| The Village Herbalist | 
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How Safe is Allopathic Healthcare?
Benjamin Franklin
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Each year, nearly 2 million people come down with an infection in a
hospital they didn't have when they entered; more than 80,000 of these die. Let's Live, June 1995
During 1983 -1992 between 90,000 -110,000 people died from reactions to prescription
drugs, 320 from over -the -counter drugs, three from all dietary supplements combined,
including contaminated L-tryptophan and zero from herbs.
Chemotherapy and radiation can increase the risk of contracting a second cancer by up
to 100 times, according to Dr. Samuel S. Epstein.
Stanford University doctors compared the effects of chemotherapy to doing nothing in
patients with slow -growing tumors of the lymph nodes. The patients whose treatment was
deferred for years did just as well as patients who immediately received expensive and
unpleasant chemotherapy. Nineteen of the 83 experienced spontaneous remission lasting
four months to six years. A review of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine
concluded, “. . . deferring treatment may allow for spontaneous regression of the disease.”
"latrogenic diseases, generally defined as diseases that result from a physician’s action
or in response to a drug, are believed to be a major problem in terms of morbidity and
hospital expense.”
“Errors in judgment or technique concerning either the anesthesia or the surgery, or a
combination of the two, contribute to close to 50% of the mortality in the operating room.”
A study in one 300 - bed hospital found that nurses averaged one error for every seven
medications given.
150,000 to 300,000 Americans ore injured or killed each year because of medical
negligence (i.e., mistreated diseases, surgeries, drug reactions, misprescribing drugs).
Current research suggests that 36% of physician visits are unnecessary;
36% of hospital admissions are caused by side - effects from other treatments; 53%
of surgeries are unnecessary; and half of all time spent in hospitals isn’t medically indicated.
Studies at the University of Washington revealed that workers in intensive care units wash
their hands only 38% as often as recommended; physicians washed their hands less than
26% as often as recommended.
In 1916 in Bogota, Colombia, doctors went on strike during a 52-day period. The death rate
went down 35%. In Los Angeles County in 1976, doctors went on strike to protest increasing costs of malpractice insurance. The death rate decreased by 18%. When the strike ended, the
death rate returned to prestrike proportions. In Israel in 1973, during a month-long strike, the death rate dropped 50%. The last time the death rate had been that low was when there was a doctors’ strike 20 years before.
Fewer than one-fourth of doctors surveyed routinely ask their patients about their dietary
habits.
Harvard researchers studied hospital records from the state of New York over a one-year
period. They estimated that more than 13,000 New Yorkers were killed and 2,500
permanently disabled due to medical care. More than 51% of the deaths were blamed on
negligence.
About 90% of the patients who visit doctors have conditions that will either improve on
their own or that are out of reach of modern medicine’s abilities to solve.
75% of independent people over age 75 who were hospitalized were no longer independent
when they left the hospital; 15% were discharged to nursing homes.
Of 1,000 women getting mammograms each year between the ages of 40 and 50, 345
will receive false positive results, often with unnecessary intervention as the result. |
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