Sub-headings
Death by Medical Error
The Procedure to Produce Medication
Desires of the Pharmaceutical Industry
Medication and the Influence of the State of Mind
Evidence-based Medicine Confirms Caution with Taking Medicine
Concerns about the Trials of a New Medicine
Medicine depends upon Powerful Influences
Should You Go to Your Doctor?
Final Word
You go to your local pharmacy. You buy some medicine. You take your prescription from your doctor to your local chemist (pharmacy).
Are your pills safe? Can you trust in the language of science-based and evidence-based medicine?
Can you trust the pharmaceutical industry?
Is it an act of faith that your medicine is good for you? Does profit or people-care take priority in the medical business?
The US government has fined major pharmaceutical corporations around $10 billion for criminal activity. Crimes include making false, misleading statements about the drugs on their packets and for promotion of drugs outside of their intended use.
Certain drug companies thus ignore scientific evidence and evidence-based research to increase profit margins. Drug companies also paid doctors, known as kickbacks, to use their medicine.
We wonder whether we can trust drug companies or their drugs. The problems around medical claims expand much further than organised crime.
We, the so-called unenlightened consumers, rely upon our so-called enlightened masters in the pharmaceutical industry to employ scientific methods to make major decisions around appropriation consumption of medicine to support and protect our health.
Science-based medicine (SBM) includes the application of evidence-based medicine (EBM). The experts assess the strength of evidence to see the benefits of medicine and the risks to our health if we take the prescribed medicine
You might think that SBM with its emphasis on ‘facts,’ derived from the ‘laws of physics’ and EBM, which employs research, experiments on animals and trials would safeguard patients worldwide.
Death by Medical Error
In 2016, the BMI, a respected international medical journal, stated that ‘medical errors’ were probably the third leading cause of death in the USA. Up to 50% of surgeries relate to medical related errors.
You might think the science and evidence-based research shows objectivity and a rational, independent view, free from any subjective interest, either of the scientists or the corporation. All medicine is conditional-based. The medicine exists conditional on the views in the mind of the medical world and the substances used to manufacture the medicine.
We cannot separate the medicine from the limits of knowledge of the doctor, who prescribes the medicine.
SBM and EBM belong to systems of beliefs/views/facts masquerading as truth and reality, even without making false claims and kickbacks.
Backed with the Godhead of Science, EBM worships a belief in clinical trials to provide the objective evidence for success and safety in medicine for adults and children with physical and mental health issues.
The pharmaceutical industry promotes a belief with religious conviction that our health is safe in their hands.
The Procedure to Produce Medication
The procedure for new drugs for a specific health issue, or more than one health issue, includes:
- Work in the laboratory
- Animal testing which causes immense pain to mice, rats, rabbits, monkeys and more
- Tests on young men, who receive a payment as ‘guinea pigs’
- Trials for around 100-200 people
- Patients with the sickness take the medicine to see if the drug is effective.
- Distribution of the medicine to hundreds or thousands of patients informed of the stage of the medicine.
- Comparison of drugs with the placebo option
- More pain makes the placebo option appear more effective
- Surveys which show as much 35% benefit from placebos
- More children benefit from a placebo because they believe in the pill
- Expensive packaging contributes to belief in placebo
- Quality of communication between doctor and patients contributes to healing
- Collection and interpretation of much data along the way, which may contain accuracy or otherwise.
Reader might conclude that such a rigorous process ensures the safety of the drug. Once again, you cannot rely upon evidence-based medicine to protect you at some stage from harmful or minimal influences of medicine. Other factors, such as a radical change in diet, may prove to be more effective in the short and long term for health.
Desires of the Pharmaceutical Industry
You might think these evidence-based trials stand totally free from vested interests. The desires of the industry get in the way.
The industry has the desire to sell medicine to as many hospitals and doctors as possible. So, it:
- Employs numerous sales staffs to persuade doctors to use their medicine.
