Surgery, Death Rates, MDs, Health Reform.

Several years ago a committee of the American Congress investigating procedures of surgery in the United States came to the conclusion that 2,4 million operations are performed unnecessarily each year, costing 12,000 lives and 4 billion US dollars. The latest figures show that some six million unnecessary operations are performed each year.

Another study found that most people who were accepted for an operation did not actually need one and half of them did not even require medical treatment. Many of them were children suffering tonsil infection. Parents rarely object to the removal of their children’s tonsils, especially since not many side effects are recorded for this type of surgery. The death rate from tonsil operations amounts to only 1 in 3,000 or even less.

Only few parents know that tonsils are an important part of the immune system and are needed to keep the head area free from toxins, bacteria, and viruses. It has been shown that many children become depressed, pessimistic, fearful, insecure, and shy after surgery, “character traits” that may stay with them for the rest of their lives. There are natural methods that can support the body in overcoming an infection of the tonsils without the need for surgery (see “Natural Methods of Nursing” in chapter 10). What applies to small operations, also applies to big operations. The need for surgical intervention is indicated only in certain extreme situations.

Most people believe removing an inflamed appendix is a necessity and diagnosing appendicitis is a reliable thing. But surgeons get it wrong up to 45 per cent of the time even when they perform a diagnostic laparotomy. False-negatives – claiming there isn’t a problem when there is one -- also run high, at around 33 per cent. One in five patients with appendicitis leaves the hospital without a correct diagnosis ever being made, and one in five appendixes removed by surgery is found to be normal. In the US this amounts to 20,000 healthy appendixes mistakenly removed every year.

One of the most common operations today is coronary bypass surgery. A seven-year controlled study has demonstrated that except for very rare cases where the left aorta is affected, coronary by-pass surgery does nothing to improve heart condition. In addition, the mortality rate among patients with low risk heart disease undergoing a by-pass operation is higher than it is among those with a high risk. A 1998 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that patients who suffer a mild heart attack and are given a bypass or balloon angioplasty are more likely to die as a result of the surgery. Another study that involved researchers from 14 major heart hospitals around the world found that up to one-third of all bypass operations were not only unnecessary but actually hastened the death of the patient.

Angioplasty, a relatively new procedure used to open arteries, offers an even lower survival rate than bypass surgery. Several research studies confirm that patients, who have undergone these types of surgery, are as likely to suffer a heart attack as the ones who haven’t. The relief of chest pain (angina) that patients may experience after a bypass operation cannot be attributed to an actual improvement of the condition but rather to the cutting of nerve strands during the procedure, to the secretion of endorphins which are the body’s natural painkillers, and/or to the placebo response.

In the case of a bypass operation, the newly inserted pieces of coronary arteries can block up easily again if the cause of arteriosclerosis is not removed. The US National Institutes of Health has estimated that 90 per cent of America’s bypass surgery patients receive no benefits. Major lasting improvements are attributed to an improved diet and lifestyle, stress reduction, quitting smoking and regular exercise.

Fear-motivated Operations

In the States alone over one million women a year sacrifice their uterus to the scalpel. This means that more than half of all American women will have had a hysterectomy by the time they reach age 65. Many of these women will suffer from post-operative syndromes such as depression, anxiety, and increased susceptibility to stress. I have seen in my own practice that most women who had a hysterectomy developed ovary problems, breast lumps, digestive disorders, or breast cancer within 1-5 years after the operation.

An investigation carried out in six New York hospitals found that 43 percent of all uterus operations were unjustified. Other research shows that only 10% of hysterectomies are properly justified. There are thousands of women every year who have a full hysterectomy (including the removal of the ovaries) but have not given their consent prior to the surgery. Only few of them make use of the law to seek compensation, but money cannot return the status symbol of a woman, which is her womb.

Having a hysterectomy is not without a risk. The mortality rate is 1 in 1,000 procedures and serious complications occur 15 times more frequently than that. Side effects can occur in more than 40 per cent of operations; they include urinary retention or incontinence, significant reduction in sexual response, early ovarian failure, risk of a fatal blood clot, and bowel problems.  
Pregnant women are generally treated with respect and special care, but the methods of delivery used today can have an adverse effect on mother and baby alike. Before the era of hospital deliveries the responsibility to handle deliveries was given to competent women. Home was considered the best place for all involved. This had been a common practice around the world for thousands of years. Provided that the appropriate hygienic measures were taken, there were very few birth complications. Today, however, with most deliveries being handled by male doctors and taking place in the sterile environment of a hospital room, we have the highest rates of complications at birth. Research from Britain, Switzerland, and Holland, published by the British Medical Journal in 1996, found that planned home births were the safest of all options, including hospital deliveries.

