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["Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>]

> Despite these costs, a randomized controlled trial published in April 2007 
> in The New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasties and stents 
> do not prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients 
> (i.e., 95% of those who receive them). Coronary bypass surgery prolongs 
> life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. So, Medicare and other 
> insurers and individuals pay billions for surgical procedures like 
> angioplasty and bypass surgery that are usually dangerous, invasive, 
> expensive and largely ineffective. Yet they pay very little -- if any 
> money at all -- for integrative medicine approaches that have been proven 
> to reverse and prevent most chronic diseases that account for at least 75% 
> of health-care costs.

--
That's my biggest complaint about western medicine. It doesn't work very 
well...it's what makes "chronic" conditions "chronic". My mother takes a 
slew of pills, yet still has high blood pressure, high colesterol, etc. The 
medications are dangerous and have many bad side effects, but they just keep 
upping the dose (and give her Lasix to counteract the edema, and Sanctura to 
control the constant peeing from the Lasix).

The 'alternative' treatments are actually GOOD for you. They prompt your own 
body and immune system to work better. They make you stronger and healthier. 
Garlic (raw, untreated) is one of the strongest antibacterial/antivirals 
known, but it doesn't harm normal stomach flora; it also stimulates your 
immune system and is anti-hypertensive, and can help regulate blood sugar. 
Amazing stuff, and you can grow all you need in your backyard. No 
pharmaceutical company has figured out how to prevent you from growing 
garlic, or how to put healthy eating or exercise or yoga in a pill, so they 
can't make money from it. As long as pharmaceutical companies run the  FDA, 
alternatives will be dismissed as quackery, or even banned.

Lynn Wigglesworth
Tioga Co. PA