Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| You may operate your hospitals, your doctors' offices, or your emergency rooms on a first-come, first served basis, by appointment only, or any other way you see fit. You can offer free drugs; you can offer costly drugs. You can offer free nursing home care for the aged; or, as in the novel Soylent Green, you can have old people euthanized when they outlive their usefulness. You may guide medical research in any direction. Every facet of medical care merits your expertise, because right now greedy pharmaceutical corporations have that goal in mind — complete control. |
Bill Sardi
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 Chemotherapy patients are more likely to be hospitalized or visit emergency rooms for side effects related to chemotherapy, such as fever, infection, nausea, diarrhea, malnutrition, dehydration or low white blood cell or low platelet count. [J National Cancer Institute 98:1108-17, 2006]
Chemo brain
Most cancer drugs cannot discriminate between healthy and cancerous cells. They damage both. Patients can never get back to a state of wellness during chemotherapy. Brain tissues are particularly vulnerable. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 Alas, when all is said and done, we do not know the proportion of all visits to emergency rooms that are indeed emergencies. The most recent government statistics would have us believe that only about one in ten are nonurgent. Our best guess would be somewhere between one-third and one-half.
So what is the problem? Is "nonurgent" the same as "inappropriate?" Is it wrong to have a medical safety net—a place where medical care is a civil right extended to all?
One problem is cost. |
| Indeed, many hospitals have closed their emergency rooms; others turn away ambulances or "dump" patients who require critical care and cannot pay—leading to what one critic calls "no room at the inn."12 Still other hospitals have cut available emergency room services, resulting in long waiting lines.
We have completed our consideration related to the second function of EDs—that is, as a medical safety net. We turn now to an assessment of emergency medicine's efficacy for those who have medical problems, perhaps life-and-death problems.
LIFE OR DEATH? |
| According to one study of ten emergency rooms, 2% of patients with acute myocardial infarction (serious heart attacks)— and another 2% with unstable angina (a precursor to serious heart attacks)—were inappropriately discharged.2' Each one of these mistakes is reprehensible; each must be understood, and in so doing, effort must be made to avoid further errors. Having said that, we do not and cannot live in a society without error. Heart disease may have an array of presenting symptoms, and therefore a success rate of 98% should not be too quickly criticized. |
Charles Barber
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 Eventually, there was simply no place for patients to go but the parks, the bus stations, the public libraries, the emergency rooms, and the homeless shelters. Deinstitutionalization coincided with the arrival of AIDS and the emergence of "crack" cocaine in the early 1980s, and the numbers of the homeless mentally ill rose dramatically across the country.
Both Asylum Psychiatry and Community Psychiatry have been swept away by a new Corporate Psychiatry. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Now, of course, they have a place in a hospital setting -- in emergency rooms or burn wards, for example -- although there are much better alternatives, such as colloidal silver. Colloidal silver is a broad-spectrum antibiotic with none of the toxic side effects of these antibacterial chemicals. I can certainly see some justification for using these types of chemicals in emergency rooms or burn wards, but they have no place whatsoever in the household, and they have no place on pencils.
So when I saw these pencils, I asked myself, "What is the marketing angle here? |
Mark Sircus
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 Preliminary trials found "promising" effects of MgS04 (magnesium sulfate) on stroke victims, if given early enough, before getting to emergency rooms.8 Magnesium infusion in patients with acute myocardial infarction (four grams of MgS04 during the first three days) reduced the incidences of arrhythmias, death and the size of infarction. Another study showed reduction of mortality with infusion of 10 grams of MgS04 in 24 hours.9
Dr. |
Bottom Line Health
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| ER: Enter at Your Own Risk—How to Avoid Dangers Inside emergency rooms. New Horizon.
Coping with Health-Care Conflicts
Abraham Verghese, MD, director, Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is author of My Own Country: A Doctor's Story. Simon & Schuster. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| As it happens, emergency rooms have two separate roles within the health care system. The first is the obvious one, as providers of emergency care. Thus, as in all other chapters, we ask: what actually happens in the ER?3 and how many lives are saved? The second role of the ER is a safety net provider for vulnerable populations: the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and minorities. The question for this book then becomes: Is this latter function appropriate for the ER? and how does this second role affect the first one?
Let us examine this second set of questions first. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| Driving records, accidents, admittances to emergency rooms resulting from low blood sugar — all confirm a significantly increased risk when human insulin is used.
