Aryana Libris

Authors : Weatherby Craig - Gordin Leonid
Title : The arthritis bible
Year : 2010

Link download : Weatherby_Craig_-_Gordin_Leonid_-_The_arthritis_bible.zip

Foreword. When Craig Weatherby asked me to critique his manuscript for The Arthritis Bible, I readily agreed to do so because I believe that current medical practice very much needs to raise its eyes to a much wider view of the problems with which we deal unsatisfactorily. In his encyclopedic survey of arthritis and rheumatoid afflictions, Craig Weatherby offers open-minded practitioners and patients a wealth of relevant, readable information not found in the usual consumer guides to arthritis, and he compellingly outlines the current legal and intellectual stasis that forces physicians into excessively narrow avenues of inquiry and therapy. In my various roles as surgeon, teacher, and medical researcher, I have had considerable experience with the biases and institutional pressures that distort medical research and practice. My early explorations into the clinical effectiveness of various dosages of bovine cartilage involved highly encouraging trials in osteoarthritis, rheumatoid conditions, acceleration of wound healing, and, some years later, experimental treatment of advanced cancer. Unhappily, my efforts in these areas were greeted at worst with skeptical indifference by the members of medical academia and at best by fear of involvement based on a decidedly nonheroic apprehension about the effect on their careers if they were to actually try to confirm my results! This astonished me, since in my naïveté, I felt certain that the publication of results I considered epochal would provide me with an army of eager co-investigators. After all, I had shown that contrary to conventional teaching, wound healing could be consistently accelerated (previously declared a biological impossibility), rheumatoid and osteoarthritis conditions significantly improved, and advanced cancers cured with unexpected frequency by therapy with bovine cartilage. The lack of any positive reaction from colleagues and institutions whose scientific objectivity and curiosity I took for granted was originally inexplicable, but I have now concluded that the primary causes for this unexpected attitude are rooted in the nature of medical training and institutions. Weatherby sees this clearly and ably discusses the dilemma in his preface. The basic problems are twofold: first, physicians’ attitudes induced by medical school and residency experiences and, second, inconsistent and illogical government regulation that strongly influences research and provider conduct. With regard to the first, the attitudes of physicians have gradually narrowed under the zealotry of regulators and the curious therapeutic rigidity of medical schools. In this way, many providers have slowly become transformed into highly skilled technicians rather than physicians. This unfortunate change occurs when a physician becomes a slavish follower of a therapeutic “cookbook” despite the compelling fact that his or her patient is growing worse. When the patient suggests that maybe they should try (insert anything about which the patient may have heard), the doctor often responds with Olympian anger and declares, “I can’t believe that you would take this unproven substance!” Astonishingly, it never occurs to the physician that the therapy hitherto used on the patient has indeed been tested - and proven not to work! The intellectual dilemma of such posturing never occurs to the physician-technician. It is as if the doctor has learned a catechism rather than studied medicine. ...