September 23, 2009 by Avery Jenkins.

Apologies to my readers: The link to the video on this post got broken, and I have not been able to re-locate it. I will insert the new link as soon as I find it.

Alternative medicine is under attack as it hasn’t been since the 1st District Court found the AMA guilty of antitrust violations in its ongoing war against chiropractic.

Pharmaceutical companies and “mainstream” medicine are feeling insecure as the sands of health care reform shift under their feet. And one thing they want to avoid at all costs is allowing chiropractic physicians an even playing field — because they know that will unlock  the floodgates, allowing patients who are seeking alternatives to drugs and surgery to freely find the assistance they so desperately need. As a result, the distortions about alternative health care in general and chiropractic physicians in particular are piling up again.

This video sets the record straight. Although I am not its producer, many of the facts presented in this video are data that I have used frequently in my own writing and seminars. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Please watch it. And pass along the link to this page to anyone who you know who cares about the future of healthcare.

Posted in politics, medical folly, allopathic medicine | Print | 1 Comment »

September 14, 2009 by Avery Jenkins.

As a doctor, I rely on research to inform my decisions and help formulate treatment plans for my patients. Research tells me what works and what doesnt’ work.

In addition, when doing acupuncture, I stand on the shoulders of many generations of doctors who have come before me, and I can rely on their experimentation and observations to guide me.

And when it comes to research on Western nutrients and chiropractic advances, I am assured that the research is free from the influence of big money. Because, let’s face it, nobody is becoming a millionaire by selling Vitamin B.

Pity the poor MD, then. There has been mounting evidence for years that the research that MDs use to decide which drugs to prescribe has been tainted. And, finally, the crows are coming home to roost.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has revealed that up to 10 percent of the articles in the most prestigious medical journals were written by unacknowledged, industry-funded ghostwriters. Some 7.8 percent of named authors of 630 articles admitted contributions from ghostwriters who weren’t named, with the highest percentage found in the New England Journal of Medicine (10.9 percent) and the lowest in Nature Medicine (2 percent).

In another story just reported by the AP, GlaxoSmithKline commissioned sales reps to recruit doctor-authors for ghostwritten articles supporting Paxil use. And this story followed another revelation, that Wyeth used ghostwritten reviews to push its hormone replacement therapy.

You remember hormone replacement therapy, right? The anti-cancer, anti-heart disease miracle cure for women that turned out to cause breast cancer and stroke?

And just to top it all off, it appears that the pharma companies are turning to ghostwriters once again, in this case to have the FDA change its rules to allow pharma to use journal articles (you know, the ones they wrote) to push their drugs for off-label uses.

You know, I really wish I was making this stuff up. But I’m not. And the biggest problem is that nothing will ever come of these revelations. Like the big banks, Big Pharma is too big and too wealthy to fail.

All I can do is try to remind people that the companies that make drugs are far more interested in your wallet than your health.

But I’m a tiny voice in a very large, and largely craven, industry.

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