Was Flexner Wrong?
Conventional Medicine after the Flexner Report 1910
Abraham Flexner was not a doctor nor a medical expert, but was a secondary school teacher and principal with a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University and Master’s degree in Philosophy from Harvard. Flexner joined the research staff of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching employed by the Carnegie Foundation, and published his famous report changing medicine in 1910: “Medical Education in the United States and Canada” which is considered the birth of medical education. The Flexner Report reformed the direction of medicine to exclude anything from nature, censure knowledge, and close down natural health schools (155 to 16) and he wasn’t even a doctor! 1500 chiropractors were prosecuted!
Structuring a medical monopoly based on patentable drugs, the Flexner Report eliminated any competition from the homeopathic and naturopathic medical schools.
Abraham’s brother, Simon Flexner MD, was appointed the first director of the influential Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1903, a position he held until 1935. While Simon was working for the Rockefeller Institute, Abraham published the Flexner Report under the Carnegie Foundation creating the new medical education. At that time, with organic chemistry, the Carnegie and Rockefeller groups had begun their manipulating of petroleum based molecules, for patentable products, and were able to drive all medical education towards patentable drugs with their very generous tax deductible contributions to the medical schools allowed to stay open. The natural health medical schools were shut down and the Carnegie and Rockefeller groups spent hundreds of millions on the schools teaching pharmaceutical drug based medicine. Schools also had to revert back to the male-only admittance programs since there were so few schools.
Allopathic doctors (MDs) desire to heal their patients. They are taught Flexner triggered a much needed reform by creating standard care. Their attitude towards alternative medicine is mostly negative. Many suggest it’s a sham, doesn’t work, and natural medicine should be feared. This has been their indoctrination for over a century, since the Flexner Report.
A good surgeon is worth their weight in gold. Pharmaceutical drugs are accepted as standard care by the general population. Pharmaceuticals for disease maintenance, mental disorders, pain management, birth control, and infection control with antibiotics have contributed immensely to our quality of life when not abused. MDs now have a defined structure to their practice. But was it wise to allow the Flexner brothers to throw out the baby with the bath water, promoting only pharmaceuticals and condemning natural medicine? Could it be “They don’t know what they don’t know”?
The conventional approach to medicine started in hospitals studying cadavers and illness. Treating disease with patentable drugs being discovered by the Carnegie and Rockefeller groups was the basis of the remaining medical schools after the Flexner Report. Did this lead to treating the “symptoms” of disease?
Alternative Naturopathic and Homeopathic Medicine
Naturopathic doctors also desire to heal, and the beginnings of current alternative treatments started with “wellness”, prevention, and treats the causes of disease. The natural approach starts with healthy bodies and the process maintains health, boosts the immune system, and balances the body, warding off disease and preventing lack in the body. Most of these treatments are natural and nonpatentable, so there is no reason for pharmaceutical companies to embrace them.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann based on his doctrine of like cures like, saw the pharmaceutical medicines he was prescribing were more harmful than the disease. Using diluted amounts of mineral, animal, and plant materials, he fathered homeopathy. Wikipedia still says today, “Homeopathy is considered a pseudoscience, and its remedies have been found to be no more effective than placebos…homeopathy being characterized within the scientific and medical communities as nonsense, quackery, or a sham.” So why do plastic surgeons now prescribe “homeopathic arnica” to reduce inflammation, and charge $50 for the same $5 arnica you can get in health food stores? They obviously didn’t read the “placebo” note, or the “nonsense, quackery, or a sham” note in Wikipedia. How can a trusted source be so obviously biased against natural medicine and be able to unfairly criticize a science?
One obstacle is naturopathic medicine is not organized and structured with one protocol like the framework the Flexner Report created for conventional medicine. There is a basic understanding of naturopathy and alternative therapies, how they are applied and how they transform the body. Practitioners choose the avenues that resinate with their goals. It is up to the patients to do their homework and find the practitioner who can treat their personal issues with alternative treatments discovered while doing their research. Most of this is by word of mouth. This is where you come in and can send in your selfies!
Oxygen therapy, vitamins and minerals, probiotics, herbal medicine, chelation, IV therapy, enemas, blood irradiation therapy, Rife technology, homeopathy, parasite cleanses, organ cleanses, acupuncture, NAET, diet/nutrition, colonics, chiropractic’s, yoga, biofeedback, hypnotherapy, massage, and exercise are a few of the pieces of the puzzle to wellness. You might want to incorporate some of these treatments with your conventional approach to wellness. You might also want to avoid bpa’s, amalgam fillings, root canals, radiation, gmo’s, and fluoride, to mention a few. You have a choice to treat the symptoms and maintain your disease or give your body the tools to heal itself. Alkalinize and oxygenate your cells. Know that refined sugars are your enemy. Our soils are depleted, so even if you consume healthy foods, you can be deficient. There is no simple pill, but a conscious lifestyle choice. Discover how truly amazing your body is!
Functional Medicine | Integrative Medicine
ACAM
Functional Medicine integrates both conventional and alternative therapies. Practitioners treat the whole person: mind, body, and spirit. Many MDs are becoming more open to alternative therapies as they have incorporated natural philosophies in their own personal lifestyles and see improvement for themselves and for their patients. Many hospitals are planning to include complementary therapies in the future. Patient centered care including diet, supplementing, exercise, massage, even probiotics are now becoming more mainstream. Stem cells are promising.
The politics of medicine is changing, but doctors are still afraid of rocking the boat, losing their licenses, and being sued. As the general population is becoming more educated by practitioners who are including natural treatments, our world is shifting. Maybe by integrating more complementary practices, insurance will pay for more preventative therapies!
ACAM | American College for Advanced Medicine
ACAM provides education and has created a defined structure and standardized protocol to the practice of integrative medicine. Consumers and patients can join The Link mailing list. The American College for Advancement in Medicine is a not-for-profit organization.
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