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Why Don’t Doctors Know?

Many patients come to our site and get very excited about what they read here. What they read here often makes a lot of sense to them and it answers a lot of questions they’ve had for years. Many patients can’t wait to tell their doctors because the patients are sure their doctors will be very interested to hear what they have found out.

Many doctors are very interested to hear. But patients are often surprised when their doctors aren’t. It can be a shock to patients who would think that doctors would want to know of something that has a chance of helping. The information makes so much sense, why don’t more doctors know about it?

There is a “short answer” and a “long answer” to that question.

A Short Answer:
Many doctors do know about Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome and its treatment. More doctors are finding out about it every week, and many more doctors will be finding out about it eventually.

But until then, doctors often don’t have time to investigate or accept new approaches. They are often too busy being doctors. And when they aren’t too busy, raising patients’ body temperatures to normal may not be where their interests lie.

A Longer Answer:
Our medical system is complex, and there are many forces at work that influence the care people receive. We’ll review just a few.

Most doctors go to medical school to become competent physicians so that they can help people with their health problems. That’s true isn’t it? But let’s look at the problems that can come from that one sentence. Let’s look at it a couple of different ways.

Most doctors go to medical school to become competent physicians so that they can help people with their health problems.

Does it imply that they are incompetent if you can introduce them to a way of helping people they’ve not heard of before?

Patient says:
Patient means:
“I found out about a new condition that sounds just like what I have.” “I think this approach might help me would you be willing to work with me on it?”
Doctor responds:
Doctor means:
“There’s nothing to that.” “I’m not incompetent.”

 

How about,

Most doctors go to medical school to become competent physicians so that they can help people with their health problems.

Does that mean that if they didn’t learn it in medical school it can’t help people?

Doctor responds:
Doctor means:
“There’s nothing to that.” “I didn’t learn about it from our medical system therefore it can’t help people.”

 

If we’ve been able to find so much misunderstanding in just one sentence, imagine how ingrained and reinforced that can sometimes become after many years of medical training. Indeed, it sometimes seems that the more training a doctor receives the stronger this effect can become.

For example, endocrinologists have typically been to 4 years of medical school, 3 years of Internal Medicine training, 2 years of Endocrinology training, and in some cases, a couple of years after that to focus on thyroid problems. That much training might suggest that the endocrinologists are

  • interested in learning about solutions to thyroid problems
  • interested in being an expert or authority on thyroid problems and treatments

Though these two goals are similar they are not necessarily the same. The first is focused on finding out, the second is focused on already knowing. It’s understandable how some of the endocrinologists might have gone through that training expecting,

  • that they’d be able to help as many people as well as is currently possible
  • not to have patients inform them of very effective treatments the endocrinologists have never heard of (many doctors simply don’t believe that’s possible)

A medical treatment can make perfect sense and work marvelously well, and a physician can still easily dismiss it out-of-hand without knowing much about it, just because of how he’s been oriented.

Very few doctors have been taught about Wilsons Temperature Syndrome in medical school, although it is starting to be taught in some medical schools now. It’s been our experience that the doctors that say that the WT3 protocol isn’t helpful are almost always the ones that haven’t read the Doctor’s Manual for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, and especially the ones who haven’t actually correctly tried the treatment in patients. There’s nothing like doing the treatment to see it’s benefits. If you want to interest your doctor in the WT3 protocol, we suggest that you

  • see if you can persuade him to “just try it” on you, and maybe others. He’ll be able to see for himself how well it works.
  • rather than trying to prove to him on paper that it works in order to get him to treat you for Wilsons Temperature Syndrome.

A Few Factors That Have Helped Shape Our Medical System Into What It Is Today

Humans cannot survive without plants. Let’s think about that. Fruits and vegetables are plants, grains and cereals and breads come from plants, even the meat we eat comes from plants. Cows eat grass, chickens eat grain, fish eat plant life.

In fact, right now astronauts are conducting gardening experiments on the international space station, because long term space travel and colonization will not be possible unless we can take plants with us and grow them for food. Imagine the variety of plants we would need to take with us to avoid nutritional deficiencies.

Patents

More than 100 years ago doctors were getting excellent results treating many conditions using plants (herbs). However, herbs are not patentable because they are already present in the food supply. Companies found that if they could isolate or create compounds, like aspirin, they could patent them.

Patents gave the companies exlusive marketing rights for their compounds. The more people bought the products, the more the companies could spend on advertising. Thus, people were hearing more and more about the products, not necessarily because they were better but because they were patentable. Other companies could advertise herbal products, but since other companies could also compete by providing the unpatented herbs, the advertising might not pay for itself and could quickly die out.

