Is the medical establishment looking out for the best interests of patients?
That is the big question. Many of us have put our faith in pharmaceutical companies and public health agencies, only to discover too late that our trust was misplaced. We know that private industries and governments are corruptible, but there is something in us that resists the idea that such corruption can take a strong hold in the medical arena, because when it does, the consequences are so dire. They are life and death. And who wants to admit that public health and Pharma put profits and power above the lives of Americans? It is a miserable prospect to consider, and to accept it leaves us all in the difficult place of not knowing who to trust to help us when we, or our children, are sick.
But until we face that difficult truth corruption has taken hold in the medical establishment, it will remain and grow and we will continue to suffer the adverse outcomes of bad medicine.
I came to this battle from the autism world. But as I began doing research on what was happening with other patient groups, it was surprising to me how unoriginal medical corruption is, and how the autism story is the cancer story is the Lyme disease story is …. It is truly a wonder that it has taken us this long to find one another when we are all battling a different part of the same monster.
As we begin to look at the problems in one another’s world, I thought we should start with a film about Stanislaw Burzynski. Dr. Burzynski came up with a treatment that improved outcomes for some of the most aggressive forms of cancer, and saved the lives of many cancer patients, even young children, who had been given up for dead by their oncologists. Our own government admitted that yes, he was saving lives that would have otherwise been lost. But rather than furthering his research, the government spent almost two decades trying to run him out of business.
They failed.
But why, any sane person would ask… why would our health authorities try to run a doctor out of business who had found a promising new treatment for cancer? Make sure you watch to the end of the film to find out.
The story of the dogged persecution of this doctor has been made into a fascinating documentary that details many of his patients cases. Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business was released last year, has been picked up by a new distribution company. This weekend it is being shown free on Vimeo (for the next two days ONLY) as a special promotion. (Be sure to click on it for your Netflix cue, so it will be picked up by them.)
Take some time and see for yourself how the FDA can target and pursue a doctor, to the point of absurdity, whose successes threaten the billion dollar cancer industry.
… And this is only one story in many that makes the case that many health authorities are working in bad faith with the American people and good medical professionals, and that it is time to clean house in medicine.