EVEN IF IT’S MEDICAL ADVICE, AN AMAZING AMOUNT OF WHAT WE ARE TOLD ISN’T TRUE
SUCH AS HOW MUCH WE SHOULD DRINK.
THAT IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE.. THE MAJORITY OF MEDICAL ADVICE IS JUST NOT EVIDENCE BASED—OR IS BASED UPON SUSPECT RESEARCH CARRIED OUT BY THE MANUFACTURER.
The much propagated myth is that medicine is science-based, and that all recommendations are based up on scientifically tested solutions. Based upon my reading and general research, that isn’t true.
Beyond that, where meds are tested, in most cases it is done by the manufacturers—who are scarcely impartial, and who have a track record of manipulating the figures.
It is also worth noting that meds, for instance, are rarely tested in combination with other drugs, even though most drugs are taken in exactly that way.
You would have to wonder the the FDA tolerates this situation.
There are “lies, damn lies,” and medical research.”
The following is an extract from a recent piece published by that useful site www.mercola.com
We like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers who do our homework and make up our minds on the basis of the best information available—but I debate the veracity of that. In fact, I think it is downright delusional.
We might prefer to think otherwise, but we are barraged with propaganda from the cradle to the grave—and I suspect we are all influenced by it to one degree of another.
Free speech (which we don’t have, by the way) sounds like a marvelous concept but when it is utilized to the extent it is by corporations, corporate controlled government, and corporate dominated academia to drown us in downright lies leavened with information of dubious reliability, it strikes me that we would be better off if we had less of it.
Many Times They Just Make Stuff Up
While it’s hard to comprehend, some health recommendations are completely fabricated and are not based in any science. Dr. Kendrick wrote about this in a recent article for The Independent:1
“If you are a man, it has virtually become gospel that drinking more than 21 units of alcohol a week is damaging to your health. But where did the evidence to support this well-known ‘fact’ come from?
The answer may surprise you. According to Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, the level for safe drinking was ‘plucked out of the air.’
He was on a Royal College of Physicians team that helped produce the guidelines in 1987. He told The Times newspaper that the committee's epidemiologist had conceded that there was no data about safe limits available and that ‘it's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't.’
Smith said the drinking limits were ‘not based on any firm evidence at all,’ but were an ‘intelligent guess.’ In time, the intelligent guess becomes an undisputed fact.”
According to Dr. Kendrick, the linear model for blood pressure—which states the higher your blood pressure is, in a linear fashion, the greater your risk of dying—was also made up.
Ditto for recommended cholesterol levels, and healthy versus unhealthy obesity levels. Believe it or not, none of these are based on real data. The recommendation to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables is equally made up, yet recommendations such as these become set in stone.
People believe it must be based on solid evidence and therefore true. One of the most impressive comments he made in the interview is: “Don’t believe it. They just made it up.”
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