Can Health Be Mandated?
What happened to personalized medicine and the doctor/patient relationship ...
Does the health of each individual determine the health of the population or does the health of the population determine the health of the individual?
This is not a trick question, it is a worldview question.
You remember the old philosophical question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The answer to this question shows your fundamental worldview. Someone with a creationist world view would say the chicken came first, while the evolutionary view would say it was the egg. I believe the answer is they both came first. Think about it.
Measure or driver?
The equivalent question about health in a population is, does the health of each individual determine the health of the population or does the health of the population determine the health of the individual? Do you believe individual health is the measure or the driver of population health? I believe the answer to that question is fundamental to how we move forward in caring for our health. And in this case I believe the choice is one or the other, not both.
Health care is more than a pill for every ill. Since each individual person is unique, one individual’s health choices must take into account the risk and benefit of each choice to the individual, not how that choice affects someone else. If each individual is healthier, the population in general will be healthier. Trying to make health decisions using a cookie-cutter approach, while ignoring the unique situation of each individual, will improve neither individual nor population health.
Personalized medicine.
Where I used to work “personalized medicine” had been the mantra for the past 14 years I was there. Personalized medicine was proclaimed to every potential healthcare customer of our software as a core mission of our company. Most customers also pledged allegiance to that mission. Now I wonder, “Where did that allegiance go? What happened to the commitment to personalized medicine? Was it only marketing hype?”
The reason I ask is I no longer work for that company because the company proved to be hypocritical. While they preached personalized medicine, it did not apply to company employees. When the company mandated health care choices for all employees that went against against my personal choice I was fired. It turns out the personalized medicine mission statement did not apply to me or other employees. It was solely marketing to customers.
If that is not bad enough, it appears our healthcare system, our government, our media and most world leaders are involved in the same marketing scheme.
Fearfully and wonderfully made
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Psalm 139:14
Like snowflakes, no two of us are exactly alike. Each person is unique. We know each individual is so complex that even identical twins are not entirely identical. When you add in the complex external environmental influences on each individual, the probability of two persons being exactly alike are non-existent.
I grew up around friends who are twins. They were so identical practically no one could tell one from the other — but I could. I knew them well enough I could tell the difference at a glance, and even from their voice over the phone, from nuances in their personalities. I still can tell them apart over 50 years later. The differences are plain to me.
This is the reason the personalized medicine mantra sells so well. We instinctively know it is the best approach because we are all so obviously different. Every doctor and patient knows that a treatment that heals one patient can be detrimental or even fatal in another. For instance, there are two kinds of brain stroke, ischemic and hemorrhagic. How you treat one can prove fatal for the other. The doctor must treat the patient before him because conditions and differences matter. Medicine is not one size fits all.
It would be so simple if there was only one solution for every health problem. We would not need clinical trials. If we were all alike, if something worked for one person it would obviously work for everyone else. But we know it is not that simple.
Personalized medicine is more than good marketing. It is essential.
Population Health
In the last few years another term has became increasingly popular: population health. It has a noble sound, however it is easily used as double-speak to push whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It seemed absurd to me to hear people in a meeting talking about both personalized medicine and population health as if they were the same thing. How would that make sense? If you have healthy individuals you need not worry about population health, but focusing on the population will not improve individual health. Population health is a measure, not a driver. If you don’t see why yet, consider this.
Personalized medicine depends on
The doctor / patient relationship
The doctor advising the patient
The patient getting multiple opinions
The patient choosing the advice to follow
The patient consenting to treatment based on given information
Treatment changing over time based on the patient’s response
The patient controlling access to personal medical records
Focusing on individual patient benefit and satisfaction
Paying a fee for the service provided by healthcare workers and institutions
The patient having the final say - period
Population health medicine depends on
Uniform checklists, control and treatment
Doctors checking off the checklists
Aggregated risk/benefit analysis of population determining individual treatment
Obtaining absolute patient compliance to medical authorities
Allowing only one protocol and either it works for you or it doesn’t
“Firing” non-compliant patients
Not assuring medical privacy. Anyone can “Break the glass” to see your records in an “emergency”
Regulatory compliance - health care workers complying or losing status, license or job
Payment for compliance - paying healthcare workers and institutions for compliance to authority and checklist completion
The higher the compliance, the higher the payments - paying for playing
Maybe you see the same conflicts I see?
I know doctors who deeply care for their patients. They got into medicine to help people. Now they find they cannot practice in the current system because they cannot do what is best for the patient. They are not allowed to.
Business people like to look at successful businesses and try to identify the drivers that made them successful. Sometimes they identify the success drives and other times, not so much. The fact they mistakenly identify outcomes as drivers can be humorous which has made it the subject of many Dilbert cartoons.