- Increases prestige for medical scientists
- Pursues success to increase profit margins of the drug manufacturers
- Sets the terms for the tests and trials
- Sets up targets and goals
- Will employ questionable methods to increase chances of a favourable outcome
The industry robustly rejects a variety of complementary medical approaches to healing. The industry believes in the supremacy of chemicals and injections for the body and mind to overcome sickness and pain, while undermining other methods of healing. Medical scientists adhere to a core belief that matter rules over mind rather than recognise the ongoing inter-connection between mind and matter, psychology and physicality, mental states and physical states. Both aspects of the duality serve as mutually influential conditions for sickness and health but not necessarily a primary cause.
The industry spends significant sums of money to undermine and dismiss other forms of complementary medicine despite the real benefits for patients, who trust in their evidence based personal experience.
The daily input of chemicals frequently contributes to side effects, mild or serious. Medication can suppress the symptoms while weakening the resilience of the whole being or become a condition for subsequent ill health.
Contemporary medicine benefits people but the same medicine can harm your health, too, in the short or long term.
Evidence based medicine depends on:
- a belief in accuracy and precision of assessments
- a belief in objectivity
- a belief in an independent and self-existent biological existence
- a belief that medical science can measure precisely sickness and pain
- a belief that medical science can measure objectively the dose to cure sickness and pain.
Measurement really means approximations of benefit of application of medication. Different people respond in a different way to medicine and the recommended daily take. Doctors do not have an exactitude of knowledge on a medicine or the dose needed for a patient. This belief system ignores the conditioned perceptions of the scientists and the doctors. Objectivity naively excludes the condition of mind and the intentions of the observer of sickness and pain. A series of human influences from start to finish influence the significance of the pill until the moment we swallow a tablet or a variety of them. These influences include the:
- desires of the pharmaceutical industry
- conclusions of researchers
- methods of scientists in the laboratory
- organisers of medical trials
- writers of the description of the medicine for the box
- medical salesmen
- doctors
- patients
Medication and the Influence of the State of Mind
Do we honestly believe that our medicine emerges independent of the influence of the human mind? Knowledge of the external world of objects, including body and sickness, depends upon the mind of those involved in the production of medicine. There is no such reality as a science- based medicine in the prescription of medicine. All medicine is conditional-based.
The doctor must rely on his or her experience, or inexperience, as well as the information, at hand, about the medication. The interpretation of the words on the box of medicine potentially contribute to a life-changing outcome or a life-threatening outcome.
Medicine depends upon human interpretation and a variety of conditions, known and unknown. Medicine can only offer probabilities at best. There are four primary possibilities in the taking of medicine
- The medicine works
- The medicine does not work
- The medicine works for a time and does not work after a period of time
- The medicine harms due to substance or a medical error.
One senior and highly- respected oncologist told a friend that he had to continue with his course of intensive chemo-therapy treatment or he would die.
Another senior highly respected oncologist told the same person. “If you continue with this course of treatment, you will die.”
Both specialists stated their views depended on an evidence based. My friend had to take responsibility for his decision. His decision had no science-base to it, nor evidence-base. Obviously. He is still alive.
Medical facts are neither subjective nor objective. What arises out of the mind depends upon the subject and the objects. ‘Facts’ have no self-existence. Facts depend upon the interpretation of the facts and the application of them. Facts have an inter-dependent actuality, as much as anything else.
There is no such thing as an independent, self-existent, objective reality. It is simply not possible. There is no such thing either as in independent, self-existent subjectivity either. The belief in subjective reality and objective reality depend upon the formation of views.
Western science leans towards claims of knowing objectively reality, as if it could be known without a mind to know it. You might think medical professionals can act objectively upon what they know or think they know but they cannot act without a conditioned mind.
