It’s not certain—where I take that word in its strict sense—that the men on our side of Reality are right about how to gain and keep health.
Should you slonk raw eggs? Avoid seed oils? Stay away from genetically engineered bio-engineered (semi) digestibles? Is it best to drink raw milk and eat more fatty red meat? Should you shun veganism and bugmeat? Should you lift and say “Nyet!” to ultra-processed comestibles? Should you be medicating yourself with every advertised “Ask Your Doctor Whether X Is Right For You”? SSRIs and statins no better than slow poison?
It’s clear enough the Experts at the FDA with their “food pyramid” cannot be trusted. And the CDC? I cannot say here what I really think of the CDC because this is a family blog.
So while our side might be wrong about all or some of those things above, it’s clear—look out your window and see for yourself!—the other side is offering only continued pain. There seems only one way to bet.
Here’s the thing. You have to make that bet. You have no choice. You really need to get healthy and stay that way. Listen to your Uncle Sergeant Briggs. You cannot get sick anymore. Maybe in the old days you could. No longer.
Doubt me? Then gaze and wonder at this opening sentence from a recent New England Journal of Medicine article: “As academic medicine begins to recognize and examine racism as the root cause of racially disparate health outcomes, we need curricula for training physicians to dismantle the systems that perpetuate these inequities.”
Once you stop gagging, you will realize this sentence is perfect. It contains the seed, the core the pearl, the very key to understanding what has gone wrong and why. It’s right here—and in the first three words.
Academic medicine.
Ah, yes. Academic medicine. That’s it. Not medicine! Academic medicine. Medicine is the practice and art—art, not science—of healing. Academic medicine is to medicine as feminist logic is to logic. My enemies managed to invert this; now corrected. Be ever vigilant!
We know this is true, that academic medicine is something far removed from medicine, because of the rest of the sentence. Which says academic medicine recognizes “racism” as the “root cause of racially disparate health outcomes”.
What would doctors of old call it when somebody confessed to “recognizing” something that wasn’t there? Hallucination? Delusion? Paranoia? Limited intellectual acuity? You pick.
There is no “racism” in academic medicine. Victims are given entry to med schools with MCAT scores far lower than non-Victims. This disparity continues with Step scores (tests would-be doctors have to take to progress), and with entry to Fellowships. And, of course, with hiring practices after school is over. Victims have to do far less work to achieve the same positions as non-Victims.
There is no “racism” in treatment, either. Can you imagine—try this—what would happen if it were discovered a non-Victim doctor were found to be refusing to treat Victims, or to treat them with less assiduity than he—or she!—treats non-Victims? You know precisely the media storm that would ensue.
There are indeed differences in health outcomes among peoples. But they are not the result of “racism”. They are result of differences in peoples and behaviors.
For instance, this:
White people are more likely to develop many types of skin cancer than any other racial group. This is because they have less melanin in their skin, which gives skin its color. Melanin provides some protection against UV light, which is a leading cause of skin cancer.
Now it’s logically possible for there to be a racist conspiracy to expose whites to greater amounts of sunlight, and so curse them with high rates of skin cancer, but it is absurd to say it.
Whites have more skin cancer because their skin is paler. This is an in-built difference between them and other races. They are stuck with this. No amount of moral preening by weepy snorting academics will change this. (And that pale is pretty.)
White females have higher rates of breast cancer than Victims. This is not because of “racism”, either, and it’s idiotic to suggest it.
But that is just what our academicians are suggesting. That “disparities” are caused by “racism.” Whereas, what is true, they are caused, at least in part, by race.
There will be no “curricula for training physicians to dismantle the systems that perpetuate these inequities”, because race can’t be eliminated. “Disparities” will ever be with us, like the poor.
Do not get sick.
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“Take 2 aspirin now and call me in seven days OR take them in the morning and call me in a week!”
There is art in that message. It is art that will not get you paid.
My brother went to a urologist. He was having urologic problems. Instead of addressing those problems, the doctor said “You need to get a sleep study”.
