At a gown and tuxedo-studded Christmas event, I was speaking to a pancreatologist, an MD, who was explaining how when a liver quits he can get the pancreas to take over the functions. He teaches at University of Washington, so he is no nut. He and a colleague in the midwest have successfully performed the treatment on some 400 plus patients, and I asked how come it is not more widely used when the more common therapy (by far) is more expensive, less successful and more painful?
Essentially the problem is marginal and new has to overcome busy.
Getting cells from a liver to the pancreas done right takes a hot shot surgeon, so you need a team of an MD that goes to this diagnosis and cure, plus the hot shot surgeon. There is no shortage of hot shot surgeons who would do it, and they love the challenge, but too few doctors who go to the diagnosis and cure. How come? Whole lotta medicine to learn, and core curriculum is "this class of disease is handled this way, and here is how." Medical school covers "best of" and then they have to practice within what they learned, of course, with no time for the marginal and new.
Next, doctors certainly can specialize in this and take continuing education seminars on the procedure (he teaches this often) but new and marginal has a problem in our litigious society: when 30% die under the standard therapy for which 100,000 people have been treated, it only takes one dead on a marginal therapy to make a lawsuit. "Doctor, how come you treated "dearly beloved" with something unusual?"
I tell you know I know doctors who reserve cures for people they know won't bitch if it goes wrong. There are no guarantees in life, but 98% cure odds are better than 12%. Romney/Obamacare is built on the hopes and dreams of that minority of voters with the dreadful combination of entitlement and fear. Medicine is going into lockdown in USA, bringing forth the worst fears of the ACA critics, but there is always medical tourism. It was one thing to use travel to access nice clothes, but to have watched USA get to where another nice thing about travel is to get quality medicine is tough to bear.
So how do you overcome the problem of "original and new" overcoming "busy?" A cardiologist took my seminar in San Diego (twice!) and I asked him about heart therapy out of Brazil in which a doctor was making a small cut, sewing it up, and curing a famous disease in USA at nearly none of the cost and much less pain. The doctor said he knew the procedure well, was doing them all the time, the heart is just a muscle, the problem in essence just a hernia, and the cure like any other hernia, cut it and sew it up. The problem was it was disapproved initially in USA, according to this cardiologist, because at about $100,000 worth of drugs for the USA alternative there was so much money in the USA way. When the drugs went off patent, then it was allowed.
The cardiologist explained the heart of the problem of distributing marginal and new ideas to busy doctors. Pointless compliance keeps them busy (romney/obamacare is pointless on steroids) but the big problem was referral fees are illegal in medicine. He was quite cross that the lawyers who outlawed referral fees for doctors allow it for lawyers, in fact commonly sell cases to each other, adding incalculable cost to "justice and equity."
This is not to say that referral fees do not happen, of course they do, when a doctor prescribes pfizer drugs, he can expect all sorts of goodies from Pfizer. Pfizer has a "how to" on their website in case anyone wants in. And these are approved by the regulators. And of course as we see time and again, even with it allowed, a fine of a couple billion is acceptable when the profits are in the tens of billions. So here again, within the patterns and practices of capitalism, pain and suffering and death, killing customers for money, is commonplace.
The solution? According to the cardiologist get rid of the non-referral laws. If the cardiologist can kick back a grand to the family MD who refers a case to the cardiologist, then that family MD will far more prefer to take $1000 from the cardiologist than $1000 from Pfizer. Simpler, easier. Overall, the patient is out $15,000 (or insurance company) instead of society out $100,000.
But sadly, all practicing lawyers are government employees, without exception, and when it gets down to it, they will always defend the government program, which is currently the patterns and practices of capitalism.
Freedom to and freedom from is the essence of free markets. To allow doctors the freedom to contract for fees and freedom from force and fraud when contracting for fees, is the free market answer to the system we now have.
(Kant spotted instantly and explained 250 years ago how the USA would fail given our legal system... in essence all lawyers being government workers and the conflict of interest... well, anyway, I've pointed this out before...)
Walmart will give you most of your medicines at $4 a month if they are generics. That is how cheap medicine is, but as long as we have patents, will have the FDA complimenting the lie that it takes billions to develop medicines, and BigPharm buying the politicians that keep the FDA in business and in BigPharm pockets. "Affordable" "Care" Act is going to get you $1000 medicines at taxpayers expense for $500, when it is unlikely the best cure and 50% have no effect but 100% of the time the synthetics go through you and pollute the environment forever. But that minority of fearful and entitled, mostly white progressives, directs what happens to the rest of us.
