The Illusion of Science-Based Medicine

At 20, I was diagnosed with an inflammatory bowel disease called ulcerative colitis. The doctors said it was chronic, that there was no way to cure it, that I'd have to take medication for the rest of my life.

For eight years I lived with the disease. I took medication three times a day, and over time, more and more pills were added for the side effects of the medication.

I hated the reality. I hated being sick, not feeling well, not having control over my body, not understanding why it was the way it was. All those years I waited and hoped that medicine and science would finally find the solution to my condition.

After eight years with the disease, I was exposed to knowledge I'd never encountered before — knowledge about self-healing.

Testimonials on the internet from people who had healed themselves of almost every disease imaginable.

Articles by a different kind of doctor I'd never met before, about the connection between nutrition, inflammation, and most diseases (inflammation is the basis of most diseases).

Studies on nutrition, physiology, hormones, the sun, chemicals, nature, disease, and more.

I understood that maybe it was possible to heal my disease.

From that insight, I kept researching, reading, listening, meeting people, and above all experimenting on my own body with everything I learned.

Within a few months I had healed myself of the disease. After the colonoscopy, the doctor was speechless.

When I walked out of that exam, I was on cloud nine. I'd done it! I'd done the impossible. I'd healed myself of the disease.

But the joy lasted only a few minutes, and then the questions surfaced:

1 — Why did I get sick in the first place?

2 — What exactly did I do to make my body heal itself?

3 — How do I make sure this never comes back?

4 — Why do people keep getting sick, more and more?

5 — Why is there no conversation about self-healing?

These questions led me to write my first book, "Gut Rules," and to start the podcast.

From there the journey only continues, the insights deepen, and my understanding of illness and healing only grows clearer.

But illness, before anything else, is a matter of consciousness. We live in a world that encourages illness. The conversation about illness, drugs, and hospitals comes before any conversation about healing, preventive medicine, the meaning of nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle.

We live in a world where people are invited, via billboards, to go discover diseases.

Come get screened for breast cancer, colon cancer, women's diseases, STDs — or simply to "raise awareness" of existing diseases in order to normalize them.

And while there's importance in diagnosis, there's not a single word about lifestyle changes that could prevent these diseases in the first place. Not to mention the collateral damage from the invasive or radiation-emitting tests and the drugs.

To answer these questions, you have to know the history of allopathic medicine (Western medicine).

Allopathic medicine, by its own definition, is a system in which doctors and other healthcare professionals (such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists) treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery.

The goal of allopathic/Western medicine isn't actually to heal, but to provide a response and help patients maintain lives of reduced suffering through drugs. Notice the definition — it doesn't offer healing, but rather treatment of symptoms through drugs.

Was it always like this? Were drug treatment, invasive tests, vaccines, and medications always so dominant?

We're brought up to believe that the only doctors qualified to give us medical care and reliable health information are those who graduated from university medical schools, holding an M.D., while natural (holistic) medicine is seen by most of the public as less reliable.

At best it's regarded as having "complementary" added value (complementary medicine), but certainly not as an equal substitute for regular medicine — and at worst, as baseless quackery. It wasn't always this way.

In Western medicine, going back to the days of Hippocrates and especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, two main schools of thought dominated:

1. Natural medicine (mainly homeopathy, osteopathy, and naturopathy), whose approach was to strengthen the body's systems so the patient could overcome the disease on their own. 2. Rational medicine, which was based on theory, focusing on the anatomy and biochemistry of the body.

The doctors who practiced this method believed the physician needed to neutralize the disease from the body aggressively, and to achieve this they relied mainly on the following:

a. Administering poisons such as mercury and lead.

b. Surgery.

Because the treatments were so aggressive, many patients died from the treatment rather than from the disease.

Despite the harsh disagreements between these two schools, a balance between them was maintained until the early 20th century.

So how did we get to a state where the only medical treatment on offer is provided by health systems that are very unnatural, very expensive, very self-interested, declaring themselves to be science-based medicine, and resting on theories — some of which were never proven, and some of which have arguments against their relevance?

In the 19th century, homeopathy developed in the US and became very accepted.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, about 8% of doctors in the US practiced homeopathy.

Many homeopaths studied in allopathic medical schools, and their large numbers led homeopaths to open schools of their own, or to the opening of homeopathy departments in other medical schools.

In 1849, during the cholera epidemic, homeopaths in Cincinnati were so successful in treating people that they published their patient list in the newspaper every day — names and addresses of those who recovered and those who died. Only 3% of the 1,116 patients treated with homeopathy died, compared to 48%–60% who died after allopathic medical treatment.

Beyond effective treatment of infectious diseases, homeopathy offered treatment for a variety of acute and chronic illnesses.

So even though homeopathy's popularity in the US was clear, there's almost no mention of it in the history books of modern American medicine.

When homeopathy is mentioned at all, it's associated with quackery, "placebo" science, and not with "real" drugs.

The Beginning of the Hunt

In 1847, the non-homeopathic doctors founded the American Medical Association (AMA).

And in a strategic move, the AMA decided to allow graduates of homeopathy schools to join them as long as they denounced homeopathy or at least didn't practice it — a first step toward a medical dictatorship?

Doctors who practiced homeopathy were expelled from all medical associations, and the AMA issued an ethical code stating that the membership of orthodox doctors in the association would be revoked if they practiced a different method.

A doctor who wanted to be part of the association was forbidden to practice homeopathy, to associate with, advise, or even consult a doctor who worked as a homeopath (regardless of the patient's wishes). Violating any of these prohibitions led to revocation of membership in the association.

The takeover of the medical establishment in the Western world by allopathic medicine is the result of a combination of the interests of allopathic doctors and the interests of the wealthiest businessmen in the US at that time — John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie.

