In this age of high tech medicine, highly specialized physicians and corporate managed medicine, we the patient are left to the mercy and wisdom of a specialist we just met and records that may or may not be following our care and then ultimately are not closely reviewed. The horrifying evidence of this is the new report showing a minimum of 200,000 deaths in the U.S. every year from medical errors. Making medically caused deaths the highest cause of accidentally deaths in the U.S., by far.

If the truth were told we are in fact, “our own doctor”, responsible for our own health and healing.  At some time in history we lost sight of this responsibility and surrendered our power to the medical professionals. Who like ourselves are only human (not the all knowing God they would lead us to believe).  As contradictory as it sounds, in this age of specialized medicine for profit, it is so important that we reclaim our power and become our own doctor. We should not wait until a life threatening illness motivates us into action and research.

A perfect example of this occurred in my office this week when a patient re-tells the story of the medical treatment saga surrounding and acute infection that included a sore throat, fever and swollen glands. Her pediatrician put her on a broad spectrum anti biotic and took a throat culture. While she was in the office the doctor recommended the young women receive her final vaccine for the prevention of HPV, the young women’s mother responded-“whatever you think is best doctor”.  Hearing the story, I was outraged by the indifference shown by the doctor and staff to the prime directive of, “do no harm”.

Besides the issue of some many reports of serious adverse reactions to this vaccine, and it’s questionable usefulness, vaccine packaging contains clear risk warnings to the use of any vaccine, one of these includes an active infection, which this young woman was clearly showing the signs of with the presence of fever and swollen glands.

That the doctor ignored this well known fact about vaccines is, in my opinion,  nothing less than malpractice, especially with a vaccine that can produce serious injury. Unfortunately, this is a story I hear again and again in my office.

We are the most vaccinated country in the world. There is a new vaccine put on the market every year. NO VACCINE IS MANDATORY, in a country where vaccine clinics are set up as drive through or walk by in your local supermarket, it becomes the consumer’s responsibility to do the research on the vaccine, determine the necessity and to avoid the use when suffering from an active infection. A great place to start is at the website of the National Vaccine Information Center.

Sometimes the safest health decision is to “JUST SAY NO” to standard drug-based medicine protocols, and seek treatment information using non-drug based medicine. There are often so many better choices to health than drug-based therapies.