USA in this 50 years before and 50 after today will go down in history as the most brutal medically in the history of mankind. Unspeakable suffering, and completely preventable. People committing suicide, and now physician assisted, rather than cure or offered palliative care.
Now comes the Ebola "crisis" and a couple of doctors who have to leave the USA to do what pioneers such as Jenner could do before regulation, and the capture thereof by BigPharm.
This is not a race against time, it is a race against capitalism, the patent regime, and its sycophants.
A country that runs many exposed medical crimes, such as the Tuskegee experiments, and then off-shores them to places such as Guatemala as well, and in which no one is ever prosecuted, is not going to stop. Doctors know this. Some are committed to medicine in the face of unspeakable evil.
Right wing Christians love to use the most tendentious of translation of Romans 13 to promote servitude to the state. But here is what Daniel says, 4:17 -
Apparently the USA does not have the internal mechanisms to investigate, charge and prosecute wrongdoing, if it is done any State workers. Too bad. But we can hope for the future. There is an election coming up, and we can vote for change. Our options are a Clinton and a Bush. The Bible says there is a reason we are ruled over by the basest of men (which includes women.)
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Essentially the problem is marginal and new has to overcome busy.
Getting cells from a liver to the pancreas done right takes a hot shot surgeon, so you need a team of an MD that goes to this diagnosis and cure, plus the hot shot surgeon. There is no shortage of hot shot surgeons who would do it, and they love the challenge, but too few doctors who go to the diagnosis and cure. How come? Whole lotta medicine to learn, and core curriculum is "this class of disease is handled this way, and here is how." Medical school covers "best of" and then they have to practice within what they learned, of course, with no time for the marginal and new.
Next, doctors certainly can specialize in this and take continuing education seminars on the procedure (he teaches this often) but new and marginal has a problem in our litigious society: when 30% die under the standard therapy for which 100,000 people have been treated, it only takes one dead on a marginal therapy to make a lawsuit. "Doctor, how come you treated "dearly beloved" with something unusual?"
I tell you know I know doctors who reserve cures for people they know won't bitch if it goes wrong. There are no guarantees in life, but 98% cure odds are better than 12%. Romney/Obamacare is built on the hopes and dreams of that minority of voters with the dreadful combination of entitlement and fear. Medicine is going into lockdown in USA, bringing forth the worst fears of the ACA critics, but there is always medical tourism. It was one thing to use travel to access nice clothes, but to have watched USA get to where another nice thing about travel is to get quality medicine is tough to bear.
So how do you overcome the problem of "original and new" overcoming "busy?" A cardiologist took my seminar in San Diego (twice!) and I asked him about heart therapy out of Brazil in which a doctor was making a small cut, sewing it up, and curing a famous disease in USA at nearly none of the cost and much less pain. The doctor said he knew the procedure well, was doing them all the time, the heart is just a muscle, the problem in essence just a hernia, and the cure like any other hernia, cut it and sew it up. The problem was it was disapproved initially in USA, according to this cardiologist, because at about $100,000 worth of drugs for the USA alternative there was so much money in the USA way. When the drugs went off patent, then it was allowed.
The cardiologist explained the heart of the problem of distributing marginal and new ideas to busy doctors. Pointless compliance keeps them busy (romney/obamacare is pointless on steroids) but the big problem was referral fees are illegal in medicine. He was quite cross that the lawyers who outlawed referral fees for doctors allow it for lawyers, in fact commonly sell cases to each other, adding incalculable cost to "justice and equity."
This is not to say that referral fees do not happen, of course they do, when a doctor prescribes pfizer drugs, he can expect all sorts of goodies from Pfizer. Pfizer has a "how to" on their website in case anyone wants in. And these are approved by the regulators. And of course as we see time and again, even with it allowed, a fine of a couple billion is acceptable when the profits are in the tens of billions. So here again, within the patterns and practices of capitalism, pain and suffering and death, killing customers for money, is commonplace.
