Friday, June 30, 2017

The erosion of empathy in medicine...

Something is drastically wrong with medical education as it currently stands1, and the effects flow into the professional arena. For decades medical students have been notorious for having abnormally high rates of illness, both physical and mental compared with the rest of the population. Depression is one problem that is well known. Dr Robert Mendelsohn stated in Confessions of a Medical Heretic (1979) that he saw a higher rate of illness in first year medical students than any other subgroup. At the time his book was published, medical students’ suicide rates in the US were reportedly second only to American Indian children who were sent away from their reservations to attend high school.

The sheer physical separation of many college/university students from their families and friends leaves them much more vulnerable to the adverse influence of teachers with agendas, toxic peer influence, and of course the pharmaceutical industry which controls medical education.

Problems in medicine are not restricted to medical students, however.

If today we doubt the value of the modern medical ethos and the effectiveness of current mainstream medical practice, we have decades of context backing us up and no shortage of statistics. Even as early as 1979, when Mendelsohn was eviscerating the medical profession for its brutality, incompetence, dishonesty, etc., the health status of the professional medical community (in the US) in itself was reason enough to doubt its methods. 1 in 20 physicians were deemed psychiatrically disturbed, more than 30,000 were alcoholics, and around 1% were narcotics addicts. A thirty year study concluded by finding that almost half of doctors were either divorced or unhappily married, over a third used drugs such as amphetamines, barbiturates, or others, and a third had suffered emotional problems severe enough to warrant a minimum of ten trips to a psychiatrist. Suicide rates for doctors were double the average for white Americans. For female physicians, the rate was four times higher than normal for women over age 25. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Don’t let modern medicine put you in your grave just yet!
  2. 10 ways a hospital stay can make us sicker...
  3. Now you can find out if YOUR doctor is being bribed by Big Pharma...
  4. Want to be healthy? Stay away from doctors and watch what you eat...

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