• Incurable hospital infections now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.
By Mark Anderson —
Rampant hospital infections, which suddenly kill unsuspecting patients, even those who were expected to live, are the nation’s fourth leading preventable cause of death, ahead of heart disease, cancer and stroke. The inescapable irony is that people go to hospitals to treat the first three causes and too often die from the fourth.
We’ve reached the point where it’s time for the people to decide—once and for all—whether the dominant allopathic medical system should be allowed to keep its own monopoly on health. This is a crucial question, given that the allopathic method simply treats symptoms and not the root causes of illness, marginalizes or ignores natural treatments and keeps often-dangerous prescription drugs flowing.
Regarding hospital infections, a shocking case this writer saw firsthand involved Abraham Gomez, Jr., 75, of Donna, Texas, who in the fall of 2011 was taken to Knapp Medical Center in the nearby town of Weslaco. After relatively routine surgery, he succumbed to infection and needlessly left that hospital dead. Several of his family members witnessed the situation from start to finish and were appalled. The doctors and staff at Knapp avoided hard questions from Gomez’s family before and after his passing.
Multiply the Gomez family’s plight many times over and you have a very serious situation. Indeed, the threat of dying in one of our “hallowed” hospitals from infection, even when visiting for relatively routine surgeries, has become constant.
And while most hospitals fail to consistently follow sufficient hygiene practices to ward off infectious pathogens, modern doctors constantly prescribe antibiotics, which are and always have been only marginally effective against infections. Dangerous “superbug” bacterial strains have developed resistance to the antibiotics.
It’s not like the medical community does not know this. In an online article entitled “Natural Alternatives to Antibiotics,” Earl Mindell, Ph.D. and Virginia Hopkins, M.A., wrote: “Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, warned us nearly a century ago that the overuse of antibiotics would create resistant bacteria. In fact, antibiotics are a major cause of recurrent infections, and our overuse of them is breeding highly resistant strains of ‘superbugs’ that are immune to all known types of antibiotics. To add insult to injury, we have lost the war on infectious diseases, even with all these antibiotics and better hygiene.”
Perhaps the most widely known, outspoken critic of hospital-hygiene negligence is Betsy McCaughey of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, or RID for short. She has testified before Congress and state legislative committees that for-profit Big Medicine and its lobbyists don’t exactly jump at the chance to do a better job, since that involves more costs and less profit.
RID publishes a helpful list of 15 steps anyone can take to reduce the risk of hospital infections.
Referring to the notoriously deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria that can threaten any patient whose immune system has been comprised—mainly by surgery—a RID report foot-noted: “Studies show that nearly three quarters of patients’ rooms are contaminated with MRSA and 69% with VRE. In one study, 42% of gloves worn by hospital personnel who had no direct patient contact, but who touched contaminated surfaces, became contaminated.”
VRE and MRSA are actually named for their resistance to conventional treatment. VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococci) “is a group of . . . round-shaped bacteria that commonly lives in the gut, although they can cause infection anywhere in the body. They are resistant to several antibiotics, but in the past, physicians could rely on the drug vancomycin to effectively treat enterococcal infections. In recent decades, however, some enterococci have become resistant to vancomycin,” reports the conventional medical website, MedicineNet.com.
MRSA is a term that describes several strains of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which resist a number of antibiotics including methicillin.
The alternatives to antibiotics, which most doctors and hospitals routinely ignore, include high quality garlic supplements that should have a stable form of allicin, which is the biologically active component of garlic. High doses of vitamins A, C and D; colloidal silver, grapefruit seed extract; olive leaf extract; the herb echinacea; hydrogen peroxide drops taken orally in water; and coconut oil can work well. Various combinations of these options and others affect different people differently. But side effects are minimal to non-existent.
Citing another option, Dave Brackett, an independent health practitioner from Michigan, noted that simple manuka honey killed the flesh-eating bacteria on a patient who was assumed by doctors to be at death’s door, according to what Brackett’s own doctor saw firsthand. Manuka honey is harvested from bees that collect nectar from the Australian and New Zealand tea tree plant. Contact your local health food store to get manuka honey or search for it on the Internet.
Citing another option, Dave Brackett, an independent health practitioner from Michigan, noted that simple manuka honey killed the flesh-eating bacteria on a patient who was assumed to be at death’s door by doctors, according to what Brackett’s own doctor saw firsthand. Manuka honey is harvested from bees that collect nectar from the Australian and New Zealand tea tree plant. Contact your local health food store to get manuka honey or search for it on the Internet.
Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving reporter.
