Publication Date 01/08/2010 Volume. 2 No. 7

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Columns

Rollo Manning: Pharma-Goss

John Dunlop: Inside NZ

Loretta Marron BSc: Health Watch

Barry Urquhart: Marketing Focus

Harvey Mackay: Strategic Thinking

Mark Neuenschwander: I`ve been thinking about...

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EPublications

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Pharmacy Owners & Other Blood Suckers

Loretta Marron BSc

articles by this author...

From a Skeptics Perspective: Loretta Marron, a science graduate with a business background, was Australian Skