How the Government Killed the Medical Profession

Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the field. Others are seeing their private practices threatened with bankruptcy, or are giving up their autonomy for the life of a shift-working hospital employee. Governments and hospital administrators hold all the power, while doctors—and worse still, patients—hold none.

-- An excerpt from "How the Government Killed the Medical Profession" by Jeffrey A. Singer, an article Dr. Terrell would have liked.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

Here's another current article that Dr. Terrell would have loved:

The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease


"Saturated fat does not cause heart disease"—or so concluded a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. How could this be? The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries. For many diet-conscious Americans, it is simply second nature to opt for chicken over sirloin, canola oil over butter."

Read the rest of the Wall Street Journal article here.

No Need for Mammograms?

As noted earlier, Dr. Terrell was not a fan of mammograms. More evidence is coming out that he was right. See this article from today's Wall Street Journal.

"A large study published Tuesday adds to the growing body of research concluding that screening mammograms save relatively few lives from breast cancer while discovering many cancers that wouldn’t have caused problems if left alone." Read more...

Unecessary Mammograms?

Dr. Terrell was not a fan of mammograms, and it seems that a larger medical community may now agree with him. Recently, The American Conservative posted an article stating,

"In a randomized controlled study (the gold standard of medical research), women who received regular mammograms were no less likely to die of breast cancer than those who went without. Although they received no additional protection, women who were screened paid an additional price. One in five of the cancers or abnormalities identified by mammography were ultimately harmless, but the women went through biopsies in order to be sure. Even worse, one out of every 424 women who were screened received treatment for a nonexistent cancer, enduring needless and debilitating radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery."

Read the rest of The American Conservative article here.

Increasing Health or Increasing Control?

The tenth amendment says, clearly, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Come now. I read English acceptably well, and so do you. As a generalist in medicine, it also immediately occurs, if one has the health of the population in view, that living in liberty secured by a constitutionally-limited republic has health benefits itself. It is even conceivable that these health benefits exceed anything that a Washington agency could provide, even if it functioned perfectly. In other words, does this effort [to develop practice guidelines] contain a lethal, genetic flaw? Ah, but to believe that there is a flaw is to presume that one knows to what environment these guidelines were adapted. If one presumes that they were adapted to improving the health of the population, and to lowering the cost, one might be mistaken. If they are in fact evolving to increase central control over our lives, then the genes may be perfectly adapted.


Excerpt from "Practice Guidelines"

Exclusive: Dr Mike Vasovski Discusses Reasons For Going Off The “Insurance Grid”

Vasovski also said that the off grid system improves the doctor patient relationship.  “You do spend a little more time – not less time – you spend more time with them, and by design, you’re going to be a little bit more interested in satisfying them than if it’s just a checkmark on a sheet with the bill going to the insurance company.”

Read more: http://benswann.com/exclusive-dr-mike-vasovski-discusses-reasons-for-going-off-the-insurance-grid/#ixzz2iNwlw5K7

'Obamacare' ALREADY forcing doctors to close practices - Washington Times

"If I do open another practice, it's going to be me, the patient and ... no insurance," Dr. Rosenwasser said. "I'm going to treat my patients how I know they should be treated."

'Obamacare' health care reform ALREADY forcing doctors to close practices - Washington Times

ORIENT: Fighting back against Obamacare - Washington Times

ORIENT: Fighting back against Obamacare - Washington Times

Licensing Monopoly

When [Steve Cooksey] was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success. 

That blog has created legal trouble for Cooksey. Because of licensing laws, Cooksey could be looking at jail time. Read the entire Carolina Journal article here and some of Dr. Terrell's comments on licensure here.

Why Doctors Die Differently

The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article regarding the choices doctors make at the end of their lives. It conveys ideas consistent with Dr. Terrell's choices at the end of his life.

"It's not something that we like to talk about, but doctors die, too. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently.

Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right)."

Read the full article here.