Cancer Cover-Up: The Book

FORWARD

The idea for this book began simply enough: I wanted to tell the story of how my husband Neal ended up in a Baltimore courtroom, singled out for persecution by "Big Medicine" and its allies in "Big Government."

What I never anticipated was that the project would turn into a journey of discovery beyond anything I could have imagined. It has opened my eyes to the crisis facing our nation's health care system. It is not a crisis arising from a lack of money, although money is a central issue. It is not a crisis arising from a lack of effective treatments, although the efficacy of treatments is a central issue. It is not a crisis arising from a lack of government regulation, although government regulation is a central issue. How can it be that these factors lie at the core of the problem and yet are not the cause? The answer to that riddle lay at the end of my journey of discovery.

What I found was that we were not spending too little on health care, we were spending too much! Indeed, we ranked first among all nations in health care spending, but that money wasn't going to improve our well being. It was being diverted to satisfy corporate greed! 

According to a study published in the July 26, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranks dead last among industrialized nations in a number of key health indicators. Included among them are infant mortality, infant birth weight and neonatal fatality. Worse, according to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 24th in terms of healthy life expectancy. But most disturbing is the apparent cause of our poor health performance: the health care system itself.

A study of inadequacies in American hospitals conducted by the prestigious Institute of Medicine yielded some chilling statistics. Among other things it found that each year:

• Adverse reactions to medications kill 108,000 people
• Unnecessary surgery kills 7,000 people
• Hospital medication errors kill 12,000 people
• Other hospital errors kill 20,000 people
• Hospital-contracted infections kill 80,000 people

Now, mind you, the drug-related deaths are not from overdoses, or misuse of prescription drugs; they represent individuals taking prescription drugs under a doctor's supervision and in accordance with the manufacturer's protocols.

All together this means that some 227,000 people die each year from deficiencies in hospitals and prescription drugs! To put the figure in perspective, that's 4.3 times as many as died during the entire ten years of the Vietnam War!

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