The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should never publish “Guidelines,” because they are being used as if they are the law of the land by tyrants, also known as politicians. Please see what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please see how chronic pain patients have been “like babies thrown out with the bath water” so a few tyrants can blame the “Opioid Crisis,” which is actually the “Polydrug Overdose Crisis” on the pain pill manufacturers, doctors, and nurses, instead of on the real culprits: the wide-open border, the cartels, gangs, and the recreational drug users.
The CDC (and NIH) should only publish “Opinions” not “Guidelines.” They need to quit being pretentious, for example see Dr. Anthony Fauci testifying before congress and the old clips during the early days of COVID-19. The CDC and NIH “experts” are not the smartest doctors in the world, and they work in a flawed system with bias, secret royalties, and government created monopolies. Thankfully, Citizen Journalists, and brave healthcare experts have used free speech (while it lasts) to get crucial information to the public. Ironically, the CDC and NIH have helped “censor” and “cancel” the doctors, nurses, and other heroes we really want to learn from, despite representing the government, an entity that is supposed to represent free speech as in the first amendment.
For examples of censorship see the “Twitter Files” after Elon Musk took over and turned Twitter into X, and see the treatment of Dr. Robert W. Malone, M.D. (the inventor of the messenger RNA vaccine), and Prof. Peter McCullough, MD, MPH, FACC, one of the greatest academic physicians in the world. And even though I rarely praise democrats anymore for anything, see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Children's Health Defense for their work on vaccine transparency. (I am not registered with any political party. I’m independent and I believe in policies, not politicians, with rare exceptions.)
The Smartest Doctor in the World
What is the problem with CDC and other guidelines? Answer: they are produced by committee; they are a reversion to the mean. They are often produced by grandiose physicians, PhD’s, and their assistants, who think because they work in government, they are smart. Often, these “conceited and stilted” people think they are better than you, or your personal physician. It’s often a; Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely; situation (thanks to Lord Acton, an 1887 politician for the wording).
Who can save your life? The smartest doctor in the world or scientific consensus? Clearly, I believe if you have a life and death diagnosis, any diagnosis really, you want to seek out the smartest physician in the world for their opinion on treatment. That’s exactly what I have done in my own life. That’s why we all need “private Cadillac Healthcare for all,” not something horrible like socialized medicine or “Medicare for All.” Ask a physician/economist to design the best healthcare plan for you, not politicians. Ask an economist who understands the Dr. Milton Friedman, PhD, school of economics, who understands that your personal freedom, wealth, and power depend on good economics.
When we are patients, we need to be able to go to any doctor anywhere around the world, instead of being stuck in “death traps” known as “narrow physician networks” which is one way uncaring third parties like Medicare (especially Medicare C or D), Medicaid, and private insurance companies can treat you as subhuman to save money and control your body.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) agrees with Me
An artificial intelligence (AI) source agrees with me! (At least that is my interpretation.) To quote AI:
“…if I were in need of medical assistance, I would likely prioritize the expertise and knowledge of the smartest doctor in the world.” – April 7, 2024.
I won’t list the exact AI source (for now) to protect them from being programmed to be stupider. So, if your life is on the line, go to the smartest doctor in the world, which should be obvious and common sense to all. The CDC and NIH should only publish “CDC Opinions” and “NIH Opinions” to recognize their intellectual inferiority, their bias, and their influence from politicians.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) also said:
“Scientific consensus is important for understanding broader scientific principles and trends, but when it comes to individual medical care, the expertise and judgment of a highly skilled and knowledgeable medical professional are crucial for making decisions about diagnosis, treatment, and care tailored to the specific circumstances of the patient.”
AI gets it. We are supposed to have personalized medicine. We are supposed to have a patient sit down with the smartest physician in the world, and they are supposed to do evidence-based medicine together, considering the values and preferences of the patient. Guidelines cannot do that. That’s why they should be called opinions not guidelines. And, individualized medicine is only going to get better as physicians incorporate AI into their decision-making process as another tool to get patients the treatment they want, not the treatment some uncaring third party wants. Your family medicine physician should be the smartest physician in the world.