With their money and influence, in cooperation with the heads of the American Medical Association, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie managed to carry out a business plan that turned medicine into an industry generating enormous profits for the drug and vaccine companies, the medical equipment manufacturers, and many other parties connected to this industry.

A chain of events that changed the relationship of human beings with their bodies, their minds, and life itself.

At the end of the 19th century, John Rockefeller, who got rich in the fuel business, also entered the field of medicine. The first drugs for pain relief and fever reduction were made from coal tar byproducts. In 1901, Rockefeller founded the Institute for Medical Research.

In 1883, the AMA's journal was founded, known today as JAMA — the Journal of the American Medical Association. From 1899 to 1924, George Simmons was the journal's editor-in-chief, and he turned the association and the role of editor into an extremely profitable business. He gave his stamp of approval to companies' products in exchange for those companies advertising in the association's journal. For years, the drug companies paid Simmons huge bribes to promote products whose efficacy or safety hadn't even been tested.

The tobacco companies became among the largest advertisers in JAMA, even though by then there were already studies pointing to a direct link between smoking and lung cancer.

In 1905, Carnegie founded the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

In 1908, the doctors' association approached the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching with a request to conduct a survey of medical education in America. The goal was to advance their reform and to accelerate the elimination of other medical schools that wouldn't meet the new standards. The task of conducting the survey was assigned to a teacher named Abraham Flexner. The Flexner Report was published in 1910 and had far-reaching consequences for the study and teaching of medicine in the US.

Between 1910 and 1925, more than 10,000 herbalists lost their jobs. Between 1910 and 1940, more than 1,500 chiropractors were arrested and prosecuted on charges of practicing quackery. Between 1910 and 1923, 20 of the 22 homeopathic medical schools were closed.

Within about 20 years of the report's publication, the AMA had taken complete control over medical care in North America.

In 1913, the AMA established a propaganda department whose purpose was to attack, in the media, every unconventional method of healing and everyone who practiced it.

In 1925, this department became the Bureau of Investigation, whose main purpose was to track and hunt down doctors who still used natural medicine and to revoke their licenses.

From 1924 to 1949, Morris Fishbein was the editor of JAMA, and he used his position to trample any person or method that threatened, in any way, the interests of the AMA and everything connected to mainstream medicine. During his tenure he relentlessly persecuted chiropractors, whom he called "rabid dogs" and "killers." Together with the association's investigation and propaganda department, Fishbein ran systematic campaigns of persecution aimed at wiping out doctors and methods that had succeeded in healing cancer patients.

They managed to suppress about 12 natural methods for healing cancer that had developed at the time.

Among those persecuted were also:

– Dr. Royal Raymond Rife, who developed an astonishing frequency device for healing, including cancer.

– Harry Hoxsey, who developed a special healing tonic against cancer.

– Dr. Max Gerson, developer of the Gerson method.

– Dr. Ernst Krebs, who discovered the glycoside amygdalin, which he called Vitamin B17.

Alongside the persecution of competitors, a process of taking over the centers of medical study and research took place:

Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan donated enormous sums of money to medical schools, hospitals, and research laboratories, and in return they were able to place their own people on the boards of those organizations. The Rockefeller Foundation, which in the 1920s was the largest philanthropic foundation in the world, donated only to medical schools and hospitals that helped promote drugs that brought handsome profits to those same capitalists. The enormous grants that all the major universities received allowed them to build new buildings, equip their research laboratories with expensive equipment, and hire the best teachers.

But it obligated them to promote medicine based on synthetic patent drugs. The curricula were updated so that any mention of natural healing methods, medicinal plants, and the importance of nutrition to health was removed.

Another process that happened in parallel was the takeover of health authorities and the media by capital:

Rockefeller managed to plant his people in every federal agency connected to health, and at the same time he also managed to recruit media figures.

For example: the publisher of a major national newspaper at the time became one of Rockefeller's close associates, and he made sure no article that might harm drug sales was published in the paper.

In all the cases where those newspapers needed medical testimony to fit the interests of the capitalists, the AMA made sure to supply them with doctors who were willing to testify, even when those doctors had no idea about the specific product, or when the product had no medical value at all.

This isn't all of it, but I think you get the point.

The situation in the world today is this: most of the world's population is sick, and the statistics are rising sharply — chronic diseases 50%, autoimmune diseases 25%, depression and anxiety 10%, obesity 16%.

I'm not writing all of this to harm the name of people or doctors whose intentions are wonderful.

Emergency medicine and rehabilitation are acute, and there's no shortage of doctors doing holy work. But when it comes to diseases that stem from our lifestyle, something needs to change.

If the situation were different, I probably wouldn't have been sick myself for so many years.

If you were shocked by the above content, it's also important to be joyful and optimistic, because without challenges there's no growth.

The same goes for health challenges. Disease is a gift if a person makes the changes required to heal it. That's why symptomatic drug treatment usually prevents this very growth.

After years on medication, I discovered that most healing processes happen within us — with changes in nutrition, lifestyle, and thinking, and with medicines from nature. That's why I make an effort to share the knowledge and the importance of healthy living and self-healing, ever since I healed myself.

I'll also share that over the past few years I've learned and gained a tremendous amount from practitioners of Eastern medicine (Ayurvedic, Chinese, and Japanese). I discovered that you can heal almost any disease naturally, gently, and with love.

And for those of you who want to learn how to set out on a journey and heal yourself — body, mind, and consciousness —

a new course in the academy, Healing Myself — a self-healing course that deals with our ability to heal ourselves.

It's a comprehensive course that deals with us, with our development, our bodies, our personalities, and the amazing path of growth called disease — if we choose to wake up, take action, and make the long-awaited change.