OPINION:
Ever hear of the term “iatrogenic”? No doubt your doctor is familiar with it. It means caused by your doctor — during procedures, diagnosis, the administration of drugs, whatever. The third leading cause of death is medical treatment. If you just consider the drug component, it ranks fifth as a cause of death. Before you congratulate President Obama for attacking this scourge to human health, though, maybe you better consider how this could be.
Drugs, medical treatment and food are the most regulated items in the U.S. economy. The U.S. government determines what drugs you take at what doses, establishes directly or indirectly via subsidies (Medicare, Medicaid and now Obamacare) the types of treatment and procedures, and has basically done a wholesale re-engineering of the nation’s food supply.
Forget cultural norms applying to food consumption, self-remedies or being anything other than brain dead when subjecting yourself to your doctor, who has been trained to be a drug salesman in most cases. This applies to medical procedures, risky or not, when connected to a government subsidy. Even the government-funded research has been flushed down the federal toilet in a vain attempt to justify the corruption extending all the way from the Harvard faculty to the halls of the National Institutes of Health and the board rooms of the largest food and drug companies.
If you are still breathing at the age of 80 it will be a testament to the robustness of the human body to withstand the government-mandated abuse that has been visited upon it over the past 50 years.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
Please read our comment policy before commenting.