Many Medical Doctors Don't Realize They Need A New Philosophy

What would most medical doctors say about philosophy as a part of medical practice? They would probably give you a puzzled look and might say, "What does philosophy have to do with medicine"? Philosophy is critical because it's in everything. It's a search for understanding or meaning; it's the WHY of how things are. The word comes from two Greek words, "Philos”, meaning to search for, and "Sophos”, meaning wisdom.

Everyone has a philosophy on life. If you live your life throwing caution to the wind, that is your philosophy on life. If you live with a vision that there is something greater than yourself, that is also a philosophy that drives your life.

Long ago, in the 1960s, I studied philosophy at university. When I went to chiropractic college and graduated, I learned that chiropractic had a unique philosophy. In fact, chiropractic practice is a triune of philosophy, science and art.

Medicine also has a philosophy which is the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Medicine primarily deals with the physical attributes of health and illness. It also deals with mental ailments but relates it to brain chemistry and most often treats these conditions with medication. For most doctors, anything beyond that is irrelevant.

Where medicine has gone wrong is its over-reliance on treating diseases with drugs, to the point that it has caused damage to many people. This is called Iatrogenic Disease, meaning caused by doctors or their treatments. There is an abundance of Iatrogenic diseases today caused mainly by drugs. These are not the illicit ones but the prescribed and over-the-counter ones. Look at what John Hopkins Medical School found:

Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.

The damage caused may be due to adverse drug reactions, the wrong drugs administered, overuse of medications and surgical errors. So in 2018, there were 250,000 such deaths in the U.S., plus millions suffering injury. This was prior to the Covid injections which have added considerably to the total.

There are two ways of looking at health. Vitalism vs Materialism

Materialism:

The materialists believe there is nothing beyond the matter and chemicals that make up the human body. The body is basically just a sack of chemicals. Another way of stating it is that the body is just the sum of its parts, and if we study it enough, we will know everything there is to know about the body. That includes emotions and cognitive abilities; everything can be explained by the matter of the body.

Vitalism:

Vitalists recognize that there is something beyond just your bits and pieces. Some vital force is there when you are alive and gone when you are dead. In chiropractic, we have a name for this. It's called Innate Intelligence. It's what animates living, breathing human beings. 

Interestingly, for decades, chiropractors were criticized for using the term Innate. It was considered unscientific. Meanwhile, since Covid, many scientists are describing the inborn ability of the body to fight off illness as Innate Immunity. Life continues to surprise me.

Since the discovery of DNA, many conflate genetic material with life. DNA is not life; it is merely the blueprint for the type of life you will have. Dead bodies have DNA, and they are lifeless. There is some other energy or force at work when we're alive.

When you recognize vitalism's importance, you know that the body has an incredible capacity to function normally, heal and battle against virtually any foe. This doesn't mean that the body never needs assistance. Still, it is a recognition that the less we interfere with the body, the better.

Modern medicine––with few exceptions––is involved with treating symptoms only. If you're constipated, there is a pill for you. If you have a headache, take this tablet or if you're asthmatic, take this. Mentally, if you feel sad, there is something to lift you up. On the contrary, if you're hyper, there is a product to bring you down. By the time a child reaches age 18, they will have been injected with a whole slew of some 40-plus vaccines. We have a full panoply of drugs for any of life's ills. Is this really health?

The problem with treating the body solely as materialistic object means there is a price to pay. The Covid-19 mRNA injections have brought this to the fore as they are now the most dangerous drugs ever foisted on humanity. Have they made us healthier? Well, suppose you define health––according to the WHO––as a state of optimal physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of symptoms. In that case, the answer is a resounding no.

According to the OECD, America spends the most on healthcare per capita globally. It's double what Australia spends. See the chart below.

If we look at the per capita consumption of drugs, America once again leads the world.

Australia spends roughly half the amount on drugs which correlates with the costs spent on healthcare. Anyone who has been to America knows that pharmaceutical advertising is extensive. Advertising works. Drug companies push medications to the public. They also target doctors with ads in medical journals. Also, drug representatives visit doctors to inform them about the latest and greatest pill.

So you would think that America should be at least one of the healthiest nations on earth. Wrong. In fact, America is not even near the top of the healthiest countries. Several health measures, including infant mortality rate, longevity and morbidity, are good indicators of a society's health.

According to the World Bank and WHO, the following is a life expectancy list, with Japan at number one and Australia fifth.

I couldn't fit the U.S. on the chart. It ranks 54th with an average life expectancy of 77.28 years.

Concerning infant mortality, the U.S. is not in the top 25. It is, in fact, number 50. Australia is at 27. Figures are expressed as death per 1,000 live births.

If you have a child in Cuba, the child is more likely to survive than in the USA. This is despite all the money Americans spend on healthcare.

By many measures of morbidity, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity, America ranks quite poorly. For all the money Americans spend on drugs and "treatment", there are not many gains. Obviously, prevention and health maintenance make a lot more sense.

The Covid pandemic has exposed the folly of not heeding the advice of focusing on a more vitalistic approach. It's astounding that denying and even prosecuting doctors for using prevention and early treatment took place. This led to many unnecessary deaths. Again, the enormous dollars spent on the supposedly magic bullet of vaccines was a dud. The "vaccines" resulted in increasing sickness in the community with vaccine injury.

So there is a better way. It's to not replace medicine but rely less on drugs. This is where vitalism comes to the fore. Professions such as chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga and meditation stress enhancing the body from within, allowing the inborn intelligence to do its job to express in a better way. In chiropractic, the goal is to remove spinal nerve interference so the body functions better. Acupuncture uses needles to free up the Qi energy along the body's meridians. Modalities such as meditation and yoga free up the mind to balance the brain. Healthful eating is another form of vitalistic healing.

We can believe one of two things: 

1. We have Innate Intelligence manifesting through every living cell. It's what keeps the body functioning in a coordinated manner, much like an orchestra conductor. However, unlike an orchestra with 60 musicians, your body takes care of billions of processes at any time. I say that is really quite amazing.

OR

2. You can believe that the body is a haphazard collection of chemicals, and the fact that the body doesn't fall apart is all luck. Thinking this way, we believe we need doctors and their drugs to "fix" the body. If so, we must question how the human species has survived through the millennia without drugs.

Medicine does have its place. At times people need some form of intervention. However, our approach to health, in most instances, has been backwards. We allow the body to deteriorate and want the medical heroics to save us. Ultimately, the source of our being is a vitalistic one, and we must realize that we cannot get health from a drug.