first section of the Oath was honored, medical doctors would practice the art of caring for the entire being. They would have the restraint to NOT prescribe suppressive medicines that result in the need for increasingly more drugs, driving the original problems deeper and deeper. They would see that their drug-based medicine further crowds the waiting rooms of the sick-care institutions.
Is there any art or creativity in medicine today? Certainly the realm of drug research and development is loaded with creativity as they cleverly find new pills for every new symptom. There is creativity in the persuasion of doctors to prescribe, and patients to consume, newly developed medications. There is amazing creativity in the ad campaigns flashing across internet and on television commercials, and certainly, much creativity has gone into the campaigns to manipulate scientists and politicians.
If that part of the oath was upheld, nearly the entire convention of modern day internal medicine and psychiatry would have to change in order to survive.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
If medical doctors lived true to this part of the oath, none would fear any criticism they could receive for suggesting a referral to the chiropractor, naturopath, acupuncturist, homeopath, integrative health clinic or true osteopath. Doctors would search out, on their own, the means to resolve an illness in any way they could. Their definition of “colleague” would be broadened if cure was indeed intended, because while a conventional medical procedure may be lifesaving in acute or traumatic situations, it is unlikely to move anyone else towards true vibrant health.
Medical doctors have been bred by their medical schools and residency programs to serve the pharmaceutically-driven Medical Monopoly which has systematically attempted to strangulate the Healing Artists since 1847 with the birth of the American Medical Association. The result is that doctors now have to live by protocols defined by the insurance industry rather than selecting a medication or ordering a test specific to the needs of their patients. The system has created a multi-generational culture of “managing” disease instead of perfecting ways of reversing it. Sadly, these practices have been accepted as the norm by most people in the United States. And with the passage of the recent Healthcare bill, angorythm-driven medicine has truly won.
Pharmaceutical money is commonly used to support medical education (2). The clear result is the indoctrination of doctors into a belief system where few, if any, will question what is perceived as the “standard” of care. The “gold standards” of conventional medicine will almost always involve a pharmaceutical drug or surgical procedure. Doctors overlook the obvious truth: their patients continue to get sicker despite their best efforts, even with all of the available drugs and interventions at their fingertips.
Allopathic medicine is what all medical doctors and most osteopathic doctors are trained to practice today. When broken down, “allo” means against, and “path” means disease. Hence, allopathic medicine is “against disease.” The system of allopathic medicine was developed in the 1800s by the British Medical Association and then later reinforced by its sister organization, the American Medical Association. Its focus is to fight disease with surgical procedures and medications. With only an allopathic understanding of illness, it is absolutely obligatory for doctors and/or patients to involve alternative practitioners for a full recovery.
Allopathic medical practice starkly contrasts its homeopathic counterparts who have historically had – and continue to have – an excellent track record of reversing or curing illness; harmlessly and inexpensively by means other than “fighting” the disease. This type of medicine works with subtle energy, supports the inborn wisdom of the life force, and can produce remedies at such low cost that it is a distinct threat to the existence of our current multi-billion dollar sick-care industry. In fact, one teaspoon of any physical substance is theoretically enough to provide homeopathic remedies (of that substance) for the entire world – for hundreds of years.
At the turn of the 20th century, 90 percent of medical doctors were practicing homeopathy, a threat to drug-based medicine, even in those days. The charter of the AMA is revealing. One of its primary concerns was to put homeopaths and other independent practitioners out of business, thereby creating an elite set of privileged doctors. Schools were established that required a doctor to obtain an expensive education with rigorous training and testing in order to receive a “license” to “practice” medicine. These new doctors were part of a “new age” of medicine, sponsored by John D. Rockefeller and a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, trained to treat disease for profit. This process continues today: The educational process silently swears an oath to uphold the values of the pharmaceutical industry, even at the expense of human life.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, ...
