Beware the 'Janus face’ of modern medicine !

Over the past 60 years, medicine has metamorphosed from a modest pursuit of limited effectiveness to a massive global phenomenon employing millions and costing trillions.

And yet the more powerful the medical enterprise has become, the greater the incentive for its professional and commercial interests to extend their influence yet further – resulting in the progressive “medicalisation” of people’s lives to no good purpose.

But, alleges Dr Marcia Angell, the former chief editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has, in the process, “moved very far from the original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily marketing machines to sell drugs of dubious benefit, it uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way – including the medical profession itself.”

Minimise drugs, maximise good food and exercise. "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food." Hippocrates


Eddie

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8883956/Beware-the-Janus-face-of-modern-medicine.html