Is modern medicine a scam?

in a way, yes.

think about it....if they had a cure for cancer, why would anyone need to go through cancer treatments or buy expensive medicines?
big loss of $ for the pharmaceutical companies and hospitals...

and its gotten to the point of doctors saying like "oh, you have problems sleeping? LET ME PRESCRIBE YOU THESE"

"one more pill to kill the pain"

That's why you get really rich, then you can buy all the mecidine no problem, you don't have to worry about anything then

i believe that all these drugs are just placebos...they're all (docs) are just trying to screw with us!

so much nonsense in this thread

if there is money in it, there is 90% scam in it too

What's even more of a scam is "alternative medicine" Fucking modern day snake oil

It's all about the come back.

I'm sure there are legitimate scientists and organizations trying to find cures. But the big pharmaceuticals (and the gov for that matter) don't make money on cures.

I'm sure several promising advances against some of our more serious diseases have been held back by greed...same reasons why most motor vehicles still run on gasoline and oil.

yep

You're an absolute and total idiot, talking about something you clearly know nothing whatsoever about.

You're an absolute and total idiot who is quite likely a 15 year old girl.

Good song

Okay genius, lets hear you name some diseases that have been cured.

So basically what you're saying is fruits and vegetables play no role in health?

right on

In the western world, many diseases caused by bacteria can now be cured quite easily. For instance, we can now treat *the plague* with antibiotics. Have you ever even heard of penicillin?

Or what about vaccinations? Smallpox vaccinations effectively eradicated that disease in the western world. Or take polio... not all that common among those who get vaccinated now is it?

Now, to dumb fucks like yourself it may seem like a total coincidence that life expectancy in the western world has hugely improved with the emergence of modern medicine.
One could blame your disbelief on modern medicine I guess... indeed it has failed to find a cure for stupidity.

Curing a disease isn't worthwhile.. the money is in treatments for life.

One of the reason they wont legalize weed is because it would put the phamarcutical companies out of business..it's all about the money..sadly

not all. some are just prescribing the drugs coz they'll have commissions for it.

how would that happen?

Ehm... no it wouldn't. I live in a country where weed is allowed, and I can assure you that the pharmaceutical companies still do great business here.
Weed isn't a magic herb that will cure every ailment... it may feel that way at times, but that's it

Curing a disease is not easy nor fast.
Cancer is not just one disease by the way, each type is it's own monster.
Then we also seem to miss many procedures that now fix things that were caused my disease or other reason.
Some examples would be the artificial heart, bypass surgery, pace maker, electrodes for epilipsy, bionic limbs for amputee's, skin grafting, limb re-attaching or from donation, and so on.
Yet I am sure none of these are go enough. It must be a magic bullet cure all for cancer, HIV, or something else that gets most of the spotlight yet is less of an issue.

The thoughts people have about hospitals, and medicine just annoy and amuse the hell out of me.

While I am at it to add a little more fuel. I do think pharmaceutical companies should make as much as they do, and I do think hospitals should be for profit.

most doctors won't admit it but if you can find a doctor in a somewhat big city online he'll probably tell you how the drug companies may offer him a "bonus" for giving patients certain drugs. The best thing to do is make friends with doctors so they actually take care of you and don't prescribe bs medications that you may not even need.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

true, but considering that americans are a bunch of pill popping nuerotic hypochoriacs..it will put a damper on it over here...

I dont go to the doctor for shit unless I am dying or something is broken.. i just smoke.

Yes the will write scripts for one drug over another for bonus's. These same evil companies will also load the doctor up with a whole slew of samples that often the doctor will send home with you free. More often than not enough to get you through the crap your in.

Yes, do know your doctor. I have seen the same one for nearly two decades.

mostly it is, they just give you shit to keep you alive so you can take more shit.

Then do not take it. See how you like those results.

By "alternative medicine" I'm refering to things like homeopathy, magnetic bracelets, reiki, herbal concoctions that haven't been tested, that kind of stuff.
I would consider fruits and vegetables to fall under "nutrition"

Yes, it's sole purpose is to cure sympoms, not problems... that was you keep going back for more treatments and expensive drugs that hide help only symptoms of illness.

