TFian
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2010
- Messages
- 1,226
Greer's latest piece in his "Salvage" series, this time he takes on Western Healthcare.
His condensed points
Western medicine and alternative medicine are on a pointless ideological battle with one another, where both have merits.
Western medicine causes issues, such as the death of his child.
Anti biotic resistance is on the rise.
Deaths directly caused by American health care are appallingly common. A widely cited 2000 study by public health specialist Dr. Barbara Starwood presented evidence that bad medical care kills more Americans every year than anything but heart disease and cancer, with adverse drug effects and nosocomial (hospital- and clinic-spread) infections the most common culprits.
The more dogmatic end of the mainstream medical industry tends to dismiss all alternative healing methods as ineffective by definition. That’s self-serving nonsense; the core alternative healing modalities, after all, are precisely the methods of health care that were known and practiced in the late 19th century, before today’s chemical and surgical medicine came on the scene, and they embody decades or centuries of careful study of health and illness. There are things that alternative health methods can’t treat as effectively as the current mainstream, of course, but the reverse is also true.
Alternative medical methods are almost all much less intensive than today’s chemical and surgical medicine.
All the core alternative modalities were all developed before the age of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy, and require very little in the way of energy and raw material inputs. Conventional chemical and surgical medicine is another thing entirely. It’s wholly a creation of the age of petroleum; without modern transport and communications networks, gargantuan supply chains for everything from bandages through exotic pharmaceuticals to spare parts for lab equipment, a robust electrical supply, and many other products derived from or powered by cheap fossil fuels, the modern American medical system would grind to a halt.
The entire article can be read here http://energybulletin.net/stories/2011-08-10/salvaging-health
Your thoughts?
His condensed points
Western medicine and alternative medicine are on a pointless ideological battle with one another, where both have merits.
Western medicine causes issues, such as the death of his child.
Anti biotic resistance is on the rise.
Deaths directly caused by American health care are appallingly common. A widely cited 2000 study by public health specialist Dr. Barbara Starwood presented evidence that bad medical care kills more Americans every year than anything but heart disease and cancer, with adverse drug effects and nosocomial (hospital- and clinic-spread) infections the most common culprits.
The more dogmatic end of the mainstream medical industry tends to dismiss all alternative healing methods as ineffective by definition. That’s self-serving nonsense; the core alternative healing modalities, after all, are precisely the methods of health care that were known and practiced in the late 19th century, before today’s chemical and surgical medicine came on the scene, and they embody decades or centuries of careful study of health and illness. There are things that alternative health methods can’t treat as effectively as the current mainstream, of course, but the reverse is also true.
Alternative medical methods are almost all much less intensive than today’s chemical and surgical medicine.
All the core alternative modalities were all developed before the age of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy, and require very little in the way of energy and raw material inputs. Conventional chemical and surgical medicine is another thing entirely. It’s wholly a creation of the age of petroleum; without modern transport and communications networks, gargantuan supply chains for everything from bandages through exotic pharmaceuticals to spare parts for lab equipment, a robust electrical supply, and many other products derived from or powered by cheap fossil fuels, the modern American medical system would grind to a halt.
The entire article can be read here http://energybulletin.net/stories/2011-08-10/salvaging-health
Your thoughts?