This is how people can hear so much about treatments that don’t always help very much, and hear practically nothing about treatments that often work fantastically well. It began 100 years ago and it continues today. The energy behind how much people hear about a treatment is often not how well it works but whether or not it is patentable, exclusive, or profitable.

It’s easy to assume that “If this works as well as all that everyone would know about it.” But the more accurate statement might be, “If this treatment approach were patentable, everyone would know about it.”

The introduction of patented medicines changed the complexion of medical science completely.

There is a saying that says that the practice of medicine changes every 17 years. Why 17 years? Because that’s how long it takes before a patent runs out. One drug might be recommended for years and years as an excellent treatment, but once its patent runs out and it can be made by generic companies, suddenly its no longer promoted at all. Did the drug suddenly become less effective than it had been for years? No, the effectiveness of the drug remained exactly the same, it’s the patent that ran out.

Thus, not only can effective herbal treatments be forgotten and overlooked, but so can out-of-patent medicines. Dilantin is a good example of a drug that some feel has many wonderful uses but that is no longer emphasized very much in research or schools (the effects of being out of patent). Isn’t it interesting to think that what treatments are recommended may have a lot more to do with patent law and a lot less with what actually helps patients?

Where are doctors in all this? Are doctors involved in some kind of conspiracy to promote patented medicine? Most doctors aren’t. It’s just that patents make advertising possible, which makes profits possible, which pays for research, which strengthens schools. And research strengthens the use of patented medicines. The doctors of today are taught by doctors, who were taught by doctors, who were taught by doctors who took an interest in researching and prescribing patented medicines.

As the first doctors trained the next “generation” they may have focused more on patented medicines and less on the alternatives. It would only take one or more generations of training for the mention of herbs or other alternatives to be wiped out almost completely. Today, doctors can go all the way through their training and never even hear of treatments that worked extremely well over 100 years ago that still work fabulously well today. And it’s not because the treatments don’t work, but because they’re not patentable (and even if they were, they’d probably only be emphasized for 17 years).

Treating Symptoms Often More Profitable Than Curing Disease

When a man can’t sleep at night because of a chronic pain in his shoulder, his main focus is getting rid of the pain so he can sleep.

If a doctor gives him a medicine that causes the pain to go away for a few hours at a time, the patient

  • is very happy to be able to sleep.
  • is convinced that the medicine helped him because the pain comes back when he doesn’t take the medicine.
  • knows that the drug is the only thing that stands between him and misery.
  • will keeping coming back to the doctor again and again, for the drug.

On the other hand, if a doctor is able to give the man a treatment that cures his shoulder pain completely, the patient

  • might conclude that his problem wasn’t very bad and probably would have gotten better on its own, and that he didn’t really need to see the doctor
  • won’t be coming back for more treatment because he’s cured.
  • probably won’t spend a lot of time talking or thinking about shoulder pain and its treatment.

Undoubtedly, companies have discovered over the years that symptomatic treatments are more profitable than curative ones. If a treatment is not profitable enough, companies simply can’t afford to promote them. In a sense, companies tend to talk about symptomatic treatments because they can. It is sustainable. The expense is being covered. As they talk about the symptomatic treatments, doctors start using them, and enough money comes in for them to be able to keep talking about the symptomatic treatments.

It’s not that symptomatic treatments are better, or all there is, it’s just that they tend to pay for themselves better. It’s just economic reality. Patients want to be cured, but companies can only afford to talk about health benefits / products that are economically sustainable. Therefore,

  • it’s up to companies to talk about the best products and benefits, that also happen to pay for themselves
  • it’s up to doctors and patients to find those products and treatments that have the best chance of restoring patients’ health (even though they aren’t profitable enough to support a lot of talk or attention).

The two aims are different. Sometimes they point in the same direction and many times they don’t. For example, economic reality is what pressures HMO’s to promote and provide care in a way that is not necessarily in the best interest of the patients. If you’re looking for health care that can restore your health to normal, instead of health care that just pays for itself, you may have to look for and find it yourself because you may be the only one that can afford to tell you about it. Thank goodness for the Internet!

There is a saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” This is as true in medicine as it is anywhere else. When doctors hear a lot of talk from drug companies about the latest (usually symptomatic) treatment, they tend to think, talk, and teach about it more. And competing drug companies with lots of money are introducing more products all the time. This is a big reason why doctors tend to be taught about and use so many symptom-oriented treatments.

