CHAPTER 15
What Doctors Should Be Telling You...
1. Potential Dangers Of Medical Diagnosis
hat do you think is the leading cause of death in the United States? You may say, it must be a
disease, such as cancer or heart disease. Whereas it is true that most deaths have something to do
with disease, it is actually not the disease itself that kills most people, but the medical treatments
administered or prescribed by doctors. In 1995, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
admitted that doctors are the third leading cause of death (iatrogenic acts), causing 250,000 deaths each
year. This disturbing trend has now worsened. Today (as of 2007), doctors are, in fact, the leading cause
of death in the United States; or to clarify, it is the many unnecessary procedures and drugs they prescribe,
as well as the mishaps and false diagnoses they make. Based on reviews of thousands of published studies
and statistics (collected and published by Gary Null, Ph.D, Carolyn Dean, M.D, N.D., Martin Feldman,
M.D., Debora Rasio, M.D., Dorothy Smith, Ph.D.), the annual doctor-caused death rate averaged 783,986
in 2007. By comparison, heart disease kills 699,697 annually, and cancer kills 553,251 annually. Since
only 5 to 20 percent of all iatrogenic acts are ever reported, the annual rate of doctor-caused deaths may
actually be over one million. Surprisingly, the most dangerous method applied by the current medical
system is the diagnosis of disease.
The categorization of disease begins with its diagnosis. Depending on the particular symptom of
discomfort or pain a person may be experiencing, a visit to the doctor will most likely result in the
diagnosis of a disease, which the physician knows by its name and description. However, before you are
given the certainty of diagnosis, you may have to undergo a series of routine examinations. There is the
stethoscope, which has become a symbol of the healing profession; a measuring device to take the blood
pressure; counting of the heart beat through feeling of the pulse; blood and urine tests; perhaps x-rays,
EEG, EKG and more... In total, there are over 1,400 test procedures available that the modern doctor can
use today to monitor and measure virtually every bit of your body.
Although in some cases, the use of these methods of diagnosis is justified and can save a person’s life,
in the vast majority of cases it is unjustified, misleading and potentially harmful. In theory, high tech
diagnostic tools seem to be impartial and yield correct results, but in reality, they are grossly unreliable
and can be as dangerous to health as some of the riskiest drugs and surgical procedures. It is therefore
important that they are not applied routinely, but much more selectively and, if possible, only during
emergency situations. The following are some of the most commonly used methods of diagnosis and their
discrepancies.
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