$80! That’s why the pharmacy business is doing so well, as evidenced by the abundance of pharmacies
everywhere.
5. Surgery Is Rarely Necessary
Several years ago a committee of the American Congress investigating procedures of surgery in the
United States came to the conclusion that 2.4 million operations are performed unnecessarily each year.
The cost of these unneeded surgical procedures is 12,000 lives and 4 billion U.S. dollars. The latest
figures show that some six million unnecessary surgeries are now performed each year.
A major study found that most people who underwent surgery did not actually need it, and half of them
did not even require medical treatment. Many were children suffering tonsil infections. Parents rarely
object to the removal of their children’s tonsils, especially since not many side effects are recorded for
this type of surgery. The death rate from tonsil operations amounts to only 1 in 3,000 or even less,
statistically insignificant, unless the one child happens to be yours.
Only a few parents know that tonsils are an important part of the immune system and are needed to
keep the head area free from toxins, bacteria and viruses. It has been shown that many children become
depressed, pessimistic, fearful, insecure and shy after surgery, “character traits” that may stay with them
for the rest of their lives. Natural methods can support the body in overcoming an infection of the tonsils
without the need for surgery. (See “Natural Methods of Nursing” in chapter 10.) What applies to small
operations applies equally to more serious ones. The need for surgical intervention is indicated only in
certain extreme situations.
Most people believe that removing an inflamed appendix is a necessity and that diagnosing
appendicitis is routine and reliable. But surgeons get it wrong up to 45 percent of the time, even when
they perform an exploratory laporotomy in order to come up with a diagnosis. False-negatives— claiming
there isn’t a problem when there is one—also run high, at around 33 percent. One in five patients with
appendicitis leave the hospital without a correct diagnosis ever being made, and one in five appendixes
removed by surgery is found to be normal. In the U.S. this amounts to 20,000 healthy appendixes
mistakenly removed every year.
One of the most common operations performed today is coronary bypass surgery. A seven-year
controlled study has demonstrated that except for very rare cases where the left aorta is affected, coronary
bypass surgery does nothing to improve the heart's condition. In addition, the mortality rate among
patients with low risk heart disease who undergo a bypass operation is higher than it is among those with
a high risk. A 1998 study, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that patients who
suffer a mild heart attack and are given a bypass or balloon angioplasty are more likely to die as a result
of the surgery. Another study that involved researchers from 14 major heart hospitals around the world,
found that up to one-third of all bypass operations were not only unnecessary, but actually hastened the
death of the patient.
Angioplasty, a relatively new procedure used to open arteries, offers an even lower survival rate than
bypass surgery. Several research studies confirm that patients who have undergone these types of surgery
are as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who haven’t. The relief of chest pain (angina) that patients
may experience after a bypass operation cannot always be attributed to an actual improvement of the
condition. Oftentimes the perceived improvement is due to the cutting of nerve strands during the
procedure, to the secretion of endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers, and/or to the placebo
response.
In the case of a bypass operation, the newly inserted pieces of coronary arteries can block up easily
again if the cause of arteriosclerosis is not removed. The U.S. National Institute of Health estimated that