I did a sleep study awhile ago. It got me a CPAP. I love my CPAP. The process of getting it likely should have been “Do you snore loudly enough to cause your wife to complain”… YES… “Sit down with this nurse and she will tell you how to use the CPAP without failing miserably.” But that is too cheap. Doctors don’t get paid that way. Tests, tests, results… Office visits. Continuity… That is how you get revenue.
And you have to get revenue.
Don’t get sick is the right path.
Find doctors who will accept $200 for a scrip if you need it. In my case, I am looking for one to give me a scrip for a CPAP.
1 – have you read The Big Fat Surprise (Simon & Schuster, 2014), by Nina Teicholz ? If not, do – it’s all about climate science in cardiac care.
2 – this, originally from 2011, https://winface.com/node/6 explains the disaster in Canadian health care that was preceded by something similar in England and is now happening in the U.S.
3 – all forms of affirmative action are racist because, obviously, based on race.
” It contains the seed, the core the pearl, the very key to understanding what has gone wrong and why. It’s right here—and in the first three words.
Academic medicine.”
Bad math. That’s two words.
False alarm 4th of July weekend 2022. 3 days in hospital, effing clown world, and that was in a red state. Stay out of hospitals.
Academic medicine is run by political commissars. The federal grant funding system has been so completely and utterly subverted for political purposes that the only way to get funding is to espouse woke medicine.
I eat and drink what I want, go to doctors as infrequently as I can get away with, would chew my own leg off to stay out of a hospital. So what? I might croak at eighty instead of ninety, and miss out on a few of those wonderful infirmity and dementia years? The Kung-Flu hysteria was the final straw that taught me to stop taking the academic medical establishment seriously.
What?
“what is true, they are caused, at least in part, by race.”
How is that possible? If Race is nothing more than social construct, an invisible, non-real, non tangible thing that has no correspondent in Reality, then how on earth could something which does not exist cause something which is obviously quite real?
It can’t, of course, and that is exactly the point.
If, as a given, we say Race does not exist, then racial disparities can only be caused NOT by racial difference (cause there is no difference) but by racial bigotry!
But wait, you say, if Race does not exist, then how can there be both racial bigotry and racial disparities?
That’s easy.
Racial bigotry exists because it’s been socially constructed too! But it”s visible, painful, and horribly real, of course….and consistently inflicted upon a given race (which does not exist and is not real). And racial disparities? Well, just ask the victims! That’s the answer.
Just send money. That solves everything!
Confession. When me and The Bride were young we had a child after her brother had a chid and he convinced her that feeding our chid anything with salt was bad. He was a grad of RPI (Renssalear Polytechnic Insititute) so she figured he knew what he was talking.
I thought that idea insane but a happy wife…
It wasn’t long before we had to haul her to our pediatrician, a great level-headed guy who lived out in Casco Bay Maine and who, like John Prine, drank his beer like it was oxygen.
He looked at her for about ten seconds and told his nurse to get some potato chips
Are you avoiding giving her salt.?
The Bride proudly “Yes.”
What’s wrong with you 60s people. Feed your children like your parents fed you, better yet, feed your children like your grandparents fed your parents
I loved that Doc. He’s dead – DED – dead now but we always have followed his advice.
Everyone I knew growing up in Vt had guns in their homes and ate Deer, Rabbits and anything else we could sneak up on and gun down. We ate a shit ton of taters and pasta and drank beer outside near yuge bonfires in mining pits.
We were happy and healthy whereas any “expert” from the FDA or CDC looks like a diseased fag.
Is that too churlish?
Life is too short (said Billy Barty) to drink bad wine and it’s too short not to eat food you grew-up eating.
Yepper–other than compound fractures or the ticker crapping out on me–I avoid the Medical Community like the plague.
Sewed up my own wounds, gimped along on minor busted extremities and handle dental issues with cheap whiskey and aspirin. Been here 80 Summers. Eat and drink whatever I want.