Doctors are taught to give a drug for this symptom and a drug for that symptom and not taught about how to correct the underlying problem. And it is not because of a big conspiracy on the part of doctors. Mostly, it’s because the doctors have never heard of anything else, that’s all they have been exposed to. And it’s not necessarily because of a big conspiracy on the part of drug companies either. They can only talk about what they can afford to talk about. They are doing the best they can within the constraints of economic reality.

Sometimes Large Traditions Are Based On Very Little Reason

Our national health care system has been constrained more by (pick one):

  • What works best to maintain and restore patients’ health, or
  • Patent law and what pays for itself

Which is easier for you to picture our health care system saying?:

  • “We’ll give patients what works best for them even if it costs us more money than we can get in return.”
  • “We’ll give patients the best health care we can as long as it pays for itself (sustainable on a large scale over the long term).”

On one hand it’s understandable. It’s the age-old balance between

  • what’s best
  • who’s going to pay for it.

For example, it might be best for everyone in America to have a new car but who’s going to pay for them?

On the other hand, it can sound really funny. Which sounds more misdirected?

  • Health care in America is about health care
  • Health care in America is about patent law

Patent law? Why would our health care system be about patent law? At first glance it doesn’t make sense, and at second glance it doesn’t seem possible that so much could actually be based on so little.

To illustrate how great things can sometimes be based on very little reason (or no good reason), consider the following example which is adapted from a poem we can no longer find. If you know the poem please let us know where to find it so we can quote it exactly. Thank you!

In an open field over 200 years gone by, a butterfly danced in the sunlit sky.
As it fluttered along here and there a cat leapt after it, pawing the air.
Later that day, a hound dog, with nose to the ground,
followed the scent hoping the cat would be found.
As the sun began to set and the deer came out to graze,
they found the dog’s parting of the grass a convenient way to pass.
When cows were left out there in the sun, they too began to follow the path one by one.
Over time the path became established more and more,
and people started following the trail, never really wondering what for.
Even a shepherd once led his sheep on the familiar route,
and as the area became more populated,
there people in carriages enjoyed their afternoons out.
Soon it became a popular road for many travelers who were “just passing through.”
before long there was enough traffic to support a restaurant, and then a hotel, too.
Then came the automobile and the road was paved,
sidewalks were poured, and traffic signals waved.
The path of that great city’s main street, lined with skyscrapers,
meanders that way why?
Because in an open field over 200 years gone by,
a butterfly danced that way in the sunlit sky.

If we look at street maps of many long-established cities we can see that many of the roads (not planned interstates) do tend to meander one way or another for no apparent reason. The roads are not mapped out in grids of streets, avenues, and blocks as they often are in planned cities. It’s likely that a story similar to the one above has happened over and over again.

Sometimes paths are chosen because they are the best way to go and sometimes they’re chosen because there is already an easy path to follow. Perhaps people that come down the road later assume that the people that came before carefully considered all the important issues and carefully selected the road’s course. But they may not have. They may have simply paved a road that was already there because it was easier than cutting a more direct path through undeveloped property.

It’s easy to see that many well-established and thoroughly paved traditions are not where they are because everyone carefully considered all the important issues and were able to determine the best path to the best results, but are only where they are because it’s easier to follow a road already traveled. Perhaps the most interesting and ironic aspect of the whole story above is that the travels and settlements of all the earthbound creatures who did need to be concerned about the lay of the land allowed themselves to be directed by a flying creature that was totally unaffected by it. The butterfly had entirely different interests and concerns.

Likewise, it may be that many people who are suffering from health problems and many of the doctors that are treating them may be following long-established and thoroughly paved roads that have tended to follow the whims of companies and institutions with entirely different interests and concerns.

For example, some types of patents are easier to defend in court than others. The most defensible patent is a stuctural patent. That’s where a company actually comes up with a new structure or molecule. Thus, there is essentially a legal and financial pressure or mandate for companies to come up with molecules that are not found in nature. The primary financial concern is not whether a molecule can cure an illness in the human body but whether or not it has a structure that’s ever been patented before.

Because the Internet is such a low-cost means for people to communicate, and because it is so easy to search, it is now possible for people to find out about many wonderful treatments they might never have heard about otherwise.

Gas stations used to pump your gas for you, because it paid for itself. Now, practically all gas stations are self-serve. Health care is also becoming increasingly self-serve, because no one is more interested in the patients recovering than the patients. And just as technology is making self-service convenient at the gas station (clerk being able to activate the pump from inside), so too is the Internet making it easier for patients to find solutions to their health problems.

Many doctors do know about the WT3 protocol for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome and are using it to get excellent results. Most doctors don’t know about it yet, but they will.