Ethics
Healthcare is Broken and we need to fix it. In healthcare we need respect for patients. This means focusing on patients instead of reimbursement, which doctors and nurses can’t do because Healthcare is Broken. Two things can vastly improve healthcare quality while lowering prices:
1. Price transparency
2. Treatment transparency
We don’t have either one today. We have socialized medicine with hidden prices, secret monopolies, and third parties in power. Obamacare was the greatest transfer of power away from patients and to entities that “don’t care how much healthcare costs you” in history. Obamacare guaranteed runaway prices in healthcare.
In healthcare, we need fairness, which means treating people better than they deserve, because “Doctors treat patients, not politics.”
In healthcare we need responsibility, which means transparency in healthcare. We don’t need to criminalize malpractice, or criminalize doctors who try to treat legitimate pain patients. We don’t need to put people trying to do good things behind bars. We need to focus on the responsibility for one’s actions, especially in a way that brings transparency and keeps teaching doctors, nurses, and all allied healthcare professionals to be better, and to provide better patient care in accordance with the patients’ values and wishes, not the wishes of an uncaring third party. As an example, see how vaccine makers get away with not being liable.
In healthcare, we need honesty and integrity, and we need to get rid of paternalistic (and maternalistic) healthcare. Allegedly, we gave up the idea of paternalistic/maternalistic healthcare decades ago, but just try to tell that to the people/organizations who still do it. Today, the patient should have the benefits of:
1. The medical literature
2. Price transparency
3. Your physician’s experience, expertise, and opinion of the medical literature
4. The values and preference of the patient (your values and preferences)
5. 10,000 variables can be solved to get the above digested down to one number so that understandable treatment transparency will exist (I call it the Treatment Score).
You got pancreatic cancer like Alex Trebek? You got glioblastoma like Senator John McCain or Senator Ted Kennedy? You need to talk to someone like me, who has been following the mathematics and medical statistics on outcomes for years, (but you can’t. I’m a retired physician/economist and this content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always consult your own healthcare professional, your own licensed medical physician, for medical concerns and advice. I am a retired physician and am no longer practicing; therefore, we cannot have a doctor-patient relationship.)
Bias
The CDC and NIH should only publish “CDC Opinions” or “NIH Opinions,” which would recognize the fact that the “CDC experts” and “NIH experts” are not any better than the smartest physician in the world, and they are not better than many other physician groups or “patient activist organizations.” They should not be better than your local family physician if your doctor went to a good medical school and residency program.
There are many physicians, groups of experts, physician groups, and individuals with less bias than the CDC and NIH from which you should also get your medical information. Lots of physicians are way better than the World Health Organization (WHO), which I fondly call the “socialist group of socialist physicians.” (Some exceptions apply.) The WHO needs to immediately retract their methodologically flawed study that claims the USA has inferior healthcare. It remains “the most flawed study in the world” in my opinion, and is simply a tool to spread socialism instead of Free Enterprise.
Most of all, everyone should want their medical advice from the smartest independent physician out there, the “smartest doctor in the world” on any subject. You should not want your final advice from a group with any kind of bias (especially undeclared bias).
The three main causes of bias in the medical literature are:
1) Academia
2) Government
3) Industry.
I repeat, the smartest doctor in the world should be your family medical doctor. There is supposed to be a Family Medicine Revolution going on if you believe social media: #familymedicine #FMRevolution: however, I often see this movement as being its own worst enemy, because these physicians often don’t understand economics or medical statistics (again exceptions apply). The Family Medical Doctor should be the highest paid physician of all physicians, but because of uncaring third parties setting prices, they are often the lowest paid, and dare I say it, … well, I’m too chicken to say it.
Summary
Instead of the CDC publishing guidelines and those guidelines being usurped by tyrants, remember the shutdown Nazis, every physician in the world should publish their opinions. Their opinions should also be summarized down to one number. When the numbers don’t agree, when the numbers are not even in the same range, we would know that bias exists, or that bad data exists. When this information was available to you, your life might be saved, because you would have control again. Information is power.
Finally, the doctor-patient relationship needs to be sacrosanct, not destroyed by guidelines, and the doctor-patient relationship needs to be improved with technology.
[Note: because of artificial intelligence, I updated an old post from August 21, 2021]