by Peter Glidden

ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE

The medical philosophy that MDs are trained in is referred to as “allopathy” (rhymes with “shall op a thee”). Allopathic (rhymes with “shall o path ik”) medicine is atheistic, reductionistic and oppositionally – defiant in its philosophy of treatment. Its greatest achievements have been in the fields of surgery and emergency care. It believes that the human body must be controlled and dominated. It relies on the use of synthetic drugs and surgery to affect changes in the physiology of the body. It does not believe in the existence of a human soul – or for that matter, anything metaphysical. Its practitioners are not trained in how to make a sick person healthy. Its treatments are used to manage the disease state and, with the exception of surgery and infectious disease, they are rarely curative.

The term “allopathic” was coined by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann in the 19th century. It is derived from the two Greek words, “allos” meaning “opposite” and “pathos” meaning “disease.” Hahnemann was a homeopathic physician (a type of wholistic medicine), and he came up with this term to describe and separate himself and the members of his profession from the MDs of his time that espoused the use of dangerous and harmful medical treatments such as blood-letting, and the use of large doses of toxic substances, like mercury. Modern day MDs are not so happy with the term “allopath” and will go out of their way to try to convince you that what they do is practice “Medicine” – that they in fact are the sole proprietors of the entire medical field. But they are not. What they do is just ONE PIECE of the medical pie. “Allopathic” is an entirely appropriate eponym for what MDs do, and Hahnemann should be applauded for his insight.

An important aspect of allopathic medicine to understand is its adherence to a reductionistic philosophy. Reductionism takes the view that the human body is a machine made of parts. It argues that, when an illness is present, the body must be taken apart in order to discover the defective piece. This reductionistic view is exemplified by the diagnostic tools that MDs use – Blood work, X-Ray, MRI scans, CT scans, Laparoscopies, Colonoscopies, etc. These devices are all used to take the body apart into smaller and smaller pieces in the desperate hunt to find the part of the body-machine that is broken. This is why CT scans and MRIs are ordered for just about everything now, and also why gene therapy and embryonic stem cell research are all the buzz today – as they represent the ultimate end of the reductionistic road, with scientific technology allowing physicians to visualize the body at very tiny levels. This “machine made of parts” viewpoint is also the reason why patients are prescribed so many different medications. One medicine is given for each part that is broken. So, in an MDs office, patients are routinely prescribed one blood pressure medicine; one arthritis medicine; one osteoporosis medicine; one hormone medicine; one sleep medicine; one depression medicine; one heartburn medicine; and one medicine to take care of the side effects of all of those medicines. Sound familiar? The reason that so many people are on so many medications is not because MDs have stock in drug companies (although many do), but because their reductionistic philosophy demands that they treat people in this manner.

Control of the body is another important point to ponder regarding allopathic philosophy. It is rarely talked about in such blatant or naked terms, but it impacts 100% of allopathic treatments. The logic goes something like this: “If somebody is sick, they are sick because their body lacks the ability to fix the problem on its own, and therefore medicines which alter the natural workings of the body must be imported into the system to control the situation, or the offending tissue must be surgically removed.” Nine times out of ten, the medicines that are imported into the body to treat an illness by an allopath are synthetic, and are prescribed in a manner which overpowers the inherent biochemistry of the body, orchestrating a violent takeover of its physiology. So for instance, if you have colitis, your colon is removed; if you are depressed, you are given a synthetic prescription drug which artificially increases the levels of serotonin in your blood, thereby making you feel better. (Kind of, but not really, like tequila). If you are in pain, you are given a synthetic medication which blocks the transmission of pain signals along nerve pathways, thereby making you feel better. (Kind of, but not really, like tequila). If you are having menopausal symptoms, you are given synthetic estrogens or synthetic progesterone to try and push the biochemistry of your body in a direction that results in the elimination of your symptoms. (Kind of, but not really, like tequila).

Also, the medicines used by allopaths are designed to oppose the illness. This is how the medicines got their names in the first place: antibiotic; anti-inflammatory; anti-depressant; anti-coagulant; anti-histamine; ant-acids, serotonin re-uptake inhibitor; MAO inhibitor; etc. Lastly, because these medicines are prescribed in an oppositional way, (e.g. to combat and to oppose the disease), the effects of them on the body are often violent, and full of side effects – not the least of which is death. When you think about it, allopathic medicine is 100% congruent with the political philosophy of communism – which believes that people are not smart enough to be left to their own devices and must therefore be dominated and controlled. Coincidentally, the father of modern day communist China was… You guessed it – an MD! His name: Sun Yat-Sen. Ouch!

