Twenty years ago, ivory tower experts and government officials made five predictions about the future of health and medicine. Many of those predictions — and their outcomes — would be laughable if they weren’t so downright depressing.
Thankfully, many clear-eyed, common sense, primary care doctors who serve on the front lines still exercise good judgment and provide sensible healthcare, despite the misguidance from the government.
Today, I’ll continue with a few more recent predictions — including some dire warnings of imminent, inevitable disasters that never happened.
No. 1: Viral pandemics will kills millions around the globe
Recently, we’ve heard a lot of gloom and doom that viral pandemics will wipe out much of the world’s population. Fortunately, these predictions haven’t proven to be correct.
For example, as I reported last month, World Health Organization created a largely useless and unneeded H1N1 vaccine, and a worldwide scandal to go with it, to prevent the pandemic that never happened. Some experts also predicted the H1N5 influenza virus would become a pandemic to rival the deadly Spanish flu of 1918. That one didn’t happen either.
Here’s a prediction I made about that topic which did come true. Back when I was working at Walter Reed Army National Medical Center in the mid-1990s, I predicted we would find influenza virus DNA in autopsy specimens of soldiers who had died from the flu in 1918 and that had been archived in the historical museum there.
Sure enough, molecular biologists went to work isolating and identifying the genes of that virus and have since made nice careers out of pursing my prediction. By studying those old viral genes, doctors have a better idea about what made the influenza virus so deadly in terms of contagion and virulence that particular year.
Another theory recently surfaced that the population in 1918 was more susceptible to the virus because of new vaccines, which had just become available and were massively used during WWI to prevent other infectious diseases.
No. 2: AIDS/HIV will decimate Europe and North America
During the early 1990s many loudly predicted AIDS/HIV would decimate the populations of Europe and North America. There was a lot of politics involved in convincing people that “everyone” was at risk of developing AIDS. This subterfuge successfully guaranteed massive infusions of public funding to research AIDS. But it was a complete myth that “everyone is at risk.” Science, medicine and public health knew all along exactly how to prevent AIDS and how to 100 percent guarantee you are not at risk.
In the meantime, funding for AIDS research pushed out funding to research other diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including autoimmune diseases like lupus, a devastating illness for which we still don’t understand the cause, prevention, or cure.
Perhaps all too predictably, a new generation of research careerists made comfortable livings at taxpayer expense studying ways to prevent and treat a disease that was already and remains 100 percent preventable.
No. 3: Ebola will kill millions by 2015
Many world health experts made dire predictions the Ebola virus would kill millions of men, women, and children around the world by the end of 2015.
But according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, the virus has claimed just over 11,300 lives since it broke out again in West Africa in March 2014.
Clearly, this virus hasn’t even approached the level of catastrophe the media frenzy made it out to be.
Instead, we learned last year the real threat came from incompetent government public health officials who refused to implement basic infection control measures known about for more than 100 years. Plus, it doesn’t help stop the spread of this virus when we have globe-hopping medical reporters like Dr. Nancy Snyderman who think they don’t have to follow standard public health protocols, which they — if anyone — should have known.
No. 4: Genetic testing will revolutionize medicine
The government said genetic testing and genetic tools would transform medical practice in the 21st century. They even claimed the big science government boondoggle called “The Human Genome Project” would provide individualized genetic cures for all diseases.
As I often report, the promise of “gene therapy” has been an impractical, unaffordable bust. Except for all the biotech companies set up around the Washington beltway and elsewhere to capture the government and private funding largesse lavished on these mind-boggling promises and predictions.
As I reported last summer, neurologists at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology rejected the use of gene therapy, fetal tissue research, and other high-tech, biotech mirages for the debilitating neurological diseases of our time, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Instead, doctors at a major university in California showed that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be reversed using — yes — all natural approaches. I’ll tell you more about these major developments in the treatment of AD in the February 2016 issue of my Insiders’ Cures newsletter. If you are not yet a subscriber to my newsletter, now is the perfect time to get started.
No. 5: Doctors will get paid what they deserve
Obamacare proponents predicted primary care physicians would finally receive the salary they deserve under their new health care reforms. These doctors really provide health care for patients, families and communities, compared to highly paid super-sub-specialists. So I hoped this prediction would come true.
But unfortunately, it didn’t.
In medicine, it seems the dreamers, schemers, and high-tech “beamers” get the big bucks. And taxpayers subsidize their piles of gold because the government tells us they will use our money to invest in better healthcare and quality of life.
Hopefully, you know by now you need to reach beyond the offerings of the huge behemoth of the hospital-based healthcare system, which now takes up 20 percent of our economy and for which we are all forced to pay (or be penalized) through the full force of Obamacare.
But that’s still not enough.
Because to really be healthful, you still have to reach into your own pocket without any government subsidy or even “tax break” to obtain the services and products you really need for your health that aren’t part of the “system.” Unfortunately, the best things for your life and health aren’t free, or even government subsidized.
One prediction you can count on in 2016?
This year, and every year, I will continue to provide you with the best information about natural approaches for your health and well-being. And kudos to all the primary care physicians on Medscape who called out these ridiculous (perhaps “crazy as a fox”) predictions from government experts and their co-dependents.