This is the analysis by Maitre Philippe Autrive,
Followed by the first chapter of Sylvie Simon, French Health
Healing, an Illegal Practice
By Sylvie Simon
Translation by Emma Holister
(Note to editor: all quotations have been translated directly from the book, that is from French to English, therefore should be compared to English originals where necessary)
“A doctor who is simply a good family doctor, determined to do his job to the very end, will never be helped by society. Neither by doctors, and not even by those who are ill, for it is not he who will be the most successful or who will earn the most money . . . Until further notice, in France, health no longer means much in terms of values: the French willingly accept being ill and going to hospital, but without ever having done anything beforehand to arm themselves against the deterioration of their health.”
Alexandre Minkowski
The Barefoot Mandarin
Preface by Me Autrive,
This book entitled ‘Healing, An Illegal Practice’ could also have been named ‘The Book of the Accursed’. Time has long since passed since the doctor, the healer, went from village to village, spreading news, comforting some, treating others, not primarily in order to cure, but in order to prevent illness.
The art of Chinese preventative medicine has gradually been replaced by the growing production and commercialisation of chemical therapeutic products that have, along the way, turned the patient into a simple consumer of medical merchandise, abandoning body and soul into the hands of the practitioner.
Medicine has a tendency to become a ‘business’ where the patient is reduced to the level of nothing more than a client. By continually boasting the merits of this or that product, the doctor takes on the appearance of ‘a sales representative’ for the large pharmaceutical laboratories, whilst most often ignoring the secondary side-effects of this or that treatment.
If medicine, medical research, laboratories and money are working so well together, the patients are gaining nothing from the affair.
However, the system is well established. The September 1997 issue of the medical publication, ‘Le Quotidien du Médecin’ (No. 6120) brandished the headline, ‘World Market Pharmaceuticals at 1800 Million Francs.’ The growing weight of the pharmaceuticals’ industry and the unquenchable thirst for financial profit have given rise to an abuse of citizens’ rights. All the more so because these same laboratories, in order to back up their peremptory claims, don’t hesitate to quote the expert “who declares and asserts the ‘truly true’ and unquestionable scientific truth” at the risk even of making himself look ridiculous. But ridicule does not kill and the ointments are legion, whilst the errors of the experts and the scientific councils who are ‘responsible but not guilty’ load heavy consequences upon the ordinary citizen.
The emergence of the experts’ authority regarding the truly ‘scientific truth’ is rather reminiscent of the role played by the leaders of the Inquisition. It is worth pointing out that
The Court regrets that many members of this committee had direct links with the pharmaceutical industry, which, it said, ‘naturally leads to the questioning of their independence and neutrality . . .’
The Medicine Bureau has become the French Bureau for the Security of Health Products. However, this simple facelift does not disguise the same methods, continually producing the same consequences. With regard to this, it is notable that the Department of Health has recently taken the decision to withdraw from the sector the reimbursement for 250 pharmaceutical specialities of which the therapeutic and healing virtues were no longer recognised. This leads one to consider that the experts were wrong 250 times regarding these products!
In addition to this, after having waited more than twenty years, it is difficult to understand the government’s lack of haste in ‘de-reimbursing’ these same 250 medical products, in the interest of the public, even when it would be a question of saving millions for the social security department.
Beyond the simple facelift and name change, it would be interesting and significant to open the doors of the French Bureau for Health Security to the general public, so that they may participate in the various committees . . .
This lack of transparency of financial interests, in addition to the lack of new faces on the prestigious panel of experts, is without any doubt one of the causes of the scandals we are forced to witness, and repeatedly.
What is more, the proliferation of health agencies (medical, food and veterinary products, etc.) does not mask the growth in scale of the scandals that are all inexorably linked to the ‘massive lobbying’. They seem, from all the evidence, unable to avoid them since their organisation and methods remain strictly the same. In other words, on the one hand we have the promiscuity of the experts and trusts, and on the other we have the opinion and advice of our ‘politically correct’ experts who are there to please everyone and disappoint no one (especially not the backers!).
For example, it is interesting to note that the illness Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (ESB) was first detected in
It is in this way that the public health organisation reflects the opinion of the authorities, the only authorities that are allowed to define what is good for the patient. It is clear that this noble cause is ‘contaminated’ by profitable interests.
The citizen is increasingly less a patient and more a consumer.
It has always been the case that the privileged relationship between a patient and his or her doctor depends essentially on belief and confidence. Therefore, from this perspective, it is immediately obvious that the citizen is placing his confidence in one who knows, one who treats, one who possesses science, but that there is no reciprocity.
