We don’t have a medical system. We have a non-system, a patchwork of competing interests in hospitals and institutions and pharmaceuticals and schools of thought and invested interests and genuinely committed people working very narrow ways, but there’s no system. The system is a non-system.

It takes me a minute to prescribe a cortisol cream, the stress hormone cream, which is suppressed inflammation, but for them to be talked about their lives, now that would take some time. When an HMO tells me I’ve got six minutes with a patient and if I’m a Psychiatrist I get a whole ten minutes, what can I do besides prescribe a medication? So there’s that, but the basic limitation is not a financial one. It’s also an ideological one and it has to do with those blinders we talked about earlier, the fact that physicians are not trained that way. They’ve got their own unresolved stuff. They don’t know how to relate to this information. Yes, the whole system is devastatingly stupid and blind. Now there are pockets of light. In Massachusetts also. For example, that Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work is done, the mindfulness based stress reduction. They’ve applied this to medical conditions, always with benefit, never with harm. The model, I don’t think it goes deep enough. They don’t deal with all this emotional stuff that is important to pay attention to. But just mindfulness based stress reduction itself is a great step forward and the more credit to them. But yeah, to apply those models universally would take a complete overhaul of…you say the medical system. We don’t have a medical system. We have a non-system. We have a patchwork of competing interests in hospitals and institutions and pharmaceuticals and schools of thought and invested interests and genuinely committed people working very narrow ways, but there’s no system. The system is a non-system.

The screening for breast cancer, the screening for prostate cancer, now the studies are becoming increasingly clear about everything we’ve been telling people is useless. Breast self-examinations, guess what, they don’t save lives. Mammograms, guess what, they don’t save lives. Now, this has been clear to some of us for years because we looked at the research but now it’s being publically admitted, is that making a bit of a difference? No, because number one, people have to believe that what they’ve been doing all these years is useful. Number two, if your living then depends on screening mammograms or on prostate cancer tests and treatments, you’re going to have a hard time accepting the evidence. So, there’s kind of a vested interest that way but for the most part the denial and the disorganization in the system is not I don’t think cupid. It’s not based on cupidity.  It’s not based on economic self-interest. I think it’s based more on these broader emotional and ideological factors.

MM: The blinders.

The blinders, yes.  I don’t think a doctor says this will cost me money therefore I won’t look at it. There may be doctors like that but I don’t think that’s what drives it.  I think what drives it is more the blinders which fit hand in glove of course with the economic self-interest as well.