A huge part of alternative medicine is based on the healing powers of both fruits and vegetables. Most alternative treatments for cancer include large amounts of carrot juice and other vegetables. Alternative methods have never been tested to a large degree because they are natural methods and cannot be patented so there is no profit motive. I have met quite a few people who have been cured of cancer using these methods yet the medical community completely ignores this because it threatens their bottom line. The average cost for treating cancer is about $277,000, with the millions of people getting treated for cancer every year you can see what a racket its become.

Back in January I was diagnosed with kidney cancer that had spread to my liver. The doctors wanted to remove my kidney and part of my liver, what they failed to mention is that the survival rate for this type of cancer once it has spread is 5%. I refused their treatment and went an alternative route. My doctor tried to talk me out of it and told me I would be dead by June. Well I'm still here and I feel better than I've felt in 15 years. I have a feeling if I would have listened to him I would either be dead right now or so fucked up on chemo that I would be close to death like a lot of other people I know that followed their advice.

depends... on how you look at it

Its just another way for the man to pocket some more money.

Polio and Smallpox are essentially wiped off the planet thanks to innoculations, those are two big ones I can name right off the top of my head.

But medicine isn't just about "wiping out disease", it's about "helping people live healthier happier lives". I, for example, have a condition which, although it happens very rarely, could be potentially fatal. Thanks to a couple pills which essentially amount to $1/day, I'm spared from having to worry about that 99% of the time, and with another cheap on-the-shelf medication I can wipe out most of my symptoms. No naturally existing medicinal herb or fruit would protect me from this condition.

My enjoyment of life would have been seriously diminished without these medical discoveries. Doesn't seem like a scam to me!

Now, if you claimed that big pharma and hospitals hold the threat of pain, disability and death over certain people in order to suck them dry of more money than they should, you'd be starting an actual debate where both sides would have reasonable points to make.

do you have anymore info on those alternative treatments? i would like to do some reading

Sure. There is a ton of info out there.

You can spend days on this site
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com

http://www.cancer-success.com

Then there is Dr. Lorraine Day. She has major credentials as a medical doctor. She developed cancer and refused conventional treatment after seeing just how harmful it is and cured herself using alternative methods. Her case is well documented.
http://www.drday.com/index2.htm

Neither of these diseases have been 'cured', they are only avoided with immunizations. If you were to get one of these diseases there would be no cure. But you are correct, they have been just about eliminated. These were really the last major medical breakthroughs and it was 50 years ago. It is obvious conventional medicine is interested only in coming up with new drugs to treat symptoms rather than cure anything.

Nor have they found a cure for ignorance. Nothing you mentioned has been cured. And I guess you havent heard bacteria is becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. Penicillin is now ineffective in over 25% of bacterial strains. And this is your idea of a cure. And your comment about life expectancy also shows your ignorance. True, people are living longer, only because drugs are keeping them alive longer. Doesnt mean they are healthy or are enjoying a good quality of life. There is more disease now than ever, are you to ignorant to notice that too?

that dr day seems like a money hungry dr...

Because it's impossible to "cure" a disease as a whole when there are people not using modern medicine for whatever reason (be it poverty, unwillingness, ignorance, unnoticed infections, whatever).

Many, many individuals have been cured of diseases because of modern medicine, however, and several diseases have been eradicated or have been severely lessened in the western world, while many other diseases are being prevented.

Many millions of lives have been saved because of antibiotics. Yes, there are new strains of bacteria evolving all the time, and scientists are working on new ways to fight them.
Blaming modern medicine for not finding a "cure all" solution is about as stupid as possible.


And here you really show your stupidity, ignorance and blindness. Many, many people live good, healthy lives because of modern medicine that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Hell, I am one of them. As are quite a few family members of mine. And friends. And random people I meet. In fact, *millions* of people.

There isn't more disease now than ever, and most diseases that we have can be either cured or don't have to be deadly anymore.

:D

do you realize that bacteria is a living organism and is adapating to survive?

also there;s more diseases now because our population is extremely high. its nature's way of population control, new diseases to kill off the population and drop it down to a more manageable size.

My dad visits these "new age" doctors which give you herbs and tell you eat certain things. Even though they are hippie communists they can help with things that a normal doctor wouldn't be able to help you.

