Pretend medicine: Let's play doctor!

How do we know it's all pretend? Aside from all the junk science, corruption, fraud, collusion, conflicts of interest and intellectual dishonesty that characterizes modern medicine, there's one more all-important thing to consider: The results. If modern medicine really worked, and wasn't just pretend, wouldn't we be the healthiest population in the world?

Seriously. We Americans pay more for health care, per capita, than any nation in the world. We take more drugs, undergo more surgical procedures, and log more hospitals visits than anyone else. If the drugs-and-surgery approach to medicine actually produced healthy human beings, shouldn't we be the healthiest people on the planet?

But look around. We are the most diseased people on the planet. We have more disease, disorders and illness than any population that has ever been observed in the history of human civilization (aside from plagues and the like). The reason is because the medicine being practiced today is pretend medicine.

Yet it seems impossible: How can everybody be pretending? Let's find out:

Conventional medical schools: They pretend to teach health, but they actually teach disease diagnosis combined with a drugs-and-surgery approach to treatment that excludes nearly all other treatments, including the ones that really work.

The FDA: This highly corrupt agency pretends to regulate pharmaceutical companies while protecting the health and safety of the American public, but in reality in protects Big Pharma profits at the expense of public safety.

Health insurance companies and HMOs: They pretend to offer coverage for health costs, but in reality, they are largely in the business of denying coverage and thus limiting payouts while driving health clinics to the brink of bankruptcy due to late payments.

Medical journals: They pretend to be the gatekeepers of scientific truth, but in reality most are for-profit publications that predominantly print pro-drug articles. By sheer coincidence, most medical journals are also largely funded by drug money (advertising dollars from drug companies).

Non-profit disease groups: They pretend to be raising money to find the so-called "cures" for their flagship disease (breast cancer, for example), but in reality they are more interested in the business of promoting a particular disease as a way to increase disease screening, diagnosis and treatment with expensive drugs (that just happen to be made by the same companies that help fund these non-profit disease front groups).

Chemotherapy: This highly toxic cancer treatment -- a poisoning of the patient that compromises all future healing -- pretends to treat patients for cancer. In reality, it only destroys the artifacts of cancer while irreversibly damaging the patient's internal organs, thereby harming the patient's ability to ever heal again.

Drug companies: These sinister corporations pretend to be working for the public good, charging us outrageous prices on prescription drugs
so that they can fund the expensive research to find cures for tomorrow's diseases (most of which they will invent out of thin air in order to sell more drugs, by the way). In reality, drug companies are in the business of disease mongering in order to expand the definitions of disease as a clever marketing strategy. The more people who can be diagnosed with something, the more drugs they can sell on TV.

Clinical drug trial researchers: These so-called scientists pretend to run honest, objective clinical trials, yet in reality they know that if they don't produce the results that please their sponsors (usually drug companies), they'll be blacklisted from the industry. So they pretend to conduct real science and thus protect their own careers. Amazing, isn't it, how drug trials almost always produce results that support their sponsors?

Mainstream media: The press pretends to write honest, objective, well-researched stories on health issues. In reality, however, the biggest publications and news outlets simply parrot the same old propaganda pushed by deep-pocketed advertisers (Big Pharma), without bothering with any real critical thinking or skepticism on most stories. Too many journalists pretend to be health experts but are, in fact, largely illiterate when it comes to nutrition, human physiology or the truth about the health care industry.

Psychiatrists: This sorry group of professional sickos pretends to help children with their mental health "disorders" by drugging them up with powerful amphetamines like Ritalin and calling it treatment. Having sold its soul to the pharmaceutical companies, psychiatry is now little more than a drug-dealing front group engaged in chemical atrocities committed against children and adults alike. Their best skill? Pretending to diagnose children with fictitious diseases that have absolutely no verifiable pathology or physiological basis.

Old-School Doctors: Old-school MDs pretend to treat patients suffering from chronic disease, but in reality most of these so-called treatments are little more than a chemical hijacking of the patient's body with harmful synthetic chemicals (prescription drugs). The overzealous writing of prescriptions to a never-ending line of symptomatic patients isn't real medicine, it's just old fashioned drug dealing and snake oil salesmanship. Real doctors -- that is, the good ones practicing today -- actually help educate patients about health and only turn to drugs as a last resort.

Patients: Patients, too, are often part of the pretend game. Far too many patients pretend that eating a salad once a week qualifies as "health food," that walking across the parking lot at the mall equals "exercise" and that taking a cheap multivitamin purchased at Wal-Mart meets their nutritional needs. Pretending to take care of your health, it seems, is far easier than actually doing so.

Economists: Yes, many economists are pretending, too. They pretend that all this economic activity in the world of medicine -- the drug sales, hospital visits, surgical procedures and medical bills -- adds up to economic abundance because it makes the Gross National Product look larger. Each year, as drug companies rake in profits while disease clinics and medical offices sprout up all over the country, economists pretend it's all a grand sign of an economic boom. Gee, if we could all get rich by being diseased, America would be the wealthiest nation in the world!

With all this pretending going on, you might wonder where it's all heading. For starters, the United States still pretends to offer the best health care in the world, yet we pay the highest drug prices on the planet, have the highest rates of chronic degenerative disease, and have earned the top ranking for the most citizens without health insurance of any industrialized nation. We're also No. 1 in mental disorders and crazy whack jobs, some of which actually don't work for Big Pharma or the FDA.

It's a good thing, then, that politicians are pretending to get serious about health care reform. These health reform proposals pretend to reduce health care costs through a shell game illusion that merely shifts the burden of paying for disease management services to whatever group hires the fewest lobbyists. Once the reforms are complete, corrupt politicians can take center stage and pretend to have helped the American people. Remember the recent Medicare drug benefit circus? That was Washington's way of pretending to help senior citizens save money, many of whom were left out in the cold thanks to massive failures in a government database that some highly paid consultant pretended would actually work.

As all this unfolds, of course, the mainstream media will pretend to offer objective reporting on the health care crisis, relying on journalists who pretend to actually know something about health.

Conventional medicine exists in a fantasy world. While cancer groups, researchers and drug companies promise enhanced health and quality of life, the reality is far different: Accelerating chronic disease, skyrocketing health care costs that are putting U.S. companies like General Motors flat out of business, and hundreds of thousands of Americans being literally killed by medication side effects -- an atrocity that the FDA still hasn't seemed to notice. Conventional medicine is actually the leading cause of death in the United States, killing over 750,000 Americans each year (drug deaths, hospital deaths, iatrogenic deaths combined, source: Death By Medicine).

That's the reality of the situation. Maybe it's time we all stopped pretending. Perhaps it's time that conventional medicine stopped playing doctor and started helping patients heal with natural, safe and effective treatments that work for real. Because once Americans are killed by prescription drugs, we can't merely pretend to bring them back.