We have all heard so much about cancer that has become so as to be prevalent enough to be thought of as reaching ‘plague proportion’ in western communities. The extent of the attention that cancer is given, the enormous research dollars that have been committed for many decades, the statistics that allow perhaps one person in four to die from it, is not matched by the availability of information as to its cause, prevention, its cure and its final eradication as a modern fatal disease.

Currently in the U.S. only heart disease appears to rival cancer’s infamy as a killer condition.

In Australia the Bureau of Statistics quotes heart disease and strokes as predominant and lung cancer amongst the highest cause of cancer fatalities. Cancer currently retains its place in most western countries as the major cause of mortality resulting from errors in lifestyle, however, there are other conditions and causes of death that are increasingly indicating a need to focus additionally upon other issues.

Iatrogenic disease is attracting a great deal of public attention and records that show the extent of mortality caused by modern medicine in hospitals and private practice to be alarming. The World Health Organization, WHO, confirms that in America 100,000 patients every year die or are injured by medical mistakes or mismanagement – that is, by wrongly prescribed drugs, surgical mistakes, hospital neglect of hygiene, errors in diagnosis and insufficient care.

In Australia deaths due to iatrogenic causes in public hospitals alone have been reported as 14,000 annually.

Obesity, we recently hear, is taking an enormous hold on the populations in both countries and at last becoming recognized as a causative factor in heart disease with ‘fast food’ and poor diet seen as the main culprits.

Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease statistics threaten to join cancer and heart disease as the main causes of mortality.

If we add to all these factors the ill health suffered by what are casually named ‘side effects’ of drugs;   ‘allergies’ that are commonly associated with consumer problems; fatalities from traffic accidents that now outnumber many wartime records; and pollution problems in our environment, we are extending our perception of what we are up against in trying to achieve and retain good health for a lifetime.

Many believe this is not possible unless we choose return to the core disciplines that Nature demands.

 

Tags: accidents, cancer, heart disease, iatrogenic factors, infectious, kidney disease, mental diseases

Filed under: Health Disease, Medicine by admin