How many times have you heard someone say, “It’s okay, I trust my doctor”? This happens to us a lot. When we try to share health information with friends, family, or colleagues, we are met with resistance. “My doctor says it’s safe,” a family member will say, “and I trust my doctor.”
On the surface, trusting your doctor seems to make good sense. After all, getting into medical school is highly competitive and medical doctors receive over six years of education after they’ve gone to college.
They dismiss our concerns, make the wrong diagnoses, and prescribe medications that do more harm than good. According to Dr. Ben Marble, speaking at a recent conference for medical doctors providing frontline care to COVID patients, emergency room nurses have dubbed remdesivir, an anti-viral used to treat severe COVID-19, as “run-death-is-near” because of its toxicity to the kidneys.
At the beginning of the pandemic, conventionally trained medical establishment doctors offered their patients no treatments for COVID-19 and no hope. As Peter McCullough, a well published cardiologist with over 30 years of experience practicing medicine, told the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee on March of 2021, people diagnosed with COVID-19 were treated like they had gotten a death sentence.
“It is unimaginable in America that we can have such a complete and total blind spot [when it comes to treating COVID]. I blame the doctors for not stepping up,” McCullough told the committee. “We have a crisis of compassion in our country in the medical field,” he added later in his testimony.
They defended and enforced hospital policies of allowing no husbands, partners, or loved ones in the birthing room with a woman having a baby, forcing them to give birth alone and unsupported.
Iatrogenic Errors #3 Cause of Death in America
In May of 2016 a landmark study was published by two researchers in the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins that showed that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for over a quarter of a million of unnecessary deaths a year. (5)In Doctors We No Longer Trust
One should always be suspicious of anyone who says, “Trust me, I know what’s best for you.” And if that person is a harried medical doctor, who is essentially a stranger, and who spends just a few minutes talking to and examining you during a medical appointment, that is all the more reason to be wary.A Better Way Forward
It does not make sense to put blind trust in any doctor, especially these days. You know your body better than your doctors. You know how you got sick and, it’s quite likely, you also know how best to heal. What does make sense is to do your own research, find doctors who will partner with you instead of lord over you, bring a patient advocate with you to every appointment, and get a second (or third or fourth) opinion when you are not sure your doctor’s recommendations are best.A true story: When Jennifer’s daughter was a baby she got an angry red rash around her face. Jennifer brought her to the doctor, a family physician named Robert Weitzman, M.D., based in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
“What’s wrong with the baby?” he asked amiably.
“That’s what I came here to ask you!” Jennifer protested.
“Naw,” Weitzman said. “I bet you know what’s wrong.” Then he paused, giving Jennifer the opportunity to speak.
“I think she has a staph infection,” Jennifer said. “An overgrowth of stapholococcus bacteria.”
“That would be my diagnosis too,” Weitzman said. He paused again. “So what do you think we should do about it?”
Jennifer laughed. “Isn’t that your job—to tell me?” When Weitzman didn’t answer, she spoke up: “I think she may need an antibiotic. But I’d rather not give her one, if I don’t have to.”
Together they made a plan: Weitzman wrote a prescription for an oral and a topical antibiotic and recommended Jennifer to get it filled in case it was needed. He said he felt comfortable with a “wait and see” approach. If the rash got worse, or if the baby spiked a fever, they would give her the antibiotics. But they would give it 24 to 48 hours to clear up on its own.
In the meantime, he suggested getting some direct sunlight on the rash to help it dry out. They also talked about how eating too much sugar—as a breastfeeding mom—can contribute to the overgrowth of bad bacteria. The rash cleared up on its own. In fact, none of Jennifer’s four children ever took a single antibiotic growing up.
We believe that the best doctors are the ones who partner with their patients. The doctors who put patients over profits, who listen as much as they talk, and who are willing to change their minds in the face of new evidence, are those who provide the best care. It is only when our health care providers act in ways that lead us away from fear-mongering and hopelessness and towards lasting and lifelong good health that our trust in doctors will be restored.
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