The Underground Healthcare Revolution
Historically, power complexes begin to falter long before the ruling elite realizes that the oppressed are organizing. Czarist Russian elitists did not fully appreciate the formidable force of organized peasants. The French revolutionaries similarly surprised their oppressors by the magnitude of underground support for a new way of doing things.
The uprising against the dominant medical-industrial complex is no different, as it meets the same old slumbering elitist criteria.
While the elitists smugly continue pandering their symptomcontrol methods, which always have side effects, a better way of health continues to gather momentum. Slowly but surely, the downplayed art of healing is being rediscovered and is increasingly practiced within the alternative medicine community. More Western humans leave the dominant medical treatment model with each passing day. Often their departure centers on a sense that something very important is missing from mainstream medicine’s approach to health versus disease.
The Medical-Industrial Complex
Some of us argue that mainstream medicine has lost its soul. In place of the soul—from which all healing effects emerge—mainstream medicine has instituted symptom-control treatment strategies. But symptom control always comes with a price, and that price is paid within its patients’ bodies, manifesting as side effects and toxicities. A vicious cycle follows, when these side effects are treated with yet more symptom-control modalities.
True healing has but one side effect—its impact on the medical-industrial complex’s bottom line.
The medical-industrial complex is a profit-oriented system. The multi-conglomerates that make up this system exist to make money. The system works quite simply: The industry develops products (pharmaceutical drugs, for instance), which are sensationalized through the media and sold to the public. Of course, the pursuit of maximum profit provides a disincentive to share more effective healing strategies. Meanwhile, the downsides of these products—side effects and toxicities—are minimized.
To protect its profits, the medical-industrial complex conducts various disinformation campaigns. The media, with its own advertising revenue goals to consider, is generally all too happy to promote these half-truths, which engender fear in those who seek alternative counsel.
Common methods of disinformation include: the results of poorly run studies trashing various alternative modalities; the professional opinions of “certified” experts; and the mantra about a “lack of scientific data,” when they know very well that it is they who control which data are collected in the first place.
If you’re in the system but rock the boat, consequences can be quick and severe. In the introduction to his book, Some Things Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, Dr. John Lee relates that his reputation initially suffered at the hands of the complex. He adds, however, that the complex underestimated the power of the international women’s network regarding what works.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
A medical system run by the profit interests of the medicalindustrial complex is analogous to a diet of junk food. Although junk food tastes like real food, it will harm the body if it is continuously ingested. So it is with modern medicine.
Americans are bombarded by clever advertising schemes that encourage the consumption of injurious ingredients, whether they’re fast foods or mainstream medicine’s latest drugs and procedures. In the case of junk food, until recently almost everyone seemed to eat it. But slowly, more people are catching on to the fact that these processed foods are harmful. We’ve become aware that processed foods—altered by chemicals, hormone mimics and nutrient depletions—will injure our bodies. The food industry’s media campaigns still tout the latest clever come-on, but fewer people are vulnerable to these tactics with each passing year.
Similarly, the underground healthcare revolution cultivates an awareness of the consequences of our obedience to the profit-generating dictums of mainstream medicine.
My Medical History
Part of the success of the dominant medicine paradigm arises from the incomplete education of physicians on a) what science has revealed, and b) the verifiable results of other healing modalities. I, too, was a victim of my complex-funded education. Without realizing it, I became a believer in the corrupted mainstream view of the medical universe. As a consequence, I have been unintentionally guilty of prescribing treatments that were not in my patients’ best interest. I believed in a system of healthcare where side effects and toxicities were treated with more medications and procedures. I regretfully remember discouraging patients from seeking or continuing alternative treatment modalities. However, I thank several of my doggedly stubborn patients who continually pointed out to me the inconsistencies of my educational paradigm. To my credit, I kept mulling over the unexplainable healing outcomes when patients adhered to what I considered fringe advice. As the years ticked by, I continued to collect inconsistencies that the mainstream view of health versus disease could not explain.
A major breakthrough occurred when I married my wife, Brenda, about ten years ago. Brenda is a chiropractor. Initially, I humored myself by offering her space in my office. I still remember with humility witnessing what two hands could accomplish for a variety of afflictions, compared to my medical training. My wife also began to instruct me in the importance of medicinal herbs, nutritional supplements and colon health.