In other words, the patient remains in the dark. Similarly, this relationship of trust and confidence has always existed in a climate of insecurity and fear: that of being ill, of not getting better, of suffering, etc. Our society has generated, through reassuring and guilt-provoking advertising campaigns, the myth, or the cult of ‘good health’; illness no longer exists! Henceforth it is necessary, through the administration of chemicals that bring in vast amounts of money to the creators of this great new fear, to eliminate it, whether it be through eradication or prevention. Regarding vaccinations, moreover, advertising plays a great deal on feelings of insecurity and fear, but also, for mothers, on guilt. It is therefore without any objectivity, thought or comprehension, that ill people are led to becoming nothing more than a mass of patients, passive consumers of products aimed at trying to cure them.
We can see that medical and pharmaceutical power relies on the confidence of the ordinary person. This confidence is a substantial and heavily budgeted element of pharmaceutical industry marketing. In the absence of confidence, other more coercive methods exist, which remind one of the Inquisition and which have as their main goal to cast out those who break ranks. It is up to public health authorities to set an example, whilst resorting to (and why not?) old-fashioned public ordeals. In other words, by exposing the condemned, the doctors, the nurses, the ill, to the verdict of the people and throwing them to the lions.
So now we are forced to witness, if no longer the stake, at least the judgements, the condemnations, the prohibition sentences and the imprisonment of the doctors, nurses and the ill who have made a choice other than that imposed upon them by the ordained authorities or eminent state representatives.
Let us not forget that a substitute doctor of the République did not hesitate to solicit a psychiatric assessment, from an examining magistrate, of a father who refused to have his French-resident children vaccinated, although they were Swiss, and
Once outside the established order, that place of salvation, the cleaver falls. It falls on those practitioners who dare to scorn the ordained scientific or governmental authority, it falls on the ill whose only crime is to use products that do them good and that they judge to be effective for their bodies.
Sanctioning must apparently set an example, even if there are no victims; quite the contrary. The scientific world makes little show of open-mindedness. Far from exchanging information, knowledge, experiences, what is incredible is that, at the dawn of the 21st century, the censors, the commanders, the scientific inquisitors are still clamping down. There’s no talking, no cohabiting, no exchange, absolutely not! One judges and one sanctions, fossilised as one is with scientific certainties.
This book could have been that of the hanged. It is fortunately only that of the revolt of the condemned, the doctors, the midwives, the outlawed ill.
Seneca once said, in the 4th century BC, ‘Wisdom requires little education!’ The days are gone when people blissfully believed in the comforting words of the experts and passively consumed.
We are witnessing the return of the talking citizens, here denouncing the contaminated blood scandal, or growth hormones, there boycotting poisoned meat for which the experts peremptorily affirmed that ‘the prion wasn’t transmissible from animal species to humans . . .’. Once again, they are organising together in order to demand this or that treatment or to mobilise against this or that vaccination.
People are now demanding to be respected. It is worth noting that, if it had not been for the good sense and vigilance of ordinary citizens, no scandal could ever have arisen. Furthermore, it is because of pressure that those in power consent, despite themselves and often too late, to take responsibility. It is an uneven match, an unequal contest. However a person’s fight against medical authority has gained some improvements, such as the doctor’s obligation to ‘acquire the patient’s permission prior to any medical intervention.’ This obligation comes from every person’s right to respect with regard to his or her physical integrity. Originally employed by jurisprudence, in other words as the result of court cases put forward by ill people, this rule has since been enforced by article 35 of the Code of Medical Ethics in the following terms: ‘A doctor owes the person that he is examining, treating or advising, information that is true, clear and appropriate, regarding his or her state of health, the tests and the treatment he recommends.’
This contract, so dear to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, between the doctor and his patient, can no longer be inequitable or unbalanced. The citizen must now be informed, and not just considered as a patient who is treated like a child. Owing to this information, people will be able to gain access to freedom of choice in connection with medical treatment. But the road to be taken is still a treacherous one, as this freedom may, no doubt, be undermined by the powerful financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Freedom of choice of medical treatment, heavily supervised as it is by the public authorities, is still in its infancy. Here and there we can now see the creation of citizen groups that are demanding the right to use this or that product, sold in one country or outlawed in another, following the example of those who were made ill by the state’s withdrawal of ‘Beljanski’ and ‘Solomidès’ products.
Has anyone ever seen citizens’ groups getting together and demonstrating in order to obtain an antibiotic or an anti-depressant?
There are also people acting individually. ‘Freedom of action over one’s own body’ is a fundamental right, and gradually we are beginning to see the emergence of the demand for, and affirmation of, the ‘dignity of the patient.’ This is being imposed upon doctors owing to their ultimate medical duty to combat the suffering that belongs to the patient!
Human rights are not given; they are gained.
Patients and doctors should at least find common ground, since freedom of choice of medical treatment is the consequence of freedom of prescription.