Oh, for modern doctors to remember and uphold this part of the oath! How much toxic acetominophen and ibuprophen is consumed each year to “fight fever,” nearly always to the detriment of the patient’s speedy recovery? There is no scientific – or even anecdotal evidence – that lowering a fever will decrease seizures or assist recovery from an illness. Nor is there any reason to believe that a febrile seizure will cause long-term harm to a child (3). There is also no credible reason to believe that fever-lowering drugs improve recovery(3). On the other hand, there is ample evidence that acetominophen and ibuprophen can be toxic and dangerous. These over the counter, readily available drugs can have multiple, adverse effects beyond lowering a fever or dulling pain. If doctors understood the body, they would stop routinely suppressing a fever. They would understand it as a protective and healing process that is vital to survival, instead of trying to treat it. They would work with the sick human being instead of toss them aside quickly, with a prescription in hand
The same holds true regarding a patient with cancer. Cancer treatment centers have become some of the most lucrative branches of hospitals. Where did this surge of cancer come from? Why isn’t honest research performed to find the causes of cancer, rather than putting so much disappointing and debilitating effort into use poisons to eliminate rogue human growths? No one will pay for the research to uncover the causes of cancer. If they were found and removed, entire departments of industries would be eliminated. After all, where would all of the doctors, nurses, immunologists, drug company employees and pharmacists work? What would the multi-billion dollar vaccine, drug and cancer industries do to keep up current revenues and keep their shareholders happy?
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
What if the prevention of disease did not involve injecting our children with toxic vaccines and adjuvants but allowed them to get sick –and recover from – benign childhood diseases? Routine childhood illnesses, colds and flu are thought by many to be a means to stay healthy; to eliminate toxins and build true immunity. Growth spurts and developmental leaps are commonly seen in unvaccinated children after they recover from one of the “vaccine preventable illnesses.”
Drugs such as statins, steroids, allergy injections and aspirin are commonly recommended for prevention, costing millions of people their health and life, and costing billions of dollars to the taxpayers. According to a New England Journal of Medicine article by Dr. Barbara Starfield, death caused by medicine is the third leading cause of death in America(4).
Being a healer today is a very tall order, given that human health has devolved as far as it has. We have cultivated bacteria and bred a depth of illness that has never been seen before on planet earth.
Why aren’t there more independent thinkers in the field of medicine? Why is there such a dedication to the “old school” of thinking, where the useless clinical pathways and treatment protocols have worn thin? Where has the creativity gone? Who is really running the show...and why? Where is the allegiance to the oath that doctors swear to uphold?
The creativity of the Caring Profession has been systematically choked to death by the pharmaceutical industry, the AMA and the government who have been waltzing together for over 60 years. Things have never been easy for practitioners who have figured out how to impact illness in holistic, natural and inexpensive ways. Little wonder that allopathic medical doctors are reluctant to veer outside of the “usual and customary” recommendations to do the work of curing. It’s risky to do something that the rest of the doctor herd isn’t doing.
Doctors have been led to believe that it is inferior and dangerous to try – even for a short while – more natural interventions. Natural medicine is disparaged despite the truth that it works. It is frowned upon despite the fact that most educated patients prefer it and are willing to pay cash for it. Removing heavy metals from the body is considered a risky and potentially dangerous intervention that is shunned and avoided by mainstream medicine, even though it has been done safely for over 30 years by alternative practitioners. This is an interesting paradox since many of the diseases that doctors treat are related in some way to heavy metal toxicity: hypertension, heart disease, various neurological diseases, cancer, and kidney failure. Could it be that addressing the cause would eliminate the need for the cure…and for the doctor?
Young, bright college grads do not go to medical school with any understanding that the system they are embarking upon destroys health rather than cures it. They are about to become pawns in a system set up for commerce, with humans being the means of putting the check in the bank. As difficult as it is to swallow, doctors are beginning to see the truth, more and more every day. The sick-care profession is just not a satisfying place to work; it is frustrating and thankless. Doctors are the glorified soldiers who are marching to the orders of government agencies, insurance regulators and the pharmaceutical industry. If doctors stop obeying the orders and then return and live up to the oath they swore to uphold, everything will change. They can either bring back the art of the healing profession, or be remembered in history as part of a deserted and collapsed experiment called allopathic medicine.
1) I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
2) Loertscher, L., et al., Pharmaceutical Industry Support and Residency
Education. Archives of Internal Medicine/ Vol 170 (No. 4), Feb 22, 2010. pp.
356-362.
3) www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_siezures/detail_febrile_siezures.htm#120763111
4) Starfield, B, Is US Health Really the Best in the World?, JAMA, 2000;284(4):483-485.
5) Ludwig Edelstein, The Hippocratic oath: text, translation and interpretation, Page 56 ISBN 978-0801801846 (1943).
