IDIOPATHIC AND IATROGENIC

The word “idiopathic” and the word “iatrogenic” are two medical terms I learned late in life. “Idiopathic” means nobody knows what the hell causes it. “Iatrogenic” means it was caused by something to do with the medical system.

I had to go up to the UVM Medical Center the other day to get an ultrasound of my liver and a blood draw to see how said liver is doing. I had Hep C for a good 35 years which was neither idiopathic nor iatrogenic.

Hep C is a virus which I caught somewhere in my feckless youth. The $85,000 treatment that killed the virus poleaxed me and sent me to bed for two weeks and my eyesight has been slightly weird ever since.That was iatrogenic but well worth the cost.

I know a lot about alternative medicine. I usually prefer it to allopathic medicine because I worry that a pharmaceutical will change something drastic in my biochemical processes and mess with all the down-line reactions. That will cause some iatrogenic stuff and the MDs will want to give me another drug to deal with it. (It happens all the time.) But I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That $85,000 Harvoni (thankfully I was really poor at the time and the government paid for it) felt like somebody strong picked me up and shook me. But it sure put paid to that virus!

I have enormous respect for surgeons. The two hip replacements I had were the best thing that I ever did. I went from being in pain all the time and not being able to walk anywhere, to being just fine. When I did the surgeries, I took every drug they told me to, including the rat poison. Put yourself in the hands of skilled professionals and you should do what they say. The trick is to figure out if they are really skilled or not.

Up at the Medical Center, I have to ask myself, why is this place such a frigging palace? Burlington used to get by with just Mary Fletcher and the DeGoesbriand hospitals. There seem to be a lot more sick people than there ever used to be! Most of these people are chronically ill, too, and most chronic illness is idiopathic. How much is iatrogenic, though, is a good question.

I know people are tired of me talking about the “M” word. My daughter even suggested I change the name of my company to something without the word “mercury “in it. It has become clear to her by now that I am engaged in some kind of arcane but legitimate endeavor but she wishes I could sound like less of a conspiracy theorist. Trouble is, I am not wrong and it is a conspiracy.

Here in the States, the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise on TV. Almost every drug flogged in these chirpy ads is for a condition that mercury can cause. The hospital is as enormous as an international airport. It has three or four levels in its parking garage and they are always packed to the gills with cars. I used to think that all those sick people, with their obesity, their grey complexions, their thinning hair, their low energy and everything else got that way from the bad food. But now I think it is mostly from toxicity….iatrogenic toxicity and specifically chronic mercury poisoning whose symptoms are legion. Andy Cutler called the medical use of mercury, “a breathtaking exercise in criminal irresponsibility,” and the dental profession, in regards to its use of mercury, “a crime against humanity.”

I read that you can tell what is important to a culture by looking at its biggest buildings. In the Middle Ages, for instance, the biggest buildings were cathedrals. Perhaps the Medical Center is more of a cathedral than a palace or an airport. A cathedral of our new state religion of “Science” with its holy priests running around with their white coats and their stethoscopes. With its holy sacraments which I will not mention here for fear of getting censored. With its hordes of compliant devotees scurrying about looking awed by the grandeur.

A large part of the economy runs on people being sick. Most of the sickness is of the chronic, idiopathic sort. When Amalgam Illness was published 20 years ago, Andy Cutler wrote that he thought between 1 and 6% of the US population had enough mercury in their bodies to give them symptoms. Before he died, he had modified that to between 30 and 50%. A large part of the population has more mercury in them than they can handle. Mercury causes all manner of chronic problems.

Here is a comment he made to some poor soul who was having a hard with said chronic problems.  I paraphrase, "Yes it is hard.  I am sorry it is so hard but it is. You shouldn’t be told there are highly trained doctors waiting to help you if you get sick so you don’t have to worry about it, only to find out when you  are in a bad way that it is all fraud and you are on your own. But that is the way it is.  Most people who recover wound up managing their own cases, all by themselves, or with the help from others who have had to muddle through the same mess."

So don’t depend on doctors to save you.  Most people go through a bunch of them before they realize that they are on their own.  I am not saying to throw the baby out with the bathwater as the MDs have some excellent stuff, like that $85,000 drug I took, but educate yourself and make your own decisions!