The Office Of Illness Prevention
Forget the Office of the Surgeon General. We need an Office of Illness Prevention (OIP).
Prevention is clearly the answer to the Health Care crisis – you would only need access to health care in the case of an accident or injury. Actually, this country does not have a health care system, it has a BigPharma-funded illness maintenance system instead, that treats symptoms with a litany of dangerous drugs and medical procedures.
Even the term “preventive medicine” is an oxymoron. Why would anyone need medicine to stay healthy? There really is no illness prevention industry because there is no money in it – it is an anathema to the medical community, which has the distinction of being the third leading cause of death in the US. Holistic health practitioners should strongly advocate for the formation of a totally independent committee to operate the Illness Prevention Office. It must be independent of: the food industry, the corrupt FDA/EPA/USDA triangle, Big Pharma, the medical community, the health insurance industry, the Surgeon General, the NIH, and even the herbal and supplement industries.
It would conduct gov’t funded university research into areas that have been completely ignored, such as using nature as a paradigm for health. Those consumers that follow the guidelines from the OIP would receive substantial reductions for catastrophe coverage, which is all they would need, much to the horror of the medical insurance industry.
There would be an anti-revolving-door policy as follows: anyone who has worked at one of the blacklisted agencies or industries listed above would not be able to work on any OIP project for at least a year after quitting their other post. All of the research from the OIP would be posted free of charge to the world community, and there would be open dialog and feedback between consumers and the OIP via the web. New professional designations would be created to designate Illness Prevention Practitioners, most of whom would have science backgrounds, but not medical degrees. Eventually, prevention should be part of a mandatory curriculum taught in every medical school that receives Federal funds (all of them). Ultimately, Illness Prevention would become a worldwide initiative, changing the face of health as we know it.