OFF BALANCE

Subtitled 'a pharmacist's perspective on why drugs don't work', this book is a damning indictment of what has become the American health system based on the author's own experience and extensive interviews with individuals who, after long years of struggle and suffering, have found their health through natural or holistic treatments and been inspired to become holistic practitioners themselves. The book is well set out, with amusing cartoons at the beginning of each chapter and interviews with a practitioner at the end of each section. The author explains in her introduction that we have introduced a new so-called health care system whereby the traditional cycle serving to maintain a healthy and balanced body and mind has been replaced by a new cycle whereby doctors have become part of the system to create long-term customers for pharmaceutical companies without realising the inherent limitations of the medical model in which they have been trained, which in most cases contains little or no nutritional education. Many of the conditions treated will not be resolved and the drugs themselves will lead to further complications and side effects.

The author describes her own journey through pharmaceutical education and working in a pharmacy before she realises that the medical industry has become a feeder system for pharmaceutical distribution. She explains some of the history of how this has come about and provides a useful comparative chart of contrasts between holistic and standard American medicine. She also describes the main natural therapies and what they may be appropriate for. Personally, I had not come across the work of Harry Hoxley, who invented a successful treatment for cancer, and was therefore hounded by the AMA and the police. He was arrested over 100 times but each time he was put in jail, his patients would surround the jail, singing and praying until he was released. Eventually he won an action against the AMA for slander and libel. Even so, the FDA eventually shut down all 17 of his clinics in 1960, claiming that there was no known cure for cancer and that he was therefore doing something illegal. The treatment of such pioneers is nothing short of disgraceful, with the FDA and other agencies simply acting on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors often define a condition as incurable when it is only in their own terms, and numerous patients have in fact been cured of incurable conditions by alternative and natural remedies.

In a chapter on what is wrong with American medicine, the author gives the example of stages of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, showing how in many cases the condition is exacerbated by the treatment and therefore requires even further treatment down the line. In one particularly horrifying case history, she details 41 separate drugs being taken by a patient at the cost of over $5000 a month. There are chapters on detoxification, acidity and alkaline levels in the body, weight loss and pain. Then there are separate discussions of the power of the mind and the role of emotions in positive and negative terms, with some useful practical advice. The scandal of cancer and its treatment is the subject of a separate chapter, and includes a note on the suppression of holistic therapies and cancer laws, which make it illegal to claim to cure cancer and form the basis of the FDA or AMA closing down natural health clinics, as mentioned above. She writes that it was very hard for her to believe that the government and the entire healthcare system has gone so far astray that the best choices to treat cancer are suppressed and the more toxic though profitable therapies have become standard.

The sad fact is that the American health system has shifted away from the goal of achieving optimal health and wellness towards the business of earning money, even at the expense of the good health of the patient. As I also mentioned in reviews in the previous issue, the pharmaceutical industry has come to dominate the entire medical system and is so powerful that it can suppress natural approaches to health and their practitioners. Regulatory bodies like the FDA have become part of the problem and business practices regularly involve fraud leading to significant fines, which, although they are enormous, are only a fraction of profits earned through the incriminated drug. The only answer is for patients to become educated and to take their own initiative so far as maintaining their own health is concerned. In the last chapter, the author provides some useful signposts. This is a wake-up call for Americans in particular, although Europeans can also learn a great deal, especially given that regulation tends to move from America to Europe.