Sometimes science recognises the influence of perception upon the perceived. Science based medicine largely ignores this influence. All kinds of medicine, whether prescription or over-the-counter medicine, comes with the aims, values and priorities of the range of producers of the medicine. We cannot separate the subject-object dynamic from a bottle of medicine/pills encased in plastic and any professional advice.
Evidence-based Medicine Confirms Caution with Taking Medicine
If an evidence-based view offered an objective fact, then would be no damaging side effects from medicine, no harmful medicine and no doctors making errors of judgement.
There would be no superior or inferior medicine since doctors would know the objective reality of a patient’s sickness and pain and prescribe according to science-based objective research.
If objectivity applied to medicine, there would be little need for doctors. A patient could enter on a website their symptoms in a list of questions and place an order for the medication. Scientific evidence would show the complete safety of the medicine.
The same websites would inform patients of the safety (or otherwise) of patients who swallow a daily cocktail of medication. Patients would know in advance the impact of different medication upon their mind and body. Evidence-based medication would know the impact of the inter-relationship and mutual influence of every drug upon the body and mind of the user of medication.
Different people respond in similar and very dissimilar ways to the taking of medicine. Fre quent use of chemicals can act like an allergy upon the body.
Human based conditionality-based medicine reveals the inter-dependence of the subject (the patient, the customer in the pharmacy and the object, namely the medicine.
If real objectivity existed without any subjective influence in any stage of the process, then we can totally trust in all medicine since it is truly science and evidence-based without any subjective influence. That is not the reality.
There is a religious/mystical faith in medical objectivity that matches any naïve faith in other forms of healing.
Like the medical profession, we rely on trust, along with a faith and willingness to go into the unknown in the use of medicine, despite the best of intentions. Medicine can offer immense benefit, but we also need to express repeatedly the dangers for health of swallowing chemicals daily on the body and mind. We are sensitive creatures. Our organic cells find it difficult to endure chemical invasions with the potential for a lasting physical trauma.
Concerns about Trial of a New Medicine
We might think medical trials and conclusions contain an objective analysis of such research. Are these trials show trials? Thoughtful citizens can experience concern when:
- The pharmaceutical industry organises the trials. They claim that objectivity shows itself in the replication of methods will achieve the same result. Other companies will not spend a fortune in the replication of means of another company’s medication to show that it works.
- The pharmaceutical industry dictates what scientists research, how much money is spent and their target goals in the research.
- The industry gives little or no money to poor nations to do their own research, especially for diseases not known in the West. It is a form of medical colonialism.
- The industry can spend vast amounts of money over years in research. The industry has a vested interest in securing a return on its investment.
- The trials often lean towards the expectations of the pharmaceutical industry. For example, the industry might select young people as they recover more quickly from sickness instead of a real cross section of ages.
- They may minimise medicine for the elderly as results may show little or no improvement
- Trials may end early when figures show improvement or continue longer until the health of patient improves.
- In a comparison of drugs, company may increase or decrease prescribed levels of another company’s’ drugs to affect patients’ health. Results can show their drugs show the more effectiveness and safety.
- Analysis can show drugs were more effective than the placebo through slanting health checks towards the benefits of medication.
Medicine depends upon Powerful Influences
Western medicine belongs to an economic system that exerts power and control over more than 50% of the population who swallow medication at any time. The system makes people dependent on medication for days, weeks, months, years extending to lifelong dependency.
To make it clear. We live in a world of relationships, not in a world of concrete, independent, measurable objects, such as the ‘body’ and the ‘mind.’
There is little interest to examine the primary causes for sickness and pain. The food industry, the tobacco industry, the drinks industry and advertising industry contribute to suffering, sickness and pain. We suffer the consequences of what goes in our mouth, pollution in the air, habits, addictions, lifestyle, unmindful activities, abuse of others and negative/harmful states of mind.
Despite an ongoing catalogue of errors, hospitals fail to keep a precise catalogue of these errors and make them available to staff and public. A prescription from doctors can result in a major health hazard for patients. The wholesome intention of the doctor can result in increased levels of sickness and pain or death for the patient.
