One of the more popular canards propagated by cult medicine leaders and their followers is that modern medical care kills and injures more people than, well, just about anything. Joe Mercola and Gary Null have very long articles on their websites bemoaning the dangers of medicine versus the safety of woo. They love to make statements like, “It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.”
What does this all mean? Should we, as the cultists suggest, abandon medicine for the cults of homeopathy, naturopathy, or chiropractic?…
Probably not. Why do I say that? Because I’m a paid shill for the Big Pharm/AMA/FDA juggernaut? Well, no. Abandoning modern medicine for the cultists doesn’t make sense, either medically or statistically.
When cultists cite their terror statistics they leave out a few important facts. There is no doubt that medical errors, and even medical therapy without errors, can harm. No one would argue otherwise. The flip side is, it also helps—a lot. For example, one of the statistics often cited from the Institute of Medicine’s landmark study on medical error is that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths yearly in the U.S. may be due to medical errors. Now, to put that in perspective, advances in the treatment of coronary artery disease reduced the number of deaths by over 340,000 in 2000 alone. And that’s just one disease. Of course there are risks to modern medicine—it is active treatment, not placebo, so it can be expected to hurt some people. But it helps far more. Returning to the era of roots and berries is not likely to improve quality of life or longevity. Reducing medical errors is important, and is an active field of research. The solution to medical errors isn’t voodoo, it’s science. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.
We all know what fantastically long and healthy lives people live where they don’t have access to pernicious western medicine, and instead rely on ancient remedies and practices handed down over the generations.
One day, I’d be curious to see what happens when Gary Null or Joe Mercola has, you know, pneumonia, a heart attack, or something like that. Will they be as reluctant to seek standard care as they recommend to their followers?
Indeed. If either Mercola or Null is ever diagnosed with a serious illness, I wonder whether he’ll put his renunciation of modern medicine to the test so that all can see the result.
Jinx!
(Just tried to post this when I saw that you had posted while I was composing mine, and received a fatherly message from WordPress: “You are posting too fast. Slow down.”)
“It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.”
Did anyone forget that it was an illness that pushed them to seek medical help in the first place? In most cases the disease is what kills them not errors nor adverse effects.
If that sentence had any sense of truth what so ever the whole health care system would have been looked over.
Man! I feel stupid just commenting on this BS.
Unfortunately, it’s one of the most common myths out there, so were stuck refuting it. As orac says, “the stupid, it burns.”
It’s true that people are sometimes killed by medical errors in the course of treating something that wouldn’t have otherwise killed them. That’s a problem. But you’re statistically far better off getting medical attention than not.