When they say medicine is an art rather than a science, yeah, it's kind of a black art, a mumbo jumbo art in some cases

Dr. Richard Smith now said . . . we are not dealing with a handful of bad papers, we are not dealing, as he put it, with a few bad apples, but we're talking about entire orchards that are bad.  . . . that we've reached the point at which we have to assume that the research coming out is just wrong unless proven otherwise instead of the contrary assumption.

 

I have devoted quite a bit of time, especially over the past several years but even before that, to the ways science can be corrupted, the way the influence of the state can have an effect, so I've looked into some of Rothbard's writing on this, but, of course, this topic of how scientific is the scientific establishment these days has become more and more relevant to us particularly in the area of health in recent years, and Tom you have some background in this, not only in your own personal experience and caring for your relatives that many of us have had, but also from your former line of work.  So you were in some way connected to the health insurance industry.

1:35. MULLEN. Yeah, I worked for two different HMOs.  They weren't really HMOs, they were managed care health insurance companies.  In the 1990s, I spent a little over a decade in the street and I was involved in provider relations, so the first company I worked for was a startup in Western New York.  I actually signed up hospital systems and doctors and negotiated all those contracts, actually ran the whole provider side of the operation for that company.  And then I went on to a bigger, more established company and did a lot of the same things.  Although their provider networks were already built, I managed them.  I sat on the review boards for claims that were generally headed by a medical director, physician, and then also chaired by a nurse and also people from operations, so I saw just about every side of that business.  I managed member services while I provided member relations for one of the firms for a couple of years while someone was on leave.  I saw quite a bit of that business.  I spent a decade in it, so I can tell you that the unscientific practice of medicine is nothing new.  I saw it every day back then.  I saw a lot of great doctors, but the industry is kind of rife with almost cultish . . . . When they say medicine is an art rather than a science, yeah, it's kind of a black art, a mumbo jumbo art in some cases.

3:11. WOODS. Well, just the other day, I had Dr. Pierre Kory on and I quoted for him a passage from Dr. Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal in which he laid out the current situation with regard to medical research fraud.  He said that back in the 80s if you were to complain about problem research fraud, you would be considered an eccentric because medical research fraud is no real problem because no patients have been harmed by it.  Science is self-correcting because we have a free and open exchange of ideas.  Richard Smith now said none of that is true, and we are not dealing with a handful of bad papers, we are not dealing, as he put it, with a few bad apples, but we're talking about entire orchards that are bad.  This is not Joseph Mercola talking. This is the editor of the British Medical Journal throwing his hands up saying this.  He says at the end of this passage that I read that we've reached the point at which we have to assume that the research coming out is just wrong unless proven otherwise instead of the contrary assumption.  So when you're faced with a system like that, I bet somebody in your line of work did encounter a great deal of absurdity.

4:33. MULLEN. Yeah and I worked in the business when the anti-Managed Care rhetoric was at its height and really all the management kind of got denuded out of that industry.  I could say that almost everything said about managed care companies and all the movies they make about how they're denying claims left and right just to save a buck are almost all completely false.  And I don't have any emotional attachments to the industry.  I haven't worked in it for over 20 years, but it was really just more or less left-wing nonsense. The anti-capitalist nonsense I sat on the review boards for denied claims and you used to always hear that there were NBA's making decisions on your medical care I was actually an English major but no a physician would make those decisions and that's just one example one of the common things that we saw from financially stressed hospitals it's called the bi-latel   bunionectomy, which sounds very technical but it's basically removing bunions from someone's feet.  And the established medical standard here is to never take a patient that's ambulatory, that can walk, even if they have to be assisted by a cane or something, and make them non ambulatory, bedridden.  But these hospitals would bring them in and remove bunions from both feet and then have to get an inpatient admission which of course sent a call through the roof and these are the kinds of things that we denied after telling the offended are the offending Hospital numerous times you can't do this it's bad Medical Practice you're endangering patients because some people who get bedridden never get up again, especially if they're older.  So these are the kinds of things that we saw and by the time I got into it actually, there had already been so much backlash against any management of care by the organization that we would frequently say that we're just providing information.  But I'll give you a great example of non-science and Medicine.