The Collapse of the Healthcare System
There is a crisis within our health care system; it is a philosophical crisis, which I believe
will eventually result in the absolute collapse of our current system. I believe that this collapse
has already begun, and that it cannot be stopped. Furthermore, I believe that this collapse, when it
takes place, will give rise to a much more humanistic system. Allow me to present a somewhat
oversimplified; yet I believe accurate overview, of our current system, how it began and why I
believe it is doomed to fail.
The dominant system of health care today, had its origins about 400 hundred years ago.
It began with a man named, Sir Isaac Newton. You may remember Newton as the “Apple Guy”
(not Johnny apple seed, the other apple guy). One of the many things that Newton was
responsible for was creating a system to track the planets and stars. What he did in effect was to
say, “point out a planet and I can tell you where in the night sky it has been at any time in the
past, and where it will be at any time in the future”. According to Newtonian theory, the motions
and interactions of all material bodies obey a few, simple laws. Newtonian physics views the
universe as consisting of fundamental, irreducible building blocks made of matter. Consequently,
it views the body as a machine that can be analyzed in terms of its parts. The Newtonian health
care model reduces disease to an outside invader that preys upon a particular part of the body, and
because of this, treatment consist of attacking the invader.
Newtonian Physics caused doctors to look at a body as two separate and distinct parts, a
physical body (or a mechanistic component), and a mind (or vitalistic component). The vitalistic
component has been all but ignored by medicine for 400 years. The reason for this, is that it does
not fit their model. You cannot see the mind, you cannot hold someone’s mind in your hand, and
at present you cannot measure the effect that the mind has on the body. The way this works in our
system is to say the cause of sickness and disease is physical (something attacked you), and
consequently the answer must be something physical as well. If you get cancer for instance, then
something physical happened to you. So, to fix it, we must do what? Right, something physical.
We will drug it, irradiate it, or cut it. As a result, patients often find themselves surrounded by an
assortment of strange charts, monitors and tubes, being spoken about, rather than to, and
witnessing their body as the object of debate among strangers, in a language that they cannot
understand.
Then in the 1930’s something happened. Along came Albert Einstein, and he said energy
and matter are interrelated, (remember E=MC²). And everyone said, “Ok.?”. Well this
seemingly simple statement caused a major change in how we view the universe. It caused
changes in all the other biological sciences, but not in health care. The idea of matter and energy
being interrelated makes it impossible to disregard either the vitalistic or mechanistic aspects of
an individual. And this is the reason why; now hold onto your hat, because now this starts to get
fun! Quantum Physics, which was an outgrowth of Einstein’s discoveries, sought to identify the
smallest particles that make up the known universe. And they now believe that they have found
them. Now here comes the surprise. These smallest particles that make up the known universe,
are not particles at all, they appear to be blurred clouds of possibilities. These particles only exist
if someone thinks about them, and the expectations of the spectator affect the behavior of the
particles.
Can you get a glimpse of how big this is? I get goose bumps thinking about this stuff.
These smallest particles, which when piled up, one on top of the other, literally make up your
body, are influenced by how you think about them. The implications of this are enormous. This
has given rise to the so-called “mind-body” revolution. People like Deepak Chopra have written
dozens of books on this connection, and its importance in health and healing. Dr. Chopra tells a
story, in his book “Quantum Healing” of a person with a multiple personality disorder. This
person has one personality that has brown eyes, and another personality that has blue eyes. This
is one person that we are talking about here. If we take Dr. Chopra at his word, and this person
really exists, then its simply incredible.
Chiropractors have maintained for 100 years that health comes from the inside. That there
is an innate intelligence within the body that is ultimately responsible for healing. Chiropractors
treat the whole person not just the disease that a person may have. As a result there are children
in chiropractor’s offices being treated successfully for problems, which when corrected, reduce
the frequency and severity of things like asthma, and ear infections. Adults are finding relief for
many of the complaints that they have as well. People report more energy, and less reliance on
medications. Certainly they report less neck pain, and back pain, as well as relief from their
headaches, but these things are only the tip of the iceberg.
The reason why I believe a collapse of our current system is eminent, is because I believe
we are in the midst of a paradigm shift. Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, defines a paradigm as a shared set of assumptions about the world, by which
individuals define the parameters of their reality and their investigation of this reality. Kuhn tells
us that when problems occur, which an accepted paradigm cannot answer, that the problems will
be dismissed, and that people who articulate solutions outside the paradigm are deemed suspect,
since their method implicitly attacks the foundational order (this may also help explain the bias
against chiropractic within much of the medical community). For this reason, the shift from one
paradigm to another generally occurs by revolution. I know that this shift is indeed occurring
because according to Dr. David M. Eisenberg, director of alternative medicine research and
education at Harvard Medical Center, in 1997 patients made 200 million more visits to
complementary providers than to primary care physicians in the US. And this number is
increasing every year. Since chiropractic makes up the overwhelming majority of these visits,
chiropractic is now the #1 choice for healthcare in the United States. In just the last few months,
chiropractic has gained inclusion within the Department of Defense as well as the Veterans
Administration. We made these gains not because the powers that be are looking for a better
way, but because the patients are standing up and demanding our care. In one instance, a
chiropractor was called to active duty, due to the possibility of war with Iraq. When the captain of
the ship he is serving on found out that he is a chiropractor, he immediately put him to work
taking care of his shipmates. The Navy was somewhat resistant to this at first, but the Captain of
the ship responded, that his jobs was to make sure that his crew was in the best possible
condition, and that this chiropractor was helping him do that. Now there are chiropractic studies
ongoing all over the department of defense.
If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, or if you simply notice that you don’t
seem to have as much get up and go as your friends or co-workers, maybe it’s time
for you to make your own personal paradigm shift and try chiropractic… It works.
Yours in Good Health,
Dr. Dan Pidgeon