The premise of this book is that the difficult issues facing humans can be solved. Surely you must have wondered at my optimism. But reflect on these two health and medicine sections and notice that problems arise simply because the correct method of thinking has not been employed. First off, human welfare is not given priority, and secondly, every one of the SOLVER principles is violated: Self-responsibility is not fostered; Open-mindedness is not encouraged; Long term consequences are not measured; Virtue is not the objective; Evidence of failure and of better systems of healing are ignored, and Reason is put aside for the sake of profits and protecting old ideas.
 
As will be repeatedly shown in this and my book on Solving the Big Questions, we get into trouble again and again when we marry ourselves to unproven beliefs and retire our minds. It is also a curiosity of the human psyche that often the more dubious the belief, the more that people are certain of it. Such certainty is murderous because there are consequences to the antics that arise out of wrong thinking. As the number one killer today, medically certain beliefs prove this point. Our pain, suffering, and death at our own and medicine's misguided hands are ghastly consequences for the sake of belief.
 
If we want to solve health problems (effects) we must attack the beliefs (causes) that are getting us into trouble. The faulty philosophy of materialism looms over medicine as it does essentially every other facet of modern human thought. Medicine begins with the assumption that the body is a mere material thing, a machine that is simply the sum of its material parts. Starting with this faulty premise, it is reasonable to assume pretty much everything else that follows in medical reasoning. If we are a machine, why would we not assume that if something goes wrong all that is needed to fix it is the right tool? If there are cancer cells, then we need mini-medical missiles to fire at them. If a plugged coronary vessel can cause a heart attack, then roto-root the plug out. If germs can feed on tissue, then kill them with poisons. If life is nothing more than a sequence of nucleotides on a DNA coil, then we should be able to gene splice, graft, and clone ourselves to immortality.
 
Injecting venom antitoxin, reversing anaphylactic shock, destroying infection with antibiotics, and sewing, screwing, and pinning people back together if they fall off ladders are life saving and remarkable medical successes. Credit is due where it is deserved. However, exuberance over medical heroics and good ol' American can-doism should not replace reason and evidence. It is one thing to replace a joint, fix a valve, reroute plumbing, and fumigate pestilences in the body. It is quite another to claim such acts deserve full credit for creating health and that all disease and even death lie within the reach of drugs and scalpels.
 
The small successes of medicine have worked a narcotic effect on the profession and the masses giving open license for medical intervention. The result is immeasurable misery that is excused because the alternative, us taking care of ourselves, is too unthinkable.
 
Modern medicine is like a malodorous rose that appears beautiful at a distance but then presents its contradiction up close. To clear our heads we need to go beyond the medical bluster and hubris and examine the beginning materialistic assumptions, as well as look at the real record, not the imagined one. For one thing, notice that medical successes are episodic and singular events for which a specific cause is identified and a specific remedy is clear. You cut yourself with a kitchen knife (cause) and a doctor sews you up (remedy). Medicine can be pretty good at fixing accidents that happen to an otherwise well-functioning mechanism. Fixing them is like patching a hole in a tire. After the tire is re-inflated, off you can go again like nothing ever happened.
 
Such events, however, are different in nature from heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, arthritis, obesity, dental disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmunities, and other chronic degenerative diseases. These are not simple accidents but rather complex systemic maladies for which no specific ultimate cause can be identified other than something as abstract and complex as wrong living. They encompass the entire being and can incubate undetected for decades. Attempting the mechanistic fix to such problems is like having the hole in the tire patched (removing the symptom) but then going back out on the road of broken glass and nails. Modern medicine ignores the condition of the road and just keeps attempting fixes until eventually the tire is so weakened that no patch will work.
 
Repair does nothing about cause, and diagnostic tools only give knowledge of effects, they do nothing to prevent or cure anything. The skill to diagnose arthritis and replace a knee joint should not be construed as skill to affect the 'climatologic' conditions within the body that led to the arthritis that destroyed the joint in the first place. Working within the philosophical constraints of their materialistic view, it is little wonder that the best that modern medicine can do is deal with effects and symptoms.
 
Successful stopgap medical repairs only serve to create an illusion of knowledge and mastery. The resulting exhilaration then becomes manic when it is used to justify limitless expenditure: If human health is the jurisdiction of modern medicine, and no limit can be put on the value of a human life, then no expense should be spared. In spite of the fact that this reasoning clearly does not work, it continues unabated, threatening to bankrupt not only our economy but our health as well.
 
