90 percent of America’s bypass surgery patients receive no benefits. Major lasting improvements were
attributed to an improved diet and lifestyle, stress reduction, smoking cessation and regular exercise. (See
also chapter 9.)
All artery-opening methods, like bypass surgery and stents, the widely used wire cages that hold
plaque against an artery wall, can alleviate crushing chest pain for a certain period of time. Stents can also
rescue someone in the midst of a heart attack by obliterating an obstruction and keeping the closed artery
open, at least for a while.
But as it turns out, the vast majority of heart attacks do not originate with obstructions that narrow
arteries. “There has been a culture in cardiology that the narrowings were the problem and that if you fix
them the patient does better,” said Dr. David Waters, a cardiologist at the University of California at San
Francisco.
Heart researchers now know that most heart attacks do not occur because an artery is narrowed by
plaque. Instead, they say, heart attacks occur when an area of plaque bursts, a clot forms over the area and
blood flow is abruptly blocked. They assert that in 75 to 80 percent of cases, the plaque that erupts was
not obstructing an artery and would not have been stented or bypassed. Because the plaque which is
attached to the artery walls is soft and fragile, it produces no symptoms and would not be seen as an
obstruction to blood flow. This makes heart attacks very unpredictable. True blockages in an artery would
make themselves known as severe chest pain and breathing difficulties.
Since heart patients may have hundreds of vulnerable plaques, surgeons cannot go after all of them. In
fact, coronary artery surgery does nothing to the soft plaque, which is the real time bomb ticking in the
coronaries of heart disease patients.
Other dangers lurk in a hospital’s operating room. According to a New England Journal of Medicine
report, 1,500 patients a year in the U.S. leave the operating table with some of the hospital's equipment
still inside them. Wayward clamps, sponges, electrodes, retractors and various other instruments take up
permanent residence in the chest, abdomen, hips and body cavities like the vagina. According to these
findings, the chances of having such items planted in your body are higher if you happen to be
overweight.
Complications from these blunders can lead to internal bleeding, infection and sometimes death. In
quite a few patients, though, these missing items are not discovered until the person undergoes another
procedure or has an X-ray or ultrasound.
Fear-Motivated Operations
In the United States alone nearly one million women a year sacrifice their uterus to the scalpel. This
means that more than half of all American women will have had a hysterectomy by the time they reach the
age of 65. Many of these women will suffer from post-operative syndromes such as depression, anxiety
and increased susceptibility to stress. I have seen in my own practice that most women who have had a
hysterectomy developed ovary problems, breast lumps, digestive disorders or breast cancer 1-5 years after
the operation.
An investigation carried out in six New York hospitals found that 43 percent of all uterus operations
were unjustified. Other research shows that only 10 percent of hysterectomies are warranted. Fifteen
percent of hysterectomies are carried out to remove cancerous tumors, and are thus considered necessary.
The other 85 percent are due to uterine fibroids, endometriosis, or other causes of pelvic pain and
excessive bleeding. Thousands of women every year have a full hysterectomy (including the removal of
the ovaries), but have not given their consent prior to the surgery. Only a few of them make use of the law
to seek compensation, but money cannot return a woman's uterus, which is symbolic of womanhood.