What Doctors Don’t Know

Renowned Doctor Slams Medical Education & Says We Have “An Epidemic of Misinformed Doctors”

September 2, 2018
IN BRIEF
  • The Facts:Dr. Asseem Malhotra, a well-known Doctor in Britain had some choice words to say in front of the European Parliment about modern-day medical education and overall knowledge doctors possess. He’s one of many who continues to emerge and speak out.
  • Reflect On:Why do doctors continue to learn nothing about nutrition? It seems they are trained to prescribe medicine and do not question what they are prescribing. They risk losing their jobs by speaking out and educating themselves.

Dr. Asseem Malhotra is known as one of the most influential cardiologists in Britain and a world-leading expert in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. Currently, he is leading a huge campaign against excess sugar consumption. What also makes him unique is something he recently admitted took him decades to figure out: that our entire medical system, one of the main ‘protectors’ of the human race, is completely corrupt. He now believes that medical education is a state of “complete system failure,” causing “an epidemic of misinformed doctors.”  He also stated that honest doctors can no longer practice honest medicine, and that there is also a growing epidemic of patients who are being harmed.

There is no denying that to some extent, medicine and doctors have done a lot of good and saved a lot of lives. However, an over-reliance on doctors for our health and well-being has spawned a serious problem, one that should be in the spotlight and immediately fixed.

The Need To Think For Ourselves

We all have to realize that society has been manufactured in a way where we simply give up our own mind to someone else, who has been given theirs by someone else. We lack the ability to think for ourselves because, from birth, we are programmed to think a certain way by somebody else.

This is something important for us to change, and by ‘us’ I not only mean patients; it should be a priority for all who practice medicine. And there are signs that it has started changing. Why? Because there is a shift in consciousness taking place. People within all societal systems (health, financial, education, government, etc.) are waking up, and starting to investigate what they have been taught. Rather than simply believing the promotional literature, more are pursuing self-education (which Dr. Malhotra stressed was the only real form of education).

Malhotra pointed out seven ‘sins’ that contribute to the lack of knowledge that not just doctors but everyone has, including patients, regarding modern day ‘medicine.’ He made these comments at a recent European Parliament meeting.

Other Prominent Doctors Speak Out

He’s not the only one to speak up about this issue. In fact, it seems that those who represent doctors have been speaking out about this for a long time. Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), considered one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, has said that,

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”  (source)

Then there is Dr. Richard Horton, the current Editor-in-Chief of another prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, who says,“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” (source)

There are many examples of statements and documented evidence to choose from, which is why doctors like Malhotra are speaking out. You can watch his full talk below the tweet from November 21st, 2017.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2018/09/02/renowned-doctor-slams-medical-school-says-we-have-an-epidemic-of-misinformed-doctors/

Whose Research Can You Trust?

Harvard’s Sugar Industry Scandal Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

There’s a lot of junk science — and corporate sponsorship — out there.

09/13/2016 05:42 pm ET

Zoonar/P.Malyshev via Getty Images

The sugar industry paid scientists to pad research to support its interests in the 1960s, according to a paper published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Author Cristin Kearns University of California, San Francisco uncovered damning letters in the basement of Harvard University that revealed that two of the school’s most famous nutritionists collaborated with the sugar industry to downplay sugar’s role in coronary heart disease.

The collaboration “delayed the development of a scientific consensus on sugar-heart disease for decades,” coauthor Stanton Glantz, a professor at the UCSF, told STAT.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sugar industry group involved in the tainted research didn’t have much to say about its decades-old conflict of interest.

“It is challenging for us to comment on events that allegedly occurred 60 years ago, and on documents we have never seen,” the Sugar Association told Reuters in a statement. “The Sugar Association is always seeking to further understand the role of sugar and health, but we rely on quality science and facts to drive our assertions.”

It’s unsettling to reflect on how food policy and American diets were shaped by this faulty research, and sadly, it’s part of a larger trend. Food and beverage companies and trade organizations have long influenced scientists to produce results that bolster their companies’ profits, or to stifle research that failed to support their products’ health claims. Here are four other times the food and beverage industries fooled us with faulty or slanted science: 

1. Coca-Cola’s anti-obesity initiative

Perhaps the most laughable recent conflict of interest is Coca-Cola’s $1.5 million donation to start the nonprofit Global Energy Balance Network, designed to convince Americans that lack of exercise, not poor eating habits, is the root of the nation’s obesity crisis. (In reality, while exercise has many health benefits, it’s not considered to be the key cause of unhealthy weight gain in kids.)

“We partner with some of the foremost experts in the fields of nutrition and physical activity,” Coca-Cola said in a 2015 statement. “It’s important to us that the researchers we work with share their own views and scientific findings, regardless of the outcome, and are transparent and open about our funding.”

New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle felt differently. “The Global Energy Balance Network is nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola,” Nestle told The New York Times. “Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake.”

2. Soda-funded studies more likely to report no link between soda and obesity

Studies with a financial conflict of interest, including research by PepsiCo and the American Beverage Association, were five times more likely than independent studies to report no correlation between drinking soda and weight gain and obesity, according to the journal Plos Medicine.

Research free from conflicts of interest has reached a far different conclusion. According to a 2013 study published in Circulation, sugary drinks aren’t just bad for your waistline, they cause preventable death and disability. In fact, the Circulation researchers attributed 184,000 deaths worldwide each year to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer from sugar-sweetened beverages.

3. Candy companies research their own products

According to research backed by a trade association that represents Butterfingers, Hershey and Skittles, children who ate candy tended to be thinner than those who didn’t. Convenient, right?

The candy-funded study made the rounds in popular media before an Associated Press investigation uncovered emails indicating that candy industry ties likely influenced the study’s results.

“We’re hoping they can do something with it — it’s thin and clearly padded,” candy study researcher and Louisiana State University professor Carol O’Neil wrote to her coauthor in early 2011.

O’Neil would later tell the AP that she believed the full study to be “robust.”

4. Pom Wonderful’s bogus health claims

Pom Wonderful’s pomegranate juice packs a mean 32 grams of sugar in every 8-ounce serving, but the company has long promoted the product as a health food, and advertised it with slogans like “Cheat death” and “Drink to prostate health,” according to the New York Times.

In fact, Pom spent $34 million to fund pomegranate juice research and then spun the results to make the juice look like it prevented disease. The FTC filed a complaint against the the company for deceptive and misleading advertising in 2010.

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 2015 that Pom would have to include a randomized, well-controlled human clinical study for any future disease benefit claims. Pom’s founders appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to take the case and upheld the lower court’s ruling this May.

We continue to stand behind our efforts to publicly convey valuable information about the health benefits of POM,” Steven Clark, a Pom spokesman, said in a statement.

Digging ourselves out of a half-century deep hole won’t be easy

This is an ongoing problem with no clear solution. Scientists need money to fund research and food companies are more than willing to provide it ― if that research yields results in line with corporate interests. As a result, Americans are swayed by industry studies and rightly confused by ever-changing nutrition guidelines.

Most frustrating of all is question the half-century-old conflict of interest raises: At this point, what research can we trust?

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sugar-harvard-scandal-nutrition-study_us_57d8088ee4b0aa4b722c6417?section=us_healthy-living