Synthetic drugs are the medicines of choice in the world of the reductionistic allopath. Did you ever stop to consider why this is so? Many of the drugs that are used today come from plants. So why not just use the plant? I mean, from an evolutionary point of view, plants and humans have co-existed for thousands of years. So why go to all of the trouble and expense of analyzing the plant’s chemical constituents, and then synthesizing a drug from one of them? The answer might surprise you. The reason that synthetic drugs are the mainstay of the allopaths boils down to two words: “Ca-Ching!” OK, maybe those aren’t real words – so here are two that are: “Profit Motive”.

It is illegal for anybody to hold a patent on a naturally occurring substance. You couldn’t go to Washington DC and secure a patent for “water” or “calcium” or “garlic.” Patents, which guarantee the patent holder the exclusive production rights to whatever was patented, can only be granted for things that are not naturally occurring. This is why drug companies go out of their way to create synthetic medicines. Since synthetic medicines have never occurred before in nature, the drug company can secure a patent for it, and then they are the only ones that are allowed to produce and to sell it. This, of course, dramatically increases the drug company’s profits. Those of you who grew up in the 50s and 60s can probably recall hearing the term “patent-medicine” – well, this is where it came from, and guess what – patenting a drug does create profits – massive profits: Statin drug sales top 30 billion dollars a year, and synthetic hormones like PremarinTM and ProveraTM generate approximately 275 million dollars a year.

CA CHING CA CHING

This is also why there is no widespread or significant research done on vitamins or herbs. There is no profit motive in that arena. If somebody found a mineral that cured breast cancer, anybody could make it, so why pour hundreds of millions of dollars of research and development into something that, once discovered, anybody and everybody could make and sell? From a humanitarian point of view this of course is a good idea, but medicine in the industrialized nations of the world is not driven by humanitarianism, nor is it driven by results. Medicine in the 21st century is driven by profits. If modern medicine was results-driven, the MDs would have been out of work a long time ago.

The exclusion of the soul is one of the most startling aspects of allopathic medical thinking. Interestingly, it is a concept that is not even thought about by most allopaths – even though it is fundamental to their medical philosophy. Just go ahead and ask your MD what the relationship between the soul and the health of the body is – and see what you get for an answer. The relationship between the soul and the body is completely discounted in allopathic medicine because reductionism argues that if you can’t measure something objectively, it doesn’t exist. Since nobody has ever dissected the soul out of a human body, nor measured it with some type of reliable instrumentation, it therefore doesn’t exist – to the allopath. If it doesn’t exist, then it can’t impact the health of the body – or anything else. Of course, if the soul does exist, then it must have an intimate connection to the body’s health. By discounting this possibility altogether, however, allopaths have effectively thrown the baby out with the bath water. To add yet another layer of irony to this situation, even though many allopaths are deeply religious people, the concept of the soul’s interface with the human body and its influence on health is completely left out of their reductionistic medical model. This is like believing in democracy when at home, but practicing communism when at work.

Because surgery and emergency care are the epitomes of reductionism – breaking the body down into smaller and smaller pieces, and then targeting for treatment the parts that are broken, the major advances in modern medicine in the last 100 years have all been in the surgical arena, and ironically, with military field medicine. However, in the same time span very few advances have been made in the treatment of most of the chronic diseases that affect most human beings most of the time. Things like heart disease, obesity, arthritis, asthma, kidney failure, migraines, anxiety, depression, hypertension, cancer, diabetes and eczema are still around, still causing massive amounts of suffering, and are still considered incurable (even though Naturopaths cure these conditions all of the time). It is telling, don’t you think, that modern medicine with all of its technological sophistication, still hasn’t been able to figure out what causes arthritis, or asthma, or depression, etc. I mean, let’s think about it – If you were a chef and only used one recipe, and your lasagna ALWAYS tasted bad, wouldn’t it be time to try a different recipe? It is one of the great ironies of the modern day that while allopathic medicine claims to be the only legitimate, scientific, and effective type of medicine on the planet, it has consistently failed for 100 years to find a cure for most of the diseases that afflict humankind.

Excerpt from The MD Emperor Has No Clothes

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