What you're referring to is called yatrogenicity, the damage induced in the process of treatment a disease. Medicine always gets extra attention in this respect, simply because we are dealing with people's lives. If a programmer messes up with the code - the network of computer crashes, if I administer the wrong drug during anaesthetic - a person can die. I am not denying the problems related to statins and also believe that they are grossly overused for many reasons. But that's how medical profession works - we have guidelines, we get influenced by the industry and politics, and are scrutinized by pretty much everybody for pretty much everything we do. I also agree that in most instances screening doesn't work and can carry risks.
It sounds like we pretty much agree on that lot! I very much agree abou tthe comparison between programming and medicine - I could never be a medic, because I know I make mistakes!
Don't get too enthusiastic about the wisdom of old people, as years go by we see more and more of them for all kinds of reasons. I have the benefit of working in critical care, and my cases most of the time are indisputable: broken hip is better fixed than not, early bowel cancer taken out, and the spine corrected of one of both legs are giving up. In general medicine things are less well defined, and potential benefits of treatment should be weighed against the risk of yatrogenicity. Sometimes we get it right - and sometimes not. It's just that the stakes are often very high.
I can't speak for Alex, only for me. I didn't even change GP after what happened to me, because I know they get bombarded with advice to do various things, and don't get anything like enough opportunity to use their own judgement. I do blame the process of medical science - I think it is corrupted by Big Pharma. I suspect that is really what Alex was talking about - not fixing broken hips and the like - that is the excellent side of medicine.
I can assure you of one thing: vast majority of doctors want their patients to get well. Not for the money - we get paid anyway - but because that's what we do.
Again I agree - the blame lies much higher up.
I believe the stories of NDE. I also believe when a schizophrenic tells me that she has been raped with X-rays over a TV set by her neighbor. Both may be imagined or both may be true, and in practice I don't care: my job is to help the patient.
My own suspicion is that Schizophrenia and NDE's are really telling us something about the brain consciousness interface, and what happens when the interface starts to break down.
That's why cheap shots at "mainstream doctors who only do things for money" irritate me.
You should really take this up with Alex.
There are different opinions on various subjects, and there is nothing wrong to be passionate about something; if he does not agree with someone it does not make him "a barking dog".
Well those different opinions do seem to be rather perverse. For example, here is a series of links to studies done in a range of countries that show that people with high blood cholesterol and/or high LDL, have
lower mortality than average!
http://vernerwheelock.com/179-cholesterol-and-all-cause-mortality/
Unless these studies are somehow considered to be wrong, you have to ask why everyone is being told to reduce cholesterol/LDL in their blood!
When it comes to consciousness nobody has definitive proof of anything, so it all comes to personal beliefs.
Well I do wish neuroscientists didn't come across as if they had nearly solved the problem of consciousness, with just a loose ends to sort out! If they actually said, "We don't know, and for all we can say, consciousness may reside in a separate realm and have properties that are incompatible with purely physical explanations!", I wouldn't mind at all.
I mean, I am sure techniques like fMRI are useful when it comes to diagnosing damage to the brain, but I am far less confident that they tell us much about how the brain works! Modern gas boilers contain a computer circuit board, and the gas man can diagnose when there is a fault and replace the board, but that does not mean that he knows much about how the circuitry does what it does!
To be fair to Alex, he has done a large number of podcasts, some of them with sceptics such as Gerald Woerlee,. Patricia Churchward, Richard Wiseman, etc. It is perhaps worth listening to one or two of those podcasts to get some incling of his current position.
David