BOOK REVIEW MARGARET MCCARTNEY: THE PATIENT PARADOX Why sexed-up medicine is bad for your health

BOOK REVIEW
MARGARET MCCARTNEY: THE PATIENT PARADOX
Why sexed-up medicine is bad for your health

patient-paradox


An excerpt from this book in Daily Mail several months ago made me fire up my Amazon account and get myself a copy. I am glad I did. This book is a much needed eye opener. Dr McCartney covers many topics here and to talk about all of them would require my review to be written in instalments. Hopefully I can inspire you to pick up this book too. I feel The Patient Paradox is a must read whether you are a medical professional or a patient. Information is power.

Dr McCartney lets you behind the curtain of her GP office. I was not aware, now I am disgusted, by the way NHS dictates how a GP runs patients’ appointments. You may come with an abdominal pain but on your doctors computer screen boxes pop up to remind her that you are due your cervical smear test or to advise you on your smoking habit. These boxes need to be ticked thus taking away from the precious time GP has with a patient.

What Dr McCartney says about screening programmes will be seen as rather controversial. It goes against what we have been told for many years. We constantly hear about the importance of screening, the message is loud and clear. We are told to have our smear tests, mammograms, PSA tests.... but are they really the life saving tools we are made to believe? The author of Patient Paradox shows you the evidence, the numbers that we never hear of, the facts we are not advised about. Did you know you have to screen (for breast cancer) 2000 woman regularly for 10 years to save 1? At the same time 10 healthy women will become cancer patients, have unnecessary treatment and 200 women will experience the agony of false alarms. Cervical and PSA screening come with similar statistics. However you will be repeatedly invited to attend these screening and money paid to the surgeries is calculated on the uptake numbers. Nobody is saying not to attend screening but wouldn’t it be better for the patients to be able to make their own informed decision based on evidence and not on spin and pressure?

We live in the world where the BIG PHARMA runs the medical world, they can choose to publish research that suits them. They market to doctors, fund research, they fund charities that people are so eager to raise money for. They have an incredible influence due to their seemingly endless funds. Quote: “In the US, there is one pharmaceutical representative for every six doctors. Up to $57billion is spent per year on promotion of medicines, almost double their health on pharmaceutical research.”

It seems that increasingly healthy people are made into patients. We are screened, our blood pressures and cholesterol levels are measured, we are offered “MOTs” by private medical companies. We don’t need wait till we develop symptoms to seek medical help, we can just (for cash) jump into an MRI machine for a full body scan. We are told that everybody, over certain, age should be given statins, aspirin and eventually the poly pill that is being developed. Nobody is telling you about the statistics, the facts, the side effects. Dr McCartney’s does in her book, and I fully support and admire her for doing so. You can’t argue with the evidence she presents.

Quote:”The biggest change to medicine that has arisen over the course of my career has been seeming determination of healthcare professional to bring healthy people into surgeries and clinics, and turn them into patients. I am no longer there to make people better, I am there to find out what risk factors for disease they might have or could have, despite their feeling well and having no complaints at all. Shouldn’t general practice be there to deal with people who are in physical or mental pain, who have noticed a worrying lump or who need their diabetes medication adjusted?”

How could you not agree with Dr McCartney’s views? We truly need to concentrate on people who are in desperate need, not on pushing pills that do more harm than good. We need to take big pharma and politics out of the medicine and concentrate on the patient. We all need more doctors like her.

In one of Dr McCartney’s articles in Daily Mail she speaks about homeopathy. She clearly is not a fan, she wants evidence behind any treatments. However she admits homeopathy worked for her friend, possibly because her friend got an hour with her homeopath, this meant she felt understood,valued and listened to and that greatly contributes to the healing process. At a GP office you get around 7min, not enough to have a proper discussion especially when interrupted by pop up boxes appearing on the computer. My father in-law’s was (during his cancer treatment) cared for by an old fashion kind of GP, if he needed an hour he gave him an hour, he visited him at home and even attended his funeral. This continuity of care, getting to know the patient has to have immense benefits. It is time to turn back the time, slow down and listen.

Quote:”So, please patients, help make the healthy service better. Hold us to account.”


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