This increased risk for the patient caused by use of human insulin or its synthetic analogs is significant in another respect: The risk comparison between human and animal insulins has always been based on mono-component pork (porcine) insulin. Diabetic practitioners and patients have always known a depot of pork insulin injected under the skin results in a more problematic release into the user's body. |
Devra Davis
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 Radiologists appreciate that we could be creating more cancer in young people by what happens in emergency rooms all over the country today."
Heron referred me to a surprising new advocate on this issue. In a 2007 white paper on radiation in medicine, the American College of Radiology noted that in the past quarter century, the amount of radiation the U.S. population receives each year from medical imaging has increased fivefold. A single computerized scan of the stomach today can give half the dose that was shown to induce cancer in those who survived the atomic bomb blasts in Japan. |
Mark Sircus
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| The same pure natural substance used in emergency rooms to save people's lives has a dramatic effect on cell life and is safer to use than aspirin. Effective in a much broader sense than vitamin C, magnesium chloride is a medicine that helps doctors to fulfill their primary mission and purpose.
"Magnesium is necessary for the normal function of over 300 enzyme systems, for muscle relaxation, immune function, cardiac function, clotting, nerve conduction etc. Indeed I cannot think of a bodily department in which magnesium is not essential. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 In the month of December 2003 alone, emergency rooms were on divert status for 1,935 hours. That's the equivalent of nearly eighty-two days.
I caught up with Patrick Campbell in June 2006, when he was living in Eugene, Oregon, pulling twelve-hour shifts as a hospitalist overseeing the care of patients admitted to Sacred Heart Medical Center. When I spoke with Campbell over the phone, he recalled the events shortly after the FBI's 2002 raid in a tone of voice that veered between incredulity and resignation. |
| Meanwhile, more than a hundred emergency rooms around the country have closed in the past decade, victims in part of rising rates of uninsured patients appearing at their doors. At hospitals that have kept their emergency doors open, administrators have not been eager to add the additional ER beds that are often so desperately needed, because that would mean caring for more uninsured (and unprofitable) patients. Many cities now face a shortfall of emergency services, and hospitals routinely divert ambulances because their emergency departments are completely full. |
Melody Petersen
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 Those deaths, occurring quietly, almost without notice in hospitals, emergency rooms, and homes, make medicines one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
On a daily basis, prescription pills are estimated to kill more than 270 Americans—more than twice as many as are killed in automobile accidents. Prescription medicines, taken according to doctors' instructions, kill more Americans than either diabetes or Alzheimer's disease.
America has become "a grossly overprescribed nation," says Dr. |
Mark Sircus
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| Magnesium walks a fine line between its perception as a dietary ingredient (let's call it a food), and a medicinal agent because it is a powerful medicine already used in emergency rooms. Yet, magnesium would not be needed nearly as much in the emergency room if it was in our foods, and we were putting sufficient amounts in our bodies "the old fashion way."
White blood cells and other immune components are sensitive to malnutrition, especially when it comes to magnesium.
In medicine, arrogance translates into massive death and suffering. |
Melody Petersen
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| Doctors treat drug-induced injuries every day in emergency rooms all over the country. One study found that as many as 28 percent of all emergency visits were related to medications. And the most vulnerable group of patients are, not surprisingly, older people.
Roughly half of Americans ages sixty-five and older take five or more different drugs or supplements every week. Twelve percent use ten or more different brands of pills every week. In part, the elderly use more drugs because they have more chronic illnesses.
Dr. Jerry H. |
Mark Sircus
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| Rapid increase of magnesium stores are necessary in some cases and may be lifesaving for diabetics as they are for other patients in emergency rooms.
The nutritional effects of restoring magnesium to normal levels, may be profoundly preventative, going a long way to protecting the children of the future from early onset of both diabetes and the complications that come from it. The safety profile of magnesium chloride as a restoration modality is extraordinary compared to today's pharmaceutical drugs. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Of the children taken to emergency rooms, almost one in 10 were hospitalized or transferred to another facility for specialized care, according to the report.
"Medications are far and away the most common ingestions for which children are treated in the emergency department," says study coauthor Dr. Dan Budnitz, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I'm one of the few vocal supporters of (legal) immigration, because I believe it is precisely such diversities that made this nation great in the first place.