The common tools of medicine are by and large useless in changing the course of degenerative diseases or preventing them. Viewing the inside of the body with diagnostic machines, starting a stopped heart, measuring chemicals and cells in the blood, and replacing organs neither prevent nor reverse disease. That's because degenerative diseases are insidious, pleomorphic, idiosyncratic, and progressive with almost a life of their own. They are whole body affairs not amenable to measuring, replacing, or fixing a part or piece, because a part or a piece is not the cause. Similarly we cannot affect climate or dissipate hurricanes by repairing wind damaged homes, welding together a weather vane, or reprogramming a digital thermometer to measure degrees out to the sixth decimal point.
 
The materialistic symptom-based approach to health is wrong in practice and contradicted by history and the success of other healing methods. The modern materialistic approach assumes that without diagnosing and naming a disease, there is no hope of cure. But effective treatment can often exist long before there is knowledge of the cause and course of a disease. Ancient civilizations had methods of healing long before germs were even conceived, and when anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry were only dimly understood. With ritual, prayer, and access only to things found in the forest, primitive cultures today also perform healings.
 
The emerging alternative medical fields also offer proof that approaches other than diagnostics, drugs, and surgery are not only effective, but are also safe.¹ Such success is in spite of the cries of foul by the medical faithful who insist that before any claim can be made about the benefits of carrots, multimillion dollar controlled trials must be performed. But who is going to embark on such an expensive project when the results could never recover the costs? Carrots cannot be patented and sold in a capsule. And besides, is it not this supposed charmed circle of third person experimental science that has given us drugs that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, kill at least 100,000 and injure two million people each year? (A Harvard professor insists those figures are way too conservative, and says thirty-six million drug related injuries per year are more like it.)²
 
Forgetting that for the moment, even the most fantastic drug or surgical procedure is for naught without the body's own healing resources. No drug could ever hope to exert anything other than a toxic effect without synchronizing in some way with the staggering complexity of body biochemistry. If defensive immunological forces did not rush to a scratch in our skin, we would all become nothing more than a tasty culture media for microbes. And where would surgeons (mechanics) be without the body doing the heavy lifting of reorganizing tissue, removing clots and debris, destroying infective agents, joining membranes, tissue, bones, and skin, and even weaving tissue into synthetic fabrics? (Let's not forget the ability to wall off in fibrous capsules the sponges, needles, instruments and other surgery room debris left behind.) Sutures would never hold without the miracle of first intention healing (inflammation, then scar tissue, then reorganization to original anatomical state). Even casual activity would result in sutures tearing through tissue, undoing all the surgical work and permitting tissues to fall apart. The body must be functioning properly to bring to a finale the most spectacular of surgical feats. On the other hand, the healing ability of the body can make even the most inept and sloppy surgeon look good.
 
This is the reality every physician faces every day: without the healing powers of the body, no salubrious outcome ever occurs. But rather than this truth hitting them squarely between the eyes, their ingrained materialistic beliefs leave no room for the obvious: If healing comes from the natural body, then every means available should be used to aid and support its natural functions. Instead, nature is ignored, manipulated, and pushed around with machines, chemicals, and scalpels.
 
Modern medicine takes far too much credit. Notwithstanding palliation, limited repair, and relief of pain, there are few medical measures that positively impact the course of a disease or improve patient outcome over the long haul. So-called 'preventive' measures, like early diagnosis and even such cherished paraphernalia as stethoscopes, thermometers, and reflex hammers are little more than props. There is no proof that they have ever resulted in changing the course of disease in a beneficial way even though routinely used by every medical practitioner. Although the public has come to assume that medicine is cold and sober hard science, the vast majority of its practices are plucked from the ethers of unproven beliefs and faith.
 
The saga of medical errors and tragedies is virtually endless. Not because medical personnel don't try. Many are wonderful at what they do and are compassionate and self-sacrificing. But they are human and rooted in a social/cultural/educational/institutional/economic context. They are not automatons driven to external truths and altruism. Like everyone else, they are ultimately self-serving and never lose sight of the cash value of their beliefs. If the present medical system serves their individual financial and ego needs, that system will be held sacred regardless of its cruel and lethal effects. It is not that white-coated, stethoscope-draped medical technicians are barbarians; they simply must shrug off contradictions and be stoic in the face of failures that they can only see as an unintended consequence of 'progress.'
 
