Quantum leaps

29. June 2008 William Davis (6)
A reader of The Heart Scan Blog and member of the Track Your Plaque program posted this comment on The Heart.org:

*The facts speak for themselves.*

Dr. William Davis and Dr. William Blanchet, your patients thank you for the low cost PREVENTIVE care you prescribe. The published facts speak for themselves. It is indeed a sad state of affairs, that the larger cardiology community does not take the time to research the data and results you have been reporting. Unfortunately it is the patients who are the victims of the mainstream, inappropriate, treatment protocols, as evidenced with the ongoing high rate of CV death rate.

I am dumbfounded by the lack of open-minded inquisitive curiosity to thoroughly research your claims by many/most cardiologists. Understood, we are all busy, but that is no excuse to stick with practices that do not result in major breakthrough improvements in patient outcomes.

Then again, we are all humans, and when "we" are convinced that "our" approach is correct, "we" tend to conveniently ignore any evidence to the contrary. "We" like to believe "we" have been right all along.

A very insightful book, recently published, says it all in its title: "Mistakes were made (but not by me)."

From the intensity of the comments on this topic, it is clear that we are in the middle of a battlefield. It is to be hoped that the facts will become visible before too much smoke obscures the field, and before the patients are all dead.

George Orwell said it correctly, back in 1946:

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, imprudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality usually on a battlefield.”

And, after several posts that preventive care with EBT would be too costly.....

*Heroic*

Prevention is what matters, but it is not very heroic. A hospital that advertises the highest volumes in heart bypasses and other heart "repair" procedures, sounds to many like a go-to place when one gets into trouble with one's heart.

Cardiologists who perform impressive surgical procedures are heroes. Not unlike fire-fighters. We celebrate them (deservedly!) for rescues and life saving heroic actions.

We tend to not pay much attention to the folks that work hard to minimize risk of calamities in the first place.

Similarly, we recently learned that it is too costly to build schools that are earthquake resistant in China. Parents had to look at their children's bodies, crushed.

Is it too graphic to imagine 20,000 American bodies, who died of heart disease, piled up on a field?

What will it take before we make prevention our first priority?

AL, Ann Arbor, Michigan


The reader also tells me that, prompted by his father's death from heart attack while following conventional advice after heart catheterization, he has lost 50 lbs and corrected his lipid patterns on the Track Your Plaque program. The reader is currently struggling with full correction of his severe small LDL pattern and is following some of the advice we discussed on our webinar recently.

Another Heart Scan Blog reader, Stan the Heretic, posted this quote from scientist, Max Planck, in his comment:


"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - M. Planck

(Max Planck was a German physicist who developed quantum theory, a disruptive set of ideas that supplanted other explanations of energy mechanics of the day.)


I fear that may prove to be the case for heart disease. The revenue-generating formula for heart disease management that dominates practice in cardiovascular medicine today is so deeply ingrained into the thinking and revenue expectations of practicing cardiologists that a preventive or reversal approach just won't cut it--even if it is vastly superior.

That's why it is important for you to take control yourself. You will be the one who obtains and applies the information that saves your life or the lives of those around you. It is, in all likelihood, NOT your doctor who will save your life, but YOU.
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Comments (6) -

  • Anonymous

    6/29/2008 8:01:00 PM |

    Planck most certainly was correct, but TYP is probably not taught in schools.  

    That's because I can't imagine you have the marketing $$$ to compete with the General Electric scanner peddlers and Big Pharma statin-pushers who have infiltrated medical education...as they have the rest of medicine!

    Change will have to happen at the grassroots - by the internet empowering patients to ask their doctors, "This expensive test you're prescribing -- you wouldn't happen to own the machine that performs it, do you?"

  • Anonymous

    6/30/2008 3:44:00 PM |

    This whole situation is very difficult!  Many of us either are stuck with doctors we don't trust or can't find a doctor who is brave enough to flaunt conventional thinking and practice.  

    It is not pleasant (very much an understatement) to challenge your doctor's orders or question his/her financial motives!

  • Anonymous

    6/30/2008 8:20:00 PM |

    With the high Return on Investment of TYP, European high end socialized medicine  should be early mass adopters.

    Matt

  • Dr. B G

    7/1/2008 2:57:00 AM |

    Matt,

    I think you are right.

    Only Europeans have the sensibilities to adopt TYP!

    (And perhaps Japan as well -- did you know they are working to reduce obesity and dangers of Metabolic Syndrome -- NY Times)

    -G

  • Dr. B G

    7/1/2008 2:57:00 AM |

    Matt,

    I think you are right.

    Only Europeans have the sensibilities to adopt TYP!

    (And perhaps Japan as well -- did you know they are working to reduce obesity and dangers of Metabolic Syndrome -- NY Times)

    -G

  • ALANSD

    7/1/2008 5:07:00 PM |

    this article from Emory Hospital in Atlanta, tells of a man who had his life literally saved by having a heart calcium scan done.
    http://www.emoryhealthcare.org/ehchomepage/featured_stories/feature20080624a.html

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