Justice is intervening more frequently in this narrow relationship between doctor and patient. However, the judge should explain rights but should not pronounce on the eventual effectiveness of this or that technique. In order to do this the judge calls on an expert, whose conclusions are not always marked by transparency and independence, especially with regard to their supervisory duty.
Freedom of prescription seems however to exist, legally speaking; thus the Court of Annulments declares that ‘the doctor is the only person qualified to discuss questions regarding medical matters.’ (Ch. Crim. 24th October 1973). Likewise, the limitation of the freedom of prescription does not exist in texts on medical ethics, since article 10 of the Code describes it in these terms: ‘The doctor cannot compromise his professional independence in any way whatsoever.’ The medical establishment council exists in order to enforce respect for ethical rules and for a certain concept of medical practice, but no-one representing users is among them. This is not a sign of openness. Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights has already pointed out this exclusion of jurisdiction several times.
The doctor has taken the Hippocratic Oath and once the patient demands it, he not only has the right but the duty to reject the rules imposed in the patient’s treatment.
Nevertheless, this halo of freedom of prescription for the doctor is limited in reality by the ethical dispositions that govern medical behaviour. These forbid the handing over of non-authorised medication, the recommending to a patient of a remedy or an illusory or insufficiently verified procedure, or indeed the use of a new non-researched therapy on the patient.
It is worth noting that medication is authorised by means of a permit obtained from the French Bureau of Health Security for Health Products in order to market a product, following clinical trials by the promoter, in other words the laboratory. It is then authorised by the experts, of whom 90% participate in and have interests in private laboratories. This is no gauge of independence and transparency.
Thus, at the beginning 1999, one quarter of reimbursable medication was seen to have the label ‘insufficient medical value’, which implies that the A.M.M.’s permits were given without any discernment, but most certainly with vested interests . . .
When it comes to medication and therapies that have been insufficiently tested, it is important to note that only the large private laboratories can afford the luxury of paying out the 10 million francs needed to test and validate their products and to obtain authorisation to market them, which is not necessarily a guarantee of their effectiveness. Furthermore, each year, dozens of medical products that have received the A.M.M permit are withdrawn from the market, owing to their dangerous nature, which shows that the clinical tests have not been trustworthy . . .
Hence, the small promoters, the associations and the patients’ co-operatives have little chance of raising such sums of money and of obtaining this notorious permit from the experts in the Health Bureau. All that remains for these experts to do is to marginalize them, indeed ‘charlatan-ise’ them and notably through the media, who on the whole are content to ‘spout off’, with insufficient research, the statements to the press given by such-and-such a laboratory or banded about by some home expert.
Having failed to prescribe and cure, many doctors, some of whom give their experiences in this book, are hauled through justice, pursued, sentenced to the stocks of pseudo-scientific certainty and become symbols of freedom of choice of medical treatment.
Whilst mainstream medicine could without any doubt be enriched by the ancestral knowledge within the branches of natural medicine, it chooses to ceaselessly condemn, without even looking to analyse or question the data and the experiments. This ‘fundamentalist’ refusal of mainstream medicine cannot hide its failure in a great number of illnesses, and the patient from now on demands a rendering of accounts and will not simply ‘swallow the pill’.
Let us not forget the case of Pierre DAC for whom: ‘the aim of medical research is to find new methods of treatment and not new clients’. But behind the condemnation by the medical authorities, whose objective is only to ‘make an example of’, are the rights of the ill which are being flouted. One used to think that their rights were well established; now one discovers that they have only been hinted at!
One used to believe in the booming declarations from Helsinki and Tokyo that expressively declared that ‘in the treatment of a patient, the doctor must be free to resort to a new diagnostic or therapeutic method if he or she judges that it offers hope of saving a life, re-establishing the health or relieving the suffering of a patient . . .’
These declarations were no more than intentions!
In the same vein, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Kassire said: ‘What really matters in a treatment is to know if a very ill patient feels relieved after its administration and not to know if a controlled trial can prove its effectiveness.’ (Le Monde January 31st 1997). Therefore healing would be more important than medicine!
The patient’s right is above all that of all people and everyone is directly concerned or will be one day for his or her loved ones, or for him or herself. And as the good doctor Knock used to jokingly remind us, ‘every healthy person is an unaware sick person!’
People, much to the displeasure of the scientific authorities, are beginning to be heard, to demand their basic rights and to know the contents of vaccines, to understand the side effects of a particular drug, to take control of their body and mind. Could the right to healthcare become the obligation to obey healthcare?
The public authorities would be well advised to listen, not so much to the demands that will be admittedly poorly met because of the lack of power of the trusts, but to the growing and more insistent murmur of the people.
Maitre Philippe AUTRIVE
Copyright 2009 Philippe Autrive - Tous droits réservés
