Random Flux

I’m in rant mode on the subject of doctors at the moment. For the last fifteen years I’ve been chronically ill, in effect I haven’t really been alive. Less than one month ago I finally discovered what the problem is myself. It’s incredibly simple: I have gluten intolerance. Switching to a gluten-free diet has totally transformed my life. It’s as though I’ve woken up from a coma.

The problem is, not one of the scores of doctors I visited in those fifteen years was able to make that simple diagnosis. Effectively, these incompetent morons stole fifteen years of my life, and they are not accountable for their actions.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

In the course of those years countless thousands of dollars have been spent by my health insurance company and myself on completely irrelevant treatments and medicines. The alternative health practitioners are just as bad as the traditionalists here. It’s now clear that not one of them had the slightest idea what was wrong with me — but they didn’t have the decency to say that. They just tried to make their favorite therapy fit (generally the most expensive one in their arsenal, since I have private insurance) and collected the money. Their abilities in medicine may have varied, but they were all very talented at making money.

Even before finding the successful diagnosis myself my opinion of the medical profession had dropped very, very low. Now it is bottoming out at the lower end of the negative scale. I think it is safe to say that all the doctors I visited break the Hippocratic oath many times over on every working day of their lives. They pull diagnoses out of their hats to keep the money coming in rather than making an honest admission of ignorance, which would help patients in my position much more — and that’s just part of the problem.

Doctors are pushers and we are their junkies

Like drugs, medicine and medical care are monstrously overpriced because our need for them is fueled by basic existential fears and needs. When people want to be released from pain or are in fear for their lives you can place any price on your services if you can convince them that you can provide a solution.

Hippocrates was well aware of this problem, that is why he created the Hippocratic oath, which all modern physicians still swear before commencing their professional work.

The modern medical and pharmaceutical industries completely ignore both the principles and substance of this oath. They are the pushers to our junkies. We are just as responsible as they are — as always, it takes two to tango.

It’s time for a change

If a computer technician or a car repair shop consistently delivered the kind of service that I have received from doctors in recent years they would go out of business, and rightly so. But pushers and doctors can afford to deliver any kind of service they like because their customers are addicts. I think it’s time for a change.

It’s time to see medicine as just another skilled trade, like laying tiles or building houses. There is no reason to pay pusher prices because paying more doesn’t improve what we get. On the contrary, it makes entire nations the thralls of a voracious and immoral medical industry that wants more and more and delivers less and less.

All we need to do is drop our fear, and that is easy when you drop the illusion that your doctor has the solution to your mortality. He doesn’t. In many cases, he is just as clueless as you are. He just doesn’t admit it.

It’s time to make them admit it. If we stop behaving like junkies they will no longer be able to behave like pushers. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.