Infinite Unknown

Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.

(CNN) — Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative.

The survey, released this week by the Physicians’ Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.

A U.S. shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025 was predicted at last week’s American Medical Association annual meeting.

In the survey, the foundation sent questionnaires to more than 270,000 primary care doctors and more than 50,000 specialists nationwide.

Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they’d consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there’s too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.

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Tags: American Medical Association, Doctors, Health, Medicine, Physicians, Society, U.S.

The placebo effect is created by your perception and belief, so it is really all about the power of your mind that you have given to a certain medicine that it will cure you.

Placebos are estimated to have an effective rate of about 30-50%. If the placebo effect is really the power of your mind then concentrating on healing yourself will bring equal results if you would believe equally in the power of your own mind as you do in useless antidepressants (Antidepressant drugs don’t work - official study).

If 30-50% effectiveness is for ‘untrained’ healers, then what if you would focus to increase your healing ability every day of your life?

Highly recommended:
Dr. Bruce Lipton Ph.D.: The New Biology - Where Mind and Matter Meet (Please watch this video. It will change your life forever. Bruce Lipton’s book The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles was awarded to be the best science book 2006.)

PS: Isn’t western medicine accusing alternative medicine practitioners of selling ’snake oil’ and placebos to their patients?!!!
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Half of Doctors Routinely Prescribe Placebos

Half of all American doctors responding to a nationwide survey say they regularly prescribe placebos to patients. The results trouble medical ethicists, who say more research is needed to determine whether doctors must deceive patients in order for placebos to work.

The study involved 679 internists and rheumatologists chosen randomly from a national list of such doctors. In response to three questions included as part of the larger survey, about half reported recommending placebos regularly. Surveys in Denmark, Israel, Britain, Sweden and New Zealand have found similar results.

The most common placebos the American doctors reported using were headache pills and vitamins, but a significant number also reported prescribing antibiotics and sedatives. Although these drugs, contrary to the usual definition of placebos, are not inert, doctors reported using them for their effect on patients’ psyches, not their bodies.

In most cases, doctors who recommended placebos described them to patients as “a medicine not typically used for your condition but might benefit you,” the survey found. Only 5 percent described the treatment to patients as “a placebo.”

The study is being published in BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal. One of the authors, Franklin G. Miller, was among the medical ethicists who said they were troubled by the results.

“This is the doctor-patient relationship, and our expectations about being truthful about what’s going on and about getting informed consent should give us pause about deception,” said Dr. Miller, director of the research ethics program in the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

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Tags: Alternative Medicine, American Medical Association, Antibiotics, Antidepressants, BMJ, Bruce Lipton, Doctors, Health, Hypertension, Medicine, placebo, U.S.

(NaturalNews) On the heels of shocking revelations that top psychiatric research Dr. Joseph Biederman secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, it has been learned that Dr. Biederman is now one of the key collaborators behind the latest efforts to discredit St. John’s Wort. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and widely reported in the mainstream media, Dr. Biederman and fellow cohorts “concluded” that the St. John’s Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children.

What’s astonishing about this study, as you’ll learn in this article, is that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the St. John’s Wort herb where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered useless! In other words, this clinical trial, which was widely reported in the mainstream media with headlines like “St. John’s Wort Found Useless!” didn’t test the herb’s active ingredients at all! It sort of makes you wonder about the agenda of the people running the study, doesn’t it?

Keep in mind that one of the study’s authors, Dr. Biederman, is not merely on the take from drug companies that sell competing pharmaceuticals, but that he also lied about how much money he was being paid by drug companies, hiding the truth about his income by underreporting $1.6 million he took from psychiatric drug companies. See my report on that here: http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html

Dr. Biederman has a clear financial interest in promoting patented prescription drugs for brain chemistry disorders while discrediting competing natural alternatives such as St. John’s Wort. This blatant conflict of interest was not disclosed by JAMA, nor was it mentioned in the text of the study on ADHD and St. John’s Wort. It appears Dr. Biederman would prefer his financial ties to Big Pharma continue to remain secret, even while producing questionable studies that desperately attempt to show that herbs don’t work.

Testing Herbs to Treat Fictitious Diseases

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Tags: ADHD, American Medical Association, Big Pharma, Children, Depression, Drugs, junk, natural medicines

The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication, according to an article to be published Wednesday in a leading medical journal.

The article, based on documents unearthed in lawsuits over the pain drug Vioxx, provides a rare, detailed look in the industry practice of ghostwriting medical research studies that are then published in academic journals.

The article cited one draft of a Vioxx research study that was still in want of a big-name researcher, identifying the lead writer only as “External author?”

Vioxx was a best-selling drug before Merck took it off the market in 2004 over evidence linking it to heart attacks. Last fall, the company agreed to a $4.85 billion settlement to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by former Vioxx patients or their families.

The lead author of Wednesday’s article, Dr. Joseph S. Ross of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said a close look at the Merck documents raised broad questions about the validity of much of the drug industry’s published research, because the ghostwriting practice appears to be widespread.

“It almost calls into question all legitimate research that’s been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry with the academic physician,” said Dr. Ross, whose article, written with colleagues, was published Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. and posted Tuesday on the journal’s Web site. Continue reading »

Tags: Alzheimer, American Medical Association, Doctors, Dr. Ferris, Drug Studies, Health, heart attacks, JAMA, Merck, New York, New York University, Pharmaceutical Industry, Physicians, Provista Life Sciences, Vioxx