Does this happen in health care, too? I am afraid it does, but I think we would rather not have cartoon strips depicting bad health outcomes. Using the pointy-haired boss’s example above, if you try to create a list of the eight drugs for successful health, you will obviously leave behind, or even harm, individual patients.
Medicine is more than probabilities!
Probabilities can be very useful in clinical trials and measuring overall clinical performance but there is much more complexity to treating an individual patient than can be tracked, measured and duplicated strictly on probabilities. I have seen the artificial intelligence algorithms that attempt this. They are very complex and not very accurate. Life processes are too complex. There are side effects, bad interactions, current state of health, nutrition, lack of nutrition, environmental issues, personal situations and much, much more making it impossible to practice adequate healthcare using probabilities alone. There are very few one trick ponies in medicine.
What have we learned?
The past couple of years have done much to uncover the best and the worst of health care.
On the “worst” side, we see god-like authorities who seem to have acquired immunity to ethics, logic, law and liability. The current authorities somehow know and agree on the one, single thing we all have to take to be worthy of life and participation in society on this earth.
On the “best” side, we see the blending of multiple health care approaches, blending care treatment and prevention with nutrition and physical activity. Different health disciplines are finding new respect for and cooperation with each other. This has led to the average person knowing more about the prevention and early care for flu and cold-like diseases than ever before. More people are also aware of micronutrients, minerals, vitamins, nutrition and gut health needed to support and maintain health and disease pevention.
Doctors from the practices of allopathic, naturopathic, homeopathic, chiropractic, osteopathic, holistic, functional, and other medical practice approaches are sitting down together and having conversations that would not have occurred two years ago. They are realizing they are on the same team and combining their knowledge and experience it means better health for all. They are finding synergy as they expand the health care box to include practices of health care and curing diseases outside their own studied expertise. They are recognizing that using a single health care practice is not as beneficial as combining practices from multiple schools of medicine as they apply.
Here are a few example podcasts of doctors from different health care approaches working together…
Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Joseph Mercola discuss their treatment of diseases like COVID:
EARLY AT-HOME COVID TREATMENT INTERVIEW WITH DR. PETER MCCULLOUGH
Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Brian Ardis discuss COVID shots:
Dr. McCullough discusses the impact the Covid 19 shots are having on our young athlete's hearts...
Dr. Vladamir Zelenko and Dr. Joseph Mercola discuss the treatment of current diseases like COVID:
THE PLAN TO TAG US FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER SLAVE SYSTEM- INTERVIEW WITH DR. VLADIMIR ZELENKO
Background of the above physicians:
Dr. Peter McCullough is an internist, cardiologist and epidemiologist
Dr. Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician
Dr Bryan Ardis is a chiropractic doctor
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko is a board certified family physician
I do not think any of these doctors foresaw a future where they would be working together on podcasts, in seminars and even in patient treatment. Supporting each other instead of arguing over their differences. There is a refreshing, encouraging, new-found mutual respect among these doctors for one another. This needs to spread. It is spreading, I see it. These doctors do not agree 100% with each other. I don’t expect them to. The honest, rational, scientific debate among them advances patient care.
What kind of health do you want?
On the patient side, I see more people looking to take responsibility to optimize their own health, rather than blindly accept advice and settle for average health. They understand the Standard American Diet is truly SAD. Ultimately, it is you, the individual, who must take the responsibility for your own health. That requires knowledge and wisdom which cannot be mastered by any single person or informed by a single area of study. It requires you to take responsibility, to do your own research and put some effort into your personal health education. You definitely do not want to turn over the responsibility of your health to the government or some bureaucratic agency. If they ever were trustworthy at one time they are clearly not trustworthy now.
You may already know from other articles I have posted that the experience I have had in my journey towards optimal health has led me to study many factors affecting health. I continue to study and learn from accomplished professionals in multiple disciplines but I am not a professional in any of them. I just stand on the shoulders of the giants and I hope I can inspire you to stand on the same shoulders. I have found what works for me and share it because much of it will work for you, too. Listen to your body. It will tell you.
There was only one healer who could heal by command
Only the God who created us can command a person to be healed. Doctors can only assist or stimulate the human body to implement built-in healing processes.
Jesus told the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk.
Jesus told the demon to depart.
Jesus told the blind to see.
Jesus said “Lazarus, come forth.”
Health experts are not Jesus!
There are doctors, and experts and officials who think they are gods. They are not. Many have good advice but if you do not have control over what you do with that advice or what goes into your body, you are not free. And you are probably not healthy either. That can be changed.
One more thing …
Here is the reason I believe the answer to the chicken and egg question at th e beginning is they both came first. We know from research females are born with all the eggs they will ever have. So the first female chicken would have been created, and all her eggs created, at the time. That has profound implications when you think about it.