Information of medical errors remains suppressed regardless of the number of deaths. Unwittingly doctors find themselves acting as agents of the pharmaceutical industry.
Errors in prescription or wrong application of the medication kill people.
Citizens adhere to a monolithic perpetuation of so-called facts that ensure their submission to our medical ideology. Science-based or evidence-based medicine often constitutes a dogmatic and narrow form of deceptive language. The public swallow the terms of the medical establishment with unquestioning obedience. Such ideology then dismisses or suppresses any critiques of claims to an objective science.
The pharmaceutical industry and its agents fail to encourage to develop an expansive view of healing and health. The claims to science-based medicine and evidence-based medicine lack credibility due to the behavioural patterns of the human mind, as well as financial, political and corporate influences.
The diagnosis and treatment of patients certainly leans towards the beneficial but medical treatments of chemical pills have an impact on a body/mind that can trigger a reaction, sooner or later.
A person can suffer due to the invasion of daily consumption of pills regardless of the kind of pill or pills swallowed. The pills may not cure the person but simply suppress the symptoms or trigger an excess of stimulation of different aspects of the biological process. We need to feel concern about the range of vitamin pills and similar forms of tablets sold to needy customers.
The pills will have an impact on the person at some point. – for better or worse or neither. Certain medicines influence the life of a person due to the consequences of consumption.
Four obvious questionable medicines stand out – steroids, anti-malaria pills, thalidomide and anti-depressants. These tablets have gained a notoriety for their impact, but they represent the tip of the iceberg.
- Steroids can lead to immense weight gain, high blood pressure, mood swings, breast expansion for men and impotency.
- Larium anti-malaria pills can trigger severe hallucinations, mental disturbances resulting in self-hate and violence.
- Thalidomide caused birth defects. Still in use in cancer treatment
- Anti -depressants can trigger chronic tiredness, insomnia, weight gain, inability to feel alive and self-harm.
The pharmaceutical industry frequently restricts use of far cheaper versions of their drugs to poor countries. They will demand poor countries pay the same price as the rich Western nations. The industry claims they need the money for research rather than state they need the money to please their shareholders. The pharmaceutical industry creates the most profits in overseas sales after the defence industry
Should You Go to Your Doctor?
Yes, you should go to your doctor if you sense you need a prescription because you are sick or in pain. Western medicine has a fine track record of diagnosis of ill-health. Yet, here, too, doctors and specialist make errors of judgement with It is worthwhile to take with you questions that will contribute to the recovery of your health.
Here are 15 Questions to take to your Doctor
- What changes do I need to take in my diet and lifestyle?
- What forms of exercise will contribute to my fitness and health?
- Should I complete the full course or stop when I start feeling better?
- What are the side effects from this medicine?
- What do I do if I forget to take the medication during the treatment?
- What should I do due to side effects from the pill or combination of pills that I take?
- If I start to feel side effects, such as nausea, headache, apathy, should I stop the medicine, reduce the medicine, carry on taking it or make an appointment to see you?
- What do I do if I am already taking medicine for other health issues and not sure what pill or combination makes feel ill?
- Would the doctor recommend websites for further information on the prescribed medication?
- If I recover after taking the medicine but then symptoms return, what should I do?
- How do I know if I am addicted to medication?
- Are there any alternatives to conventional medicine? If so, what are they?
- Are their groups of people who meet regularly or online, who share their experiences of a similar sickness and treatment?
- Do you want to hear my experience of the medication since it is evidence based?
- If the doctor cannot answer certain questions, what is his or her advice to secure the necessary information?
Final Word
Take care with your health of mind-body.
Be mindful of what you put at the end of your fork, spoon, glass or between your fingers.
Health contributes to happiness. Happiness contributes to health.
May all being be healthy
May all beings be happy
May all beings live with clarity and wisdom