#4: emergency rooms and trauma care
Another thing I really like about America is trauma care. Yes, I'm talking about emergency room physicians. They are the very best in the world, in my opinion. And even though I'm not a big fan of general practitioners and their drug-and-surgery approach to medicine, I'm a huge fan of the technical expertise of emergency room doctors. |
Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.
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 And emergency rooms routinely give aspirin to patients they suspect may be experiencing a heart attack. If they don't administer aspirin, it is considered a major faux pas.
Over the last 50 years, evidence of aspirin's heart-protective effects has continued to accumulate. Two major reviews in prestigious medical journals (the British Medical Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine) analyzed the benefits and risks of aspirin. The British investigators reviewed nearly 300 clinical trials involving aspirin. |
Jonathan V. Wright, M.D. and Alan R. Gaby, M.D.
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 I've been to the university hospital, all the other hospitals and emergency rooms, the best urologists—everything. I've had regular surgery and lithotripsy. They've had me on a low-calcium diet for years—no dairy at all. I've taken diuretics and other drugs, nothing works. I just keep having kidney stones. I might have missed one or two, but last time I counted I've had at least 47—that's more stones than I have years! Anna here keeps telling me maybe changing what I eat and taking some vitamins will help, but how can that be? |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
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 Considerations
Q People with anxiety disorder, especially those who experience acute attacks, often seek medical assistance in hospital emergency rooms only to be told they are just suffering from stress and that everything will be fine with rest. In one study, up to 70 percent of people who had panic attacks were found to have seen ten or more different physicians before being correctly diagnosed. |
| Some 200 Americans die each year, and another 10,000 are treated in emergency rooms, for carbon monoxide exposure from leaking furnaces, gas ranges, and water heaters. Early signs of carbon monoxide poisoning are sometimes misdiagnosed. One way to protect yourself is to invest in a carbon monoxide detector. These can be purchased at hardware stores.
Q See hypoglycemia; migraine; and tmj syndrome, all in Part Two. See also pain control in Part Three. |
James F. Balch, M.D. and Mark Stengler, N.D.
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 United States, resulting in nearly 900,000 visits to emergency rooms. About 90 percent of poisonings happen in the home, and more than half of these involve children under age six.
Prevention is the key. Following are recommendations from the American Association of Poison Control Centers that can help you protect children from poisons:
• Post the telephone number for your poison control center near your phone, in a place where all family members will be able to find it quickly in an emergency.
• Remove all nonessential drugs and household products from your home. |
John E. Sarno, M.D.
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 At times, the constipation had been so bad that he went to hospital emergency rooms. One physician had recommended surgery to remove the colon if things did not improve. He was referred to me, and we began to focus on his fear of not being able to defecate and to address the other issues in his life, which included complicated family relationships and job insecurity. He began to see a psychotherapist and began to recognize his extreme perfectionism, the low self-esteem that was behind it, and how the tension in his life related to the symptoms. |
Greg Critser
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 Three months later, after five patients died and dozens more were admitted to emergency rooms for ruptured bowels, Glaxo withdrew the drug from the market.
Yet right away its reg affairs people began working on a way to get it back on the market, which they succeeded in doing by mid-2002. It was, for everyone in the company's executive suite, another regulatory victory. The company's stock continued to soar. By 2003, Glaxo, now merged with SmithKline (a process begun in 2000), was the second largest pharmaceuticals company in the world. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| I can certainly see some justification for using these types of chemicals in emergency rooms or burn wards, but they have no place whatsoever in the household, and they have no place on pencils.
So when I saw these pencils, I asked myself, "What is the marketing angle here? What is PaperMate trying to do with this? Is it implying that people catch diseases by using their own pencils?" If that's the message, I'm not sure that it carries a lot of weight. Is using your own pencil a danger to your health? Are people catching AIDS from sharing pencils?
What is PaperMate trying to claim here? |
Eric R. Braverman
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 Sylvia came to see me at the age of twenty-eight with asthma so severe that she was frequently spending time in emergency rooms fighting for breath. Inhalers were not doing the job, and other medications seemingly had no effect. No matter what Sylvia took, the asthma worsened. Sylvia was a third-grade teacher, and her mounting sick days were becoming a real problem.
There was no doubt that Sylvia had a respiratory disorder. There was also no doubt that something else was going on, something that could be better understood if we identified Sylvia's dominant nature. |
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