Poor, Misunderstood Docs

A riled-up physician wrote a column slamming the lack of trust in physicians and he was, it seemed, earnestly trying to figure out why physicians wouldn’t be the most trusted people on this Earth. Hmm, he thought, it must be the influence of the Internet that’s turned everyone into a “Bigpharma did it” believer and relegated the lowly MD to too many rungs lower on the esteem ladder. Oh, please, doc, take a look at the over 100 responses you had to your diatribe. Let’s not be a head-in-the-sand seeker of truth here. Wise up.

Have an office, doc? Do you allow the shapely young women in the stilettos to come in to your office area to dispense those little goodies, books, slide shows, pens, or run breakfast or lunch seminars for your staff in the office? When was the last time you saw a guy in a suit come in to the office to drop off some literature for the waiting room? Come to think of it, what materials do you have in your waiting room? I will bet there are lots of health-related magazines with big, splashy ads or little coupons for discounts on everything from OTC meds, prescription meds, sleep-inducing plug-ins and even retreats for the over stressed. Have any of those in there, doc?

How many take-aways do you have in that rack your staff lets the detail persons stock? Are all of these materials intended to educate or to sell something? Yes, you and I know that diseases, disorders or life’s circumstances problems are all marketed and there’s a treatment for all of them. No, not a cure because that would get someone in hot water. But a treatment is still pretty safe ground.

Full disclosure here. I am not a Scientologist and I don’t ever expect to be one but I can’t say that everything they find objectionable is truly unfounded. Take the fact that too many kids are being diagnosed with ADHD these days or that one really famous Harvard doc was so effectively instrumental in pushing the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder for kids that he had too many docs seeing too many of them coming into their offices.

The guy was a maven of mavens in the world of mood disorders and no one dared question him or his treatment recommendations (which just about everyone followed like gospel) until it came out that he was pretty shy on the clues side and pretty comfortable with the consulting fees he raked in. How many kids are now labeled with this disorder and what will their lives be like in the future? You and I know that a kid’s brain is vulnerable to assault by any medications that may result in a life lacking in what it could have been without the meds. For Pete sake, we now know that general anesthesia can be damaging to kids. Even a relatively benign med like an antibiotic can result in grey teeth for the rest of a kid’s life or predispose them to Black Thyroid Syndrome which can result in cancer. Anyone think about that when treating acne or even discuss it with the patient/parent?

We can also take a look at how many people who have hopscotched up the career path to becoming authors of “the” essential textbook on some area of medicine. I tend to look at psychiatry because that’s in my area of interest, experience and education even though I am a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Do a little research on that nasty, old monster, the Internet search engine, and you’ll find some pretty stellar names have been found to be craven individuals with an enormous appetite for prestige and lots of rear-end kissing. Medical centers are famous for the latter. Cross the boss and kiss your career goodbye because there will be consequences of an extreme nature. I’ve heard the stories and they’re not pretty.

Kids and adults with that old bugaboo, treatment resistant depression, are being given antipsychotic meds and no one is talking about the true dangers of these meds. Your article did manage to squeeze in the fact that not all meds are bad and, yes, some do have troubling side effects. Yeah, I think metabolic syndrome (aka diabetes) is one of them and anemia is another and what other goodies can we dig up in the U.S. version of the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR)?

Oh, you did know that there’s not one version of this medication Bible, didn’t you? Yeah, they print several versions for distribution in other parts of the world and it’s not because they have to print them in different languages. Dig a little into that one and, while you’re at it, find out where all of our outdated or recalled medications are shipped off to by whoever. Might be a good thing to Google. The little demon can turn up a lot of very troubling facts. You might prefer to call it “misinformation” but how much misinformation or no information is being handed out in doc’s offices? Remember the old saying about “sins of omission and sins of commission?”

When a doc can’t remember the name of the longest nerve in the human body or says he can’t read a CT scan (OK, there are radiologists for that) or hasn’t bothered to keep up and keep a current PDR next to his desk (no matter how limited the book may be in content), I have to wonder how you came to your lament. People just know now that the 60s “Question authority” suggestion was right. Socrates and Jesus directed their followers to do it and it’s not a bad thing.

Authority is a dangerous thing and anyone who bows to it without using that huge gland between their ears is asking for the trouble that will surely befall them. It could result in a “Better Call Saul” moment. Lock stepping to the drum of authority got a lot for the Nazis and Germany didn’t it? How did you ever come to think that we shouldn’t have been questioning docs all along? Did medical school really turn your head around that way or did you always have a sense of superiority that was reinforced by med school?

Blame it on today’s go-go culture or too much schooling or whatever makes you sleep better at night, doc, but I think we should go right on questioning. After all, questioning is the way to finding truth and discovery in everything. Try the Socratic method on some of your peers and see how that works out for you.

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