The Forces Against Health in Australia, by Ian Brighthope, M.D.

[Guest guest]

Fwd:

" Recently, leading economic forecasters Access Economics announced that

expanding the use of complementary/nutritional medicines could maintain

excellent patient outcomes while saving hundreds of millions of dollars

a year in healthcare costs. They studied the cost-effectiveness of

common nutritional treatments for common chronic and serious conditions... "

(http://www.nicm.edu.au/content/view/161/245/

<http://www.nicm.edu.au/content/view/161/245/>)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, *June 25, 2012*

*The Forces Against Health in Australia*

*Nutritional medicine could save hundreds of millions of lives,

but vested interests actively pursue the opposite.*

*Commentary by Ian Brighthope, M.D.

*http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v08n23.shtml

*

*(OMNS June 25, 2012) Health practice in Australia is still focused on

treatment of disease as opposed to its prevention and the optimization

of health. Although the scientific literature has recently shown an

increasing awareness of the importance of lifestyle factors in

preventing disease, mainstream medical professionals continue to be

trained to react to disease and pursue drug treatment. This " drug and

disease " paradigm is costly, not only in monetary terms but also the

human toll of pain and suffering and its impact on productivity and

quality of life, and widespread illness and death caused by medical

treatment.

Iain Chalmers, director of the UK Cochrane Centre, has said that

" Critics of complementary medicine often seem to operate a double

standard, being far more assiduous in their attempts to outlaw

unevaluated complementary medical practices than unevaluated orthodox

practices . . . These double standards might be acceptable if orthodox

medicine was based solely on practices which had been shown to do more

good than harm and if the mechanisms through which their beneficial

elements acted were understood. " Unfortunately, neither of these

conditions hold true. [1]

The Australian government has made investent in the prevention of

disease a priority in its $7.4 billion comprehensive reform package to

the nation's health system. Yet prevention has been a secondary

consideration in most medical schools and practices. A huge amount of

disease and death could be prevented by addressing the use of tobacco

and alcohol [2]. There remains an enormous void in the government's

health policy because it does not encourage and support the medical

profession to practice nutritional medicine....