That's a pretty thin line... if we don't suffer their effects either way, what's the difference between 'cured' and 'avoided'? In both cases we're not at all affected by them. The only practical difference I can see is that 'cured' means we don't ever need a shot, and 'avoided' means we need a shot when we're a kid and another as a teenager.

Perhaps the definitions of 'cured' you're using are a little unrealistic. With as incredibly complex a system as the human body, success at defeating an ailment has to be measured on a continuum instead of a black and white "cured" or "not cured" basis. Take your average diabetic... diabetes may not have been cured, but medical technology has made it possible for diabetics to live more or less normal lives and improvements are constantly being made to push a diabetic's status towards "cured".

They may not have cured influenza either, but I've had a flu shot ever year for the last 4 years and not had a single day out with the flu since.

By all means though, if you're angry at the medical establishment then disassociate yourself from it. I'm sure you'll get along just fine without antibiotics, vaccines, antihistamines or any of the other useful tools we have available to ward off disease.

Totally untrue. Most diseases cannot be cured, I don't know where you are getting this from. People with a major disease may live longer due to medicine but the disease will usually end up winning. Which goes back to the original argument that it is more profitable to treat symptoms rather than cure.

As far as more disease now, I don't know the statistics of all the various diseases throughout history but the major diseases society faces now are reaching an epidemic stage. A hundred years ago 1 in a 100 developed cancer, now it is estimated 1 in 2 will. Why is this? What I find interesting is a hundred years ago 3/4 of the population smoked, now its about a fourth, yet more people are getting cancer. Furthermore, with all the cancer research and so called cancer breakthroughs more people are dying on a percentage basis from cancer than ever. In 1967 157 per 100,000 people died from cancer, in 1992 204 per 100,000 died. Does that sound like progress to you?

Look at diabetes. The Center for Disease Control now estimates 1 out of every 3 Americans born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes.

These two diseases alone make up for more than 60 percent of all medical treatment. Do you really think the medical machine is interested in curing either of these diseases?

This is the last time I'll post in this idiotic thread. Stupid people piss me off, and there are too many of them in this thread.

Most diseases can be cured quite easily. In fact, most diseases will even disappear without any treatment (although treatment often speeds up the process). That is a simple fact.
Most people get sick tons of times in their lives, and no big surprise, most often they recover.

Bacteria cause many if not most non-hereditary diseases, and many bacterial infections can be treated with modern medicine. That alone should make it quite clear that modern medicine cures tons of diseases.

People with major diseases often die from them, yes. People have to die from something, after all.
However, many diseases that used to be very deadly can now be treated relatively easily (e.g. syphilis, tbc, etc).

A 100 years ago, most people died before they could even develop cancer and many people didn't have enough healthcare to get cancer diagnosed. Aside from that, things like physical inactivity and obesity are also correlated with cancer.

But let's not forget your blatant lie about smoking. You're trying to make us believe people smoked more a 100 years ago than they do now?
In the US, annual per capita cigarette consumption increased from 54 cigarettes in 1900 to 4,345 cigarettes in 1963 and then decreased to 2,261 in 1998.
Factor in that with smoking and lungcancer, there's a big delay in the effect, and it all pretty much makes sense. The people who are 35-55 now are the most smoking group ever, and not surprisingly, they're dropping off like flies from lung cancer.

That's type 2 diabetes, caused by an unhealthy diet and obesity, you idiot. Or are you trying to blame the fatness of Americans on modern medicine now too?

I suspect the figure you just gave is bullshit, something you just made up out of thin air.
Nonetheless, the increase of cancer is caused by the fact that people are getting older and older - because they aren't getting killed by other diseases as much as they used to.

As for the "medical machine" holding back cures... you really are a conspiracy theorist moron. I bet you're sitting behind your computer now wearing a tin foil hat to keep the government from reading your brain waves, right?

The idea that the millions of scientists that are all working on cures for diseases are actually all part of a big secret conspiracy to keep drug sales up is so disgustingly stupid that I won't even respond to it.

Just promise me one thing... if you ever get sick, please, do not visit a doctor



Oh, and here's a little graphical illustration of how much modern medicine sucks:

Life Expectancy in the 1900s