to other nations, ranks #37 in effectiveness of health care according to a United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) study conducted in June, 2000.
•After more than three decades and a trillion research dollars, an American succumbs to cancer every single second of the day. J.C. Bailar, MD, PhD, from Harvard University addressed the Vice President's Cancer Panel Meeting this way: "I conclude that our decades of war against cancer have been a qualified failure."
•According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), April 14, 1998, more than 290 people die each day from adverse reactions to FDA approved drugs-more than three times the number of deaths caused by automobile accidents. In 2000, JAMA reported there are almost a quarter million deaths per year caused by medical errors and adverse reactions to FDA approved drugs. This makes our own medical system the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. 5
•In 1997 it was estimated that side effects from prescription drugs cost our nation 78 billion dollars.6
We have the most expensive health care system in the world (about one trillion dollars per year, one fifth of our gross national product-but only our emergency medical care ranks first in quality. In June, 2000, the WHO found Japan leading the world in "healthy life expectancy," with the USA at #20, falling behind every country in Europe as well as Canada, Australia, and Israel. The infant mortality rate in the USA is higher than that in many struggling countries, for example, the number of infants who died before their first birthday is 13.3 per thousand in New York City, but 10.9 in Shanghai.7
Although our needs in the United States are of less magnitude than those in the poorest third world countries, e.g. some countries in Africa where over 30% of the population has AIDS, we all are caught in a similar dilemma of needing to find economical, effective health care. The poor and uneducated, everywhere, are not getting sufficient support. People with chronic illnesses and degenerative disease, such as AIDS, are marginalized, unless they can afford to pay for special support services. They do not have the resources for medicine or food, and governments are often not organized to adequately help them. The gap between the wealthy and the poor is vast.
Former Congressman Berkley Bedell, Chairman of the Board at the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine writes, "Over forty three million people in the USA cannot afford health insurance; healthcare has almost become a luxury item. Globally, over five billion people can not afford prescription medications. The need for affordable health solutions is largely ignored in our current medical paradigm which has created a system of medical care that is unsustainable"8
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"The performance we receive for what we invest in health care is probably the biggest failure in American History."
- Business Week, August 26, 2002
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In his book, "Power versus Force," Psychiatrist David Hawkins writes, "The health care industry is so overburdened with fear and regulation that it can barely function. Healing from individual illness or the healing of the health care industry itself can only occur by the progressive steps of elevation of motive and abandonment of self-deception, to attain new clarity of vision. There are not any villains; the fault is in the misalignment of the system itself. If we say that health, effectuality and prosperity are the natural states of being in harmony with reality, then anything less calls for internal scrutiny rather than the projection of blame on things outside the system involved.”9
The health care system in America is in trouble. Former Assemblyman from the New York State Legislature (1970-1976), Dan Haley, writes, "...the US has one of the most bureaucratically controlled and over-regulated medical systems in the world."10 ... "we don't have a free market in non-toxic therapies in the US-in things that, by definition, can't hurt us."11 ... "the FDA clamped upon the US a harsh regime of censorship and repression of anything that could compete with the giant drug companies."12
Our health care system needs an overhaul. However, the 'internal scrutiny' that Hawkins advocates takes precious time, and making decisions to change the system, to foster effective, non-toxic therapies, also takes time. Meanwhile, according to JAMA in 1998,13 55% of our population and 83% of cancer patients are trying new forms of complementary and alternative health care, usually paying out of pocket. There is a dramatic rise in visits to alternative practitioners - from 427 to 629 million - nearly double the 386 million visits to primary care physicians. In answer to consumer demand, many clinics and hospitals, are now creating entire departments dedicated to complementary health care, e.g. Memorial Sioan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and Myrna Brind Center at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia.
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"Where the people lead, the leaders must follow."
- Ghandi
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However, most of our research dollars are still dedicated to exploring the efficacy of prescription drugs. The conventional medical field seems to thwart efforts to develop affordable healthcare.14 The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine, started by former congressman, Berkley Bedell, writes, that it takes at least five years to clinically document the effectiveness of a new therapy; meeting the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration generally takes one billion dollars for one new drug or treatment protocol; the National Cancer Institute budget for cancer research is over $4 billion; the scientists at the National Institutes of Health have refused to test most alternative therapies, even ones that show promise for humans.
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"There are reasons why doctors ignored non-Western treatments for so long. Most of the alternative or complementary therapies like massage therapy or herbal remedies can't be patented. And since no one's going to make a lot of money from them no one wants to finance their investigation. "
-Barrie Cassileth, PhD.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
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Two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr Linus Pauling put it bluntly: "The war on cancer is largely a fraud." Why? Little research money is devoted to complementary medicine, if they are protocols that cannot be patented, e.g. herbal remedies. Clinical trials for complementary health protocols that are low-cost, effective, and originate in an entirely different paradigm than the conventional bio-chemical, rarely get funded.
Kardecist Spiritist Centers Can Help
Spiritist Centers offer a model, a way out. They should, at least, be part of the conversation about finding a remedy to our situation.
For the poor, they offer free medical consultation, nutritional supplements, and medication, to those who prove need. They can respond to needs more quickly than our slow-moving, bureaucratic systems of welfare, e.g. Medicare and Medicaid in the USA. As reported in Newsweek, our medical researchers now recognize that both mental and physical health are improved through involvement in community, through volunteer work, and spiritual activities like prayer and meditation.15 Spiritist Centers create a place for those activities under one roof, thus providing a baseline of physical sustenance, improved health, preventive care for illness, allaying the costs of managing sickness, and contributing to spiritual wellness and evolution.
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People
