Dan's Journal of Skepticism

Some of you may be familiar with Mike Adams over at NaturalNews.com Those of you who aren’t soon will be. Mike Adams is into selling quack remedies and opposes Science Based Medicine. He is a believer in “Big Pharma” conspiracies and perpetuates many bogus claims himself. His newest article is titled. “If mainstream medicine really works, why are Americans so unhealthy?” I really wish I was making this up but unfortunately this is the type of crap Mike produces.

Did you ever wonder why such an alarmingly high percentage of Americans are obese, diabetic, depressed and suffering from cancer, heart disease, kidney disorders and skin problems? Now consider the fact that Americans pay more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world. Americans pay the highest prices, by far, for medications, medical imaging scans, blood work, surgeries, chemotherapy and hospital stays. And yet what does America have to show for it? The most universally diseased population in the world — and a nation on the verge of bankruptcy caused in part by mainstream medicine. –Mike Adams

It is true that Americans spend an insane amount of money of health but here Mike is confusing association with causation. While Americans may pay more for their health care there are many economical factors why this is the case. The biggest of which is their lack of unified health care. Medicine is expensive, due to the extensive research and development that goes into Science Based Medicine. All those extensive clinical trials that medicine must go though in order to prove it’s effectiveness are not cheap to perform and someone has to pay. Unfortunately in the United States there is no socialised health care and so patients must foot the bill themselves. Americans do not enjoy services such as the UK’s NHS. The fact that Americans pay more for health care is nothing more than a Red Herring. It has no relevance.

Mainstream medicine says poison is medicine (chemotherapy) while teaching people that nutrition is useless. This is the system of medicine that dismisses the value of sunlight, colon cleansing, acupuncture and juice cleansing, but it firmly believes in toxic vaccines, chemotherapy, cancer-causing mammograms and dispensing a lifetime of poisonous medications to little babies who are now being diagnosed with depression before they’re even old enough to speak! –Mike Adams

Chemotherapy is a proven treatment for cancer and has had great success. It’s side affects are well documented in Medical Literature and while it is far from an ideal solution, as it makes the patient very sick and can even kill them. It has been proven to work but is used as a last resort. Doctors can sometimes cut the cancer out but when all else fails Chemotherapy may save the patients life.

Yep, out of all the hundreds of other systems of medicine practiced around the world — most of which are based on medicinal herbs and natural remedies, by the way — the arrogant, ignorant promoters of mainstream medicine have no shame standing in a room of chemo patients (most of whom are dying from the chemotherapy) and proclaiming, “This is the ONLY system of medicine in the entire world that has any merit whatsoever!” –Mike Adams

Really? I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Doctor do this. That sort of sales pitch belongs to the “Alternative” Medicine crowd; not real medical practitioners. But wait Mikes claims get even more bizarre.

When it comes to whether mainstream medicine really works, here are ten important “reality check” realizations to keep in mind:

#1) If mainstream medicine really worked, then drug companies wouldn’t have to commit scientific fraud to fake their clinical trials, would they? –Mike Adams

I don’t know where the Alt Medders get their information from but all Scientific Journals are peer reviewed to prevent Scientific Misconduct. There was the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield falsely linking the MMR Vaccine to Autism in children but fortunately such fraud is a rarity in legitimate scientific literature and is amended when found.

#2) If mainstream medicine really worked, then doctors, drugs companies and the FDA wouldn’t be afraid of competition from nutritional supplements and natural remedies, and they wouldn’t keep trying to censor or outlaw those natural remedies. –Mike Adams

So we should sit back and allow fraud to take place because it’s the consumers fault for being so ignorant? Sorry, this is such a stupid statement. I’m sure many people who read this will be able to think up a much better response than I can.

#3) If mainstream medicine really worked, drug companies would gladly test their drugs side-by-side with nutritional remedies to see what works best. –Mike Adams

Legitimate medicine has to undergo extensive clinical trials and face ruthless scientific scrutiny. Many natural remedies have never undergone clinical trials or failed the trial and nearly all of them collapse under scientific scrutiny. This is why you won’t find them in medical literature.

#4) If mainstream medicine really worked, health insurance costs would be extremely low. The only reason health insurance costs so much is because mainstream medicine doesn’t cure anybody, and patients stay sick, which costs more money to keep treating –Mike Adams

Natural remedies are cheap because they don’t work. Medicine is expensive because a huge amount of resources that goes into producing, testing and approving each drug, even the peer reviewed journals are expensive to produce and just about every publication requires a payment of some kind. Natural remedies are not peer reviewed and much of their literature is found for free, it happens to be worthless but that is at least one victory Natural Medicine has; cheap literature.

This is the furthest I can go without supplying an email address to NaturalNews.com but you can read another brilliant master piece by Mike Adams “What ‘skeptics’ really believe about vaccines, medicine, consciousness and the universe“ and the response by Dr Steven Novella “Mike Adams Takes On “Skeptics” It does not take much to see Mike Adams for the nutjob that he is.