Western Medicine Is Weak
From wrong diagnosis to toxic drugs and then interventionism
I got this title from the American rapper Big Sean’s song, Lucky me. In the song, Big Sean narrated how he was diagnosed with heart disease, and the doctor said they needed surgery to insert a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat.
Meanwhile, this mom took him to a holistic doctor who prescribed magnesium for him. He took the magnesium for two weeks, and when he got returned to the medical doctor, the doctor said that he was fine and that they didn’t have to go on with the surgery.
“That’s when I know that western medicine is weak.”
The first time I heard that song, I had to play it again. Not because the song was fantastic, although the song was indeed fantastic. But what makes it more compelling is that Big Sean was rapping from his soul. You could hear it in his voice, and his words struck a chord in my head. I could relate to the things he was rapping about. I have experienced some medical mishaps that would make you wonder, “what the hell are these western doctors doing.” And people around me have also had many such experiences.
I was only 9 when I noticed that I could not see the board from my seat in class. It didn’t feel strange that in that one moment, I could see what was there before my eyes, and in the following moments, I couldn’t. Although I knew other pupils could see it, even farther distances.
At that moment that I recall like it was yesterday, I had just become myopic or amblyopic, as the doctors say.
I had thought my low vision was just for that day, but days later, I still couldn’t see correctly. Then I reported to my parents. I visited several hospitals and diagnostic centers. After a lot of examinations and tests, the doctors could not find anything wrong with my eyes.
When I was 24, I was diagnosed as “chronic hypertensive.” And the doctor prescribed some drugs for me. However, before taking any of the drugs, I went to the eye clinic (the primary issue that took me to the hospital), and the doctor there said that I do not have high blood pressure and no presbyopia (Blood pressure in the eye).
Today, my dad is audibly impaired because he had catarrh, common flu, and the doctor gave him a drug that damaged his hearing. Even after using hearing aids and trying many other drugs that they claimed would help him gain his hearing back, non has worked to get him to hear correctly.
Before you tell me that is not the norm, I don’t know if I care what the norm is. I don’t know if I believe any of their data when many people cannot get correct diagnoses. And some who are probably diagnosed with the right ailment are given drugs that get them into more severe pathologies.
Sometimes, you don’t care about the data. Take, for example, Walter Summerford, who has been hit by lightning four times. To put that in perspective, the odds that you would ever be struck by lightning in a lifetime is 1 in 15,3000. And the odds of being struck by lightning twice is about 1 in 9 million.
So, if you are like Walter Summerford, how would you act during the rains? Would you consider that the chances of the lightning hitting you the first time is this super low, and the chances of it hit you the second time outrageously low? Probably not. You may coin all kinds of superstitious beliefs to explain what has happened to you. Or, best-case scenario, you would religiously avoid rains or cloudy weather.
The stat won’t matter. Logic may not matter either. What matters is your experiences. Now I am super careful when dealing with a doctor. I share in Big Sean’s sentiment — Western medicine is weak.