Stepped on a huge rusty nail in the dark barn a while back. Cursed that it punctured the sole of a good boot and then figured I needed a tetanus shot. Closest ER was about two hour drive. Drove there and some still wet-behind-the-ears Intern gave me BS about not taking the “jab.” Told him: “Gimme the tetanus shot now, or I’ll give YOU a jab in the jaw, Dude.” Nurse came in, got the tetanus injection–never saw the smart-aleck Doc again. Paid in cash.
I posted this less than a year ago
oops
https://thegooddoctor.substack.com/p/dont-get-sick
I have to question your syllogism. From the text of your post, it seems you should be saying, academic medicine is to medicine as feminist logic is to logic. Perhaps I’ve not understood your post?
If you’re over a certain age, they will try to kill you in the emergency room through neglect. They almost killed my 64-yr-old husband last fall. He had suddenly broken out in a sweat, profusely vomited, and broken out in a rash. He was losing consciousness. The ER thought he was having a heart attack. Many many tests later—no heart attack, no stroke, nada. They gave him a saline drip and nothing else. I asked the nurses repeatedly, could it be sepsis, an allergic reaction? Ten hours later, he still hadn’t seen a doctor and no one had diagnosed him. His symptoms had abated. The ER looked like a third world country, gurneys lining both sides of the hall and patients groaning in agony, laying there all day. A woman’s dead body, outside my husband’s room, laid there for two hours with a sheet over her body. This was in an award winning Level 4 hospital in the suburbs outside of a major city. He decided against doctors orders to leave and just let me take him home. The next day, I took him to our family doctor to follow up. She looked at his hospital records and consulted with a colleague. Twenty minutes later she told us that he had had an extreme anaphylactic shock and should have been given an epipen shot and Benadryl. He could have died because of their negligence. All we can do is try to take good care of ourselves and enjoy our lives, because the medical system is out to kill us.
But… of course, eliminating race is not one of the aims of the curriculum. And just like many things, while we cannot eliminate racism or inequality, we can reduce it. We may never be able to cure cancer, but we still want to manage it somehow. Imagine we just accept the existence of cancer without treatments.
I have involuntarily gone through at least two more-than-two-hour DEI and DIE (doesn’t matter what acronym you wish to use) sessions of training. Before I took the mandatory training, I was annoyed and arrogantly thought that I, having been a victim of racism and being an awesome human being, need no training from anyone. I was wrong.
“Academic medicine is to medicine as logic is to feminist logic”.
The other way round, actually. “Academic medicine is to medicine as feminist logic is to logic”.
As far as I know, skin cancer is not primarily caused by exposure to sunlight. For instance, rates have historically been high in Scotland, where actualy sunlight is a rare occurrence.
Also skin cancers tend to occur in parts of the body where there is little exposure to sunlight – for instance, the skins of the feet.
It’s quite possible that one of the causes of skin cancers (like other cancers) is not enough exposure to sunlight. In which connection it’s dispiriting to watch young people going around in skin-covering trousers, jackets, and hoods that sink even their faces into deepest gloom. Their chance of getting enough healthy sunlight is about as good as that of a Muslim woman in a burka.
I wrote my last post too hastily and before drinking a drop of coffee. I should have written:
“Scotland, where actual sunlight is a rare occurrence”.
And:
“…the soles of the feet”.
JH writes “Before I took the mandatory training, I was annoyed and arrogantly thought that I….need no training from anyone. I was wrong.”
Funnily enough, Winston Smith came to a similar conclusion in Orwell’s “1984”:
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Welcome to the Ministry of Love, it’s getting bigger and more brotherly every day.
The mandatory DIE training discussion made me chuckle. I find my mandatory DIE training quite useful, although not for any reason the DIE trainers would approve of.
My wife spent quite a bit of time and effort successfully training the cats to stay off of the kitchen counter. Or so she thought. One day I noticed out of the corner of my eye one of the cats quietly jumping down from the kitchen counter. A few seconds later, my wife arrived in the kitchen. Intrigued, I started paying more attention. The cats would only react to her footsteps, not mine or the kids.
If a cat or a human isn’t invested in the lesson, training is unlikely to have the intended outcome.
Excellent one and all!! I will say, though, that our family docotr is very good!!
God bless, C-Marie