“If the Medical Industrial Complex is the Devil in healthcare, then natural or alternative medicine would probably be God.” Thus begins a chapter we devote to alternative medicines in our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Supressed Cures.
Natural medicine… Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? Given the dictionary interpretation of medicine is drug or medication, little wonder natural medicine sounds contradictory. However, it’s no secret that natural medicine – like alternative health – is (once more) a widely used, well understood term and is a practice that has legions of followers the world over. And those legions are increasing – much to the consternation of mainstream medicine…
The following excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex addresses this contentious issue:
Many in the medical fraternity instantly label treatments in the traditional, natural or holistic health fields as quackery. This word is even used to describe Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the Indian Ayurveda – two medical systems which are far older than Western medicine and globally just as popular.
One sign that the Medical Industrial Complex may view natural or alternative medicine as a financial threat is the sweeping law changes it has forced upon the alternative health market in recent years.
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“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” –Thomas Edison
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Today, most nations now have laws requiring any health substance with medicinal claims to be legally defined as “drugs.” This includes herbal remedies and various other non-drug medicines of natural origins. Critics say such laws prevent wider distribution of natural health products and give Big Pharma ever more control.
In the US, these laws are monitored by the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration), an organization which critics argue is at the very top of the Medical Industrial Complex. That’s right folks, the same FDA that allows genetically-modified Monsanto organisms in your food supply and the same FDA that allows your kids to consume Aspartame in soft drinks is the organization responsible for telling Americans how they can and cannot treat their illnesses.
It has been repeatedly argued by natural health proponents that major pharmaceutical companies, along with their supportive cronies in government, conspired to pass these laws to force the public to only use modern medicines that are pharmacological, patented or patentable, and profitable.
Call us crazy, but we think any product with 100% natural and non-synthetic ingredients such as those derived from the likes of herbs, flowers, fruits and roots should be in a totally separate category to synthetic, laboratory-made pharmaceutical drugs.
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“We each have the innate ability to heal ourselves. To empower ourselves with natural solutions, instead of succumbing to life-altering chemicals. There’s a time and place for pharmaceuticals, but it shouldn’t be the first answer, nor the only form of treatment.” –American wellness coach and author Dana Arcuri
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Many alternative health researchers also claim that little funding is granted for research into natural or traditional cures because Big Pharma cannot patent plants or anything else that occurs organically in nature.
One such example is the work of high-profile American chemist and Nobel Prize recipient Linus Pauling (1901-1994). He received no support from the medical establishment for radical health discoveries (he claimed) he discovered when experimenting with mega-doses of Vitamin C. Despite his illustrious credentials, Pauling was also labeled a quack for his claims that the natural, unpatentable Vitamin C could cure a whole host of diseases, including cancer.
However, it appears Pauling may have the last laugh, albeit posthumously. Several high profile studies in the last few years suggest his theories on high dose Vitamin C being an effective anticancer agent may indeed be correct.
America’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) provides a brief history of the use of high-dose Vitamin C as a complementary and alternative treatment for cancer on its website, pointing out that “High-dose vitamin C has been studied as a treatment for patients with cancer since the 1970s”.
NCI states, “A Scottish surgeon named Ewan Cameron worked with…Linus Pauling to study the possible benefits of vitamin C therapy in clinical trials of cancer patients in the late 1970s and early 1980’s” and “In the 1970’s, it was proposed that high-dose ascorbic acid could help build resistance to disease or infection and possibly treat cancer”.
Interestingly, the institute concedes, “Laboratory studies have shown…treatment with high-dose vitamin C slowed the growth and spread of prostate, pancreatic, liver, colon, malignant mesothelioma, neuroblastoma, and other types of cancer cells,” and “combining high-dose vitamin C with certain types of chemotherapy may be more effective than chemotherapy alone”.
NCI refers to another laboratory study that “suggested that combining high-dose vitamin C with radiation therapy killed more glioblastoma multiforme cells than radiation therapy alone”.
The institute advises that “The FDA has not approved the use of high-dose vitamin C as a treatment for cancer or any other medical condition” and “Because dietary supplements are regulated as foods, not as drugs, FDA approval is not required unless specific claims about disease prevention or treatment are made”.
However, it seems the door remains open at least. As NCI concedes, “More studies of combining high-dose IV vitamin C with other drugs are in progress”.
TBC…
You have been reading an excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex. This top rating book is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/
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Morcan Books & Films 