Failure is the function of the ignorance that springs from the grandiosity of a belief system not derived nor restrained by reason and evidence. From the gilded prison of faith in a belief, even the embarrassing fact that medical expenditure is disjointed from success is lost on virtually
 
everyone. Instead, there is a pomposity and arrogance that either
 
assumes immunity from error and accountability, or endless forgiveness because of how much effort is being put forth. Modern medicine is a failed system (in terms of creating health). That is not changed by some of its headstrong, self-congratulatory, and elitist practitioners. The system must be seen for what it is: a threat and danger that must be employed with careful discretion and extreme caution.
 
I have cited much evidence in the previous chapters to make this point. To illustrate let me here just single out one of the many disasters. Let's consider what modern medicine does to birth. The U.S. ranks last (meaning worst) among developed nations for infant mortality, and first in terms of technological intervention. Should this not make one think that present medical solutions may be the problem? Although medical intervention in high-risk pregnancies can save lives, that should not mean that intervention in normal pregnancies is indicated. But in true form, when an inch is given a mile is taken. A natural process (birthing) is illogically turned into a disease needing treatment.
 
Epidural blocks are given for delivery pain which in turn increase the likelihood of a dangerous Caesarean section. The blocks can also cause fever and headaches resulting in more medication and increased risks to mother and child. Epidurals and the practice of whisking the child away immediately after birth interfere with child-mother bonding which can
 
delay breastfeeding and open the door to vastly inferior formula feeding.
 
Episiotomies are routinely performed but statistically do more harm than good.³⁻⁴ Electronic fetal monitoring is of no proven benefit and often brings harm.⁵⁻⁶ Clamping the umbilical cord immediately after birth so that medical personnel can do their sampling and chart recordings, deprives the child of blood intended to flow from the placenta to the newborn. For about three minutes while the cord is still pumping, oxygenated iron rich blood and stem cells are delivered to the newborn. This bounty of nutrients helps jumpstart the child's respiratory metabolism, prevents anemia, and contributes to brain development.⁷⁻⁸
 
In short, every medical intervention is fraught with danger to mother and child. This story is detailed in the doctors' own medical journals but by and large ignored. Since medical intervention is the only tool they have, if there are problems, doctors can only assume that they just need to figure out how to use their tools better. And on and on the endless cycle goes because nobody will step back and ask the hard and embarrassing questions about whether the tools themselves, and the thinking that creates them, are wrong.³⁻⁷
 
Disastrous examples could be enumerated regarding every facet of modern medical care. Turning things around will require thinking deep enough to recognize that the body is neither a machine nor an extension of human technology. Better technology, making more donations to research, national free healthcare, and increasing the percentage of our gross national product expended on allopathic (treating symptoms) approaches is not where healing will come from.
 
The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country but has the highest infant mortality among 24 industrialized countries and the lowest life expectancy after age 60.⁹ No matter how much sincere effort is expended to repair and tweak the present system, it will continue to fail until the underlying materialistic bias and philosophy of healing are changed. In the meantime, modern medicine is only punching at its own shadow.
 
If we put thinking first, wonderful new vistas of health and healing open to us. Survival of the sickest rescue medicine, the mentality in diseasecare today, must become just a withering branch of a new focus on true healthcare that explores and supports the reasons why people can be well. That change will not come from within a system that has inverted priorities in order to sustain its own unquenchable economic thirst. It must come from the bottom up, from the medical consumer once they decide to pay for results rather than complexity.
 
In all aspects of life we come to learn that we are what we choose, not what others do to or for us. Health is no exception. After over two trillion dollars are spent on medical care each year, it turns out that simple things like stopping smoking, exercise, natural and safe remedies, and eating properly (as discussed in detail in the next section) are the only causes of any decline in dreaded diseases like cancer and heart disease.¹⁰
 
The solution to the present health crises is clear: Living in tune with nature and humbly recognizing that all healing ultimately comes from within. Thinking things through clearly reveals that wellness is not a product of a medical industry and its technology, but rather lies where all good things in life reside, in our own grasp.