The solution? According to the cardiologist get rid of the non-referral laws. If the cardiologist can kick back a grand to the family MD who refers a case to the cardiologist, then that family MD will far more prefer to take $1000 from the cardiologist than $1000 from Pfizer. Simpler, easier. Overall, the patient is out $15,000 (or insurance company) instead of society out $100,000.
But sadly, all practicing lawyers are government employees, without exception, and when it gets down to it, they will always defend the government program, which is currently the patterns and practices of capitalism.
Freedom to and freedom from is the essence of free markets. To allow doctors the freedom to contract for fees and freedom from force and fraud when contracting for fees, is the free market answer to the system we now have.
(Kant spotted instantly and explained 250 years ago how the USA would fail given our legal system... in essence all lawyers being government workers and the conflict of interest... well, anyway, I've pointed this out before...)
Walmart will give you most of your medicines at $4 a month if they are generics. That is how cheap medicine is, but as long as we have patents, will have the FDA complimenting the lie that it takes billions to develop medicines, and BigPharm buying the politicians that keep the FDA in business and in BigPharm pockets. "Affordable" "Care" Act is going to get you $1000 medicines at taxpayers expense for $500, when it is unlikely the best cure and 50% have no effect but 100% of the time the synthetics go through you and pollute the environment forever. But that minority of fearful and entitled, mostly white progressives, directs what happens to the rest of us.
USA in this 50 years before and 50 after today will go down in history as the most brutal medically in the history of mankind. Unspeakable suffering, and completely preventable. People committing suicide, and now physician assisted, rather than cure or offered palliative care.
Now comes the Ebola "crisis" and a couple of doctors who have to leave the USA to do what pioneers such as Jenner could do before regulation, and the capture thereof by BigPharm.
If direct intravenous oxygen turns out to be successful, we can expect the government of Sierra Leone to announce to the world that it has a treatment for Ebola, as Dr. Rowen and his team are going there at the invitation of its President. That will make international news very quickly. On the other hand, there are commercial interests that stand to make billions, maybe trillions of dollars, on Ebola treatment drugs and/or vaccines, whether such drugs are effective or not. So it would be naïve to think that they will not make a sincere effort to suppress inexpensive oxidation therapies for the treatment of Ebola and other potential pandemic diseases…Note they will test a cure. Note they fear for their lives from the capitalists. And here is the problem, if they mysteriously contract ebola and die, there is no knowing what happened. And it gets more complicated, because if their therapy does cure patients (technically there are no cures for viruses, your immune system just wins the fight), then that is just valid, in that case not yet proven reliable. You need many doctors in many places replicating the therapy before you get validity and reliability, and thus science.
“Will it be suppressed? Probably yes,” Dr. Rowen says. “I’m not afraid to tell you that my biggest concern in this is that we will be in greater danger from those interests than we will be from the Ebola itself… But you know, it’s something that I have to do. All of us who are going, we’re being guided by something much higher. It’s something that I have to do no matter the risk, because the risk is far greater if we don’t do it.”
This is not a race against time, it is a race against capitalism, the patent regime, and its sycophants.
A country that runs many exposed medical crimes, such as the Tuskegee experiments, and then off-shores them to places such as Guatemala as well, and in which no one is ever prosecuted, is not going to stop. Doctors know this. Some are committed to medicine in the face of unspeakable evil.
Right wing Christians love to use the most tendentious of translation of Romans 13 to promote servitude to the state. But here is what Daniel says, 4:17 -
Daniel 4:17King James Version (KJV)17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.And Peter speaking to the hegemon, Acts 5, v 29 - 32 RSVCE,
29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”Talk about speaking truth to power.
Apparently the USA does not have the internal mechanisms to investigate, charge and prosecute wrongdoing, if it is done any State workers. Too bad. But we can hope for the future. There is an election coming up, and we can vote for change. Our options are a Clinton and a Bush. The Bible says there is a reason we are ruled over by the basest of men (which includes women.)
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
2 comments:
What is the name of the pancreatologist that you mention for the novel liver/pancreas treatment? Does he have a webpage listing on the University of Washington website?
Reading stuff like this makes me want to move overseas. I'm healthy now, but I think of what could happen if I'm forced to undergo treatment here for some disease and not allowed to try other treatments that work but are not approved
The best I could do would be to forward an inquiry, but hope you need not such treatment. You could google "alternative - anything" and find such medical examples...
John
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