Induction, Cutting and Caesarean Section

In hospitals, delivering mothers are watched over by a number of electronic instruments and machines that monitor every possible change and that signal the need for an operation just in case something goes wrong. One of the most common types of surgery during delivery is known as “cutting.” The procedure helps widening the vagina so that the baby’s head and shoulders come out more easily. This routine operation is supposed to prevent tearing of the vagina. Yet if the mother wouldn’t be induced and made numb by the drugs and were properly prepared for the delivery, she would know perfectly well how and when to press and when not, to release the child from the womb at the right time. The pain would tell her exactly what to do during the birth process. This would naturally prevent tearing of the vagina. And even if it did tear, the injury would heal much faster than a cut caused by a surgical knife. Because it cuts important nerves the operation also lowers the mother’s sexual sensitivity, something that doesn’t happen with “natural” tearing.

The second most unnecessary but most commonly applied operation during delivery is the Caesarean Section. If the monitoring electronic instruments indicate a sign of irregularity in the heartbeat of the baby, the mother is cut open and the baby is pulled out of the womb. It is well known that the baby’s heart beat can react to a sudden loud noise made in the proximity of the mother, something that is more likely to occur in a hospital or operation room than it would at home. An unborn child may increase his heart beat because of irritating lights shone on the mother’s stomach or strong electromagnetic fields caused by nearby electric appliances such as monitors. Controlled birth studies have shown that a Caesarean Section is performed 3-4 times more frequently if electronic devices were used to monitor the birth rather than a simple stethoscope.

Mothers during delivery often consent to a Caesarean Section when they see intensified signals of their baby’s heart flashing on the monitor in front of them. It is quite likely that a baby’s heart activity produces erratic changes when cold electrodes are attached to its head while it is squeezed through the narrow tube of the mother’s womb. The procedure of connecting electrodes to the head of the baby before it is born is itself an invasion that may have serious consequences. A controlled study revealed that 65 percent of all children whose birth has been controlled electronically are at risk of developing growth and behavioural problems later in their lives.

The very set-up of a delivery room in the hospital, looking more like an operation theatre, can induce a fear and stress response in a sensitive mother. The sudden release of anxiety-provoking stress hormones of the mother may also affect the foetus and make him fearful. The mother’s worries become his worries, and her fears become his fears. Recent studies have shown that within a fraction of a second after fear has caused racing of a mother’s heart, a foetus’s heart begins pounding at double its normal rate. Fear can paralyse many important functions in the body, including those needed for delivering a baby.

It is often also no longer in the hands of the mother to “decide” the time of delivering her baby. Unlike a wild animal, the human mother may be forced to give birth when the doctor tells her it is the “correct” time, even though, as it has been shown, his calculations can be wrong by several days or even weeks. Artificially induced delivery is considered more practical than natural delivery and is also more convenient to fit the doctor’s schedule. But induced birth causes nearly three times as much pain to the mother than natural birth does. To deal with the pain she is given strong painkillers, all with side strong effects. It is a lesser-known fact that many of these mothers and newly born babies end up in intensive care units.

Over half of all Caesarean operations have serious complications. The mortality rate for mothers who have a Caesarean is twenty six times higher than among mothers who give birth naturally. Since 75-80 percent of them is performed unnecessarily due to excessive use of the new electronic monitoring devices, a change of policy could drastically reduce mortality rates among Caesarean mothers.  

In addition to the harm done to mothers, babies who are delivered by Caesarean Section are exposed to the danger of developing serious lung damage which causes a shortage of breath previously only found in prematurely born babies. In naturally born babies, the uterus contractions press out all the accumulated secretions in the baby’s chest and lungs and eliminate them through its mouth. Caesarean deliveries account for more than 25 per cent of all births today, of which only few are justified. They are indicated when there is a real emergency. The doctor normally knows well in advance when a Caesarean delivery is necessary.

Fewer Surgeons and Medical Interventions-- Fewer Deaths

The American College of Surgeons conceded that the US population would require only about 50 percent of the current number of surgeons to secure America’s needs for surgery in the next fifty years. In 1976, the Los Angeles County registered a sudden reduction of its death rate by eighteen percent when the medical doctors went on strike against the increase of health insurance premiums for malpractice. In a study by Dr. Milton Roemer from the University of California Los Angeles, 17 of the largest hospitals in the County showed a total of 60 percent fewer operations during the period of the strike. When the doctors resumed work and medical activities were back to normal, death rates also returned to pre-strike levels.

A similar event took place in Israel in 1973, when for one month the doctors reduced their daily number of patients from 65,000 to 7,000. For the entire month, death rates in Israel were down fifty percent. This seems to happen whenever doctors go on strike. In Bogota, Columbia, the death rate decreased by thirty five percent when no doctors were available for 52 days, except for emergencies."

by Andreas Moritz 
75 West Point Ave Tonka Bay, MN 55331 USA
E-mail: andmor@ener-chi.com

Can all  this raise our insurance rates as well? You bet it can.

From Mike:
I hear similar stories about breathing and speaking. Learn to breathe better with our holistic programs and many of those surgeries will be no longer needed.