The madness of bariatric surgery and other "modern" surgical procedures

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: bariatric surgery, weight loss surgery, bad medicine

It has now been widely reported that bariatric surgery (an aggressive form of weight loss surgery where patients' digestive organs are lobotomized) has an unintended side effect: low blood sugar. According to reports in USA Today, the New York Times, and dozens of other papers, some bariatric surgery patients are suffering from medically-dangerous low blood sugar brought on by this surgical procedure.

The "solution" to this problem, as offered by U.S. surgeons, is to surgically remove part of the patient's pancreas. Since the pancreas is the organ that produces insulin, cutting away part of this vital organ would, of course, result is lower production of insulin, halting the symptom of low blood sugar.

Does this solution strike anyone else as medical madness? If a patient's body is out of balance, you don't go around hacking away parts of various organs to try to make it all fit together again. This is the approach, however, of U.S. surgeons and the medical community at large: there's no problem that can't be solved with a scalpel, these people believe.

So, in a goodwill gesture designed to bring these surgeons even more business, I have assembled a list of additional surgical procedures that could be routinely performed on patients exhibiting various medical symptoms as described below. Each of these is consistent with the practices of modern surgeons, who seem to follow the idea that all disease is caused by physical organs, and therefore the removal of those organs is a cure for disease:

New surgery ideas for U.S. surgeons:

• Ear ache: surgical removal of the ear.
• Constipation: removal of the large intestine and colon.
• Rapid pulse: remove part of the heart.
• Knee pain: amputation of the leg.
• Mental disorders: removal of the head.
• Coughing: removal of one lung.

The following surgical procedures are actually practiced today:

• Obesity: removal of most of the stomach (this one is performed on over 140,000 patients / year).
• Hypoglycemia / low blood sugar: cutting away and removing half the pancreas (this is also performed on patients today).
• Gall bladder pain: removal of the gall bladder.
• Pain in the reproductive organs: removal of the uterus (a hysterectomy, which is still commonly performed).
• Pain in the abdomen: removal of the appendix (appendectomy).
• Headache: surgical removal of muscles of the head.

What's wrong with this picture?

As any sane person can tell, there is something seriously wrong with the idea of cutting away essential organs from a patient's body and calling it medicine. If the whole thing sounds barbaric, that's because it is: and it seemingly belongs in 16th century medicine, not modern day science.

In fact, there's nothing scientific or rational about many modern practices of surgeons. No surgical procedure needs to be scientifically proven effective in order to be widely practiced. There is no law preventing surgeons from slicing and dicing patients on the flimsiest of medical justifications.

As a result, countless patients are harmed every day by overzealous surgeons who see patients as little more than a revenue source: and the more radical the surgery, the bigger the profits. Each year, tens of thousands of unnecessary surgeries are performed in the United States alone, to the tune of billions of dollars in profits for hospitals and surgeons.

Treating mental disorders by removing organs

The individual who best demonstrates the madness of "modern" surgery is Henry Cotton, a 20th century surgeon who became convinced that mental disorders were primarily caused by infections. With this belief as his guiding philosophy, he literally dragged "kicking and screaming" patients into his surgery rooms where he removed vital organs as part of the "cure." He would remove a patient's colon, stomach, uterus, gallbladder, and even pull all their teeth.

The death rate of his patients reached an astounding 30 percent, and yet Cotton pronounced these as "successful" because the patients, he explained, were no longer suffering from mental disorders. Overall, he proclaimed to have an 80% cure rate. Of course, this 80% includes those who died on the operating table.

The psychiatric community, by the way, enthusiastically accepted Cotton's work as "scientific." In fact, the leaders of psychiatry went out of their way to protect Cotton, even giving him a forum from which to lecture and publish the results of his work. Consider this next time some doctor or psychiatrist tells you his work is "scientifically sound."

If images from the story of Frankenstein come to mind, you're not alone: Cotton was truly a mad scientist who literally murdered his patients in the name of medicine. With a scalpel as his tool and "science" as his defense, he would slice open patients and remove one or more vital organs, then claim he was responsible for their cure, even as they soon died.

(A newly published book explores the madness of this now-famous surgeon. Entitled, Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine, it has an interesting review by the British Medical Journal, posted here.)

Medical madness is still practiced today

In my view, this amounts to legalized medical murder. And the point here is that Cotton's evils are still practiced today. He was not alone, you see: thousands of surgeons are in practice today who would claim to be helping patients by slicing away their vital organs. We see it today in bariatric surgery (weight loss surgery) and countless other surgical procedures.

The common failing of all surgeons, historical or modern, is that they continue to see the body and its diseases as nothing more than a collection of physical parts. To view mental illness as having a physical origin is a classic misconception still held by these people. All disease is treatable is they could just find the physical culprits and remove them from the body, they mistakenly believe.

Of course, it's all a monumental, tragic error. There's more to the human body (and human health) than the physical body. A human being is more than the sum of her parts. Health exists at many levels: physical, chemical, and energetic. And the origin of disease can be traced to one or more of these levels as well. Slicing away organs is not a cure for any disease, it is just a sloppy, arrogant attempt by a misguided band of doctors to do something for a patient who is suffering.

These surgeons have clearly forgotten the first rule of medicine: first, do no harm. Because today, surgeons are doing tremendous harm. They are maiming patients for life, and killing more than a few right on the operating table. With the aid of their scalpels, they are unleashing health horrors like bariatric surgery -- a procedure no more credible than the now-discredited frontal lobotomy which was once thought to cure insanity.

The real insanity, it seems, is in the heads of the surgeons. Perhaps they should operate on each other...

It's astounding to me that health insurance won't cover energy healing, acupuncture or chiropractic care (things that actually work to help patients heal), but it will gladly cover barbaric, costly procedures like bariatric surgery that maim patients for life. All this quite readily reveals who has the biggest lobby in Washington, doesn't it?

Now, are there surgeons doing good work out there? Yes, indeed. In the cases of trauma, accidents or other physical injury, U.S. surgeons are the best in the world, and I've always stood behind that statement. If you're shot in a drive-by (what part of town were you walking in again?), you definitely want U.S. surgeons stitching you up.

But when it comes to treating chronic disease, mental illness or other mysterious symptoms (like headaches), my advice to you is simple: flee from the operating table. Save yourself from the madness of men with scalpels.

Chances are, you don't need surgery anyway: you need a naturopath.