On Dr. Mercola's web site, I stumbled across a cartoon dubbed "The Town of Allopath." I must say, the Flash animation was very well done, but everything else about it was quite offensive. This cartoon portrays a physician as an insensitive, deceptive, and greedy individual who fabricates a disease just so that he and pharmaceutical companies can make money. A hermit (representative of a naturopath, I guess) then says that prevention is the best way to maintain good health and suggests that allopathic doctors only treat symptoms of diseases. At the conclusion, the hermit holds up a sign that says, "Don't be fooled anymore," which of course implies that all allopathic doctors are deceiving their patients so that they can make money.
I am by no means someone who rejects alternative medicine. Unfortunately, some alternative medicine practitioners (like Mercola) make such outrageous attacks on allopathic medicine that it is sometimes difficult to take alternative medicine seriously. One common theme on many alternative medicine web sites is the idea that doctors are money-hungry ogres that don't actually care about their patients. Supposedly, doctors purposely prescribe drugs to their patients that don't work so that patients will need to keep going back to the doctor's office. That way, according to the theory, doctors can afford to make their payments on their Mercedes and golf tournaments.
Such false accusations are both facetious and offensive on several levels. First of all, most physicians are not rich. In fact, many are thousands of dollars in debt because the cost of medical school is somewhere in the area of $200,000. Even if they have paid off their debt, doctors are by no means swimming in money. Primary care physicians, especially, have seen their salaries decline dramatically over the past few years largely due to poor reimbursement from insurance companies. Patients often complain that they do not have enough time with their doctors because they are overbooked. This is certainly a problem, but many doctors have no choice. They are not overbooked because they want to maximize profits, but rather because they need to see a certain number of patients to prevent themselves from going bankrupt. Indeed, doctors are well-paid relative to the rest of society, but they deserve it - 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 3+ years of internship/residency certainly isn't a cakewalk. If anyone should be criticized for being grossly overpaid, it should be athletes, singers, actors, and people who work on Wall Street.
Keeping this in mind, one would have to be pretty stupid to go into medicine for the money, especially now. People choose to become doctors because of an earnest desire to help people and a passion for science. Therefore, it is revolting to suggest that doctors don't care about their patients, because frankly, caring about their patients is the only reason why many doctors remain in their demanding and often overhwhelming careers. Despite malpractice suits, daunting paperwork, insurance companies, and annoying drug company reps, physicians still wake up in the middle of the night to take care of their patients.
Of course, there might be a few exceptions, and there is the occasional surgeon who recommends a more invasive procedure so that he or she can receive a higher reimbursement. The vast majority of physicians, however, do not choose treatments with the intent of maximizing profits. Ironically, many alternative medicine sites that accuse physicians of being greedy are blatantly trying to make money themselves. One of the most popular alternative medicine sites, Mercola.com, has its own online store! You can't even read an article without signing up for their newsletter so that they can inundate you with spam. And what will these emails say? Of course, they'll spend a page convincing the reader that drug companies and prescription drugs are evil and out to get everyone's money. They will continue to say that real way to lower cholesterol is not to take statins, but rather to buy some herbal blend from the Mercola store that is not supported by one clinical study.
The vast majority of doctors are compassionate and do their best to provide the best possible treatments for their patients. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about so-called health "gurus" on the web.
Photo credit: http://www.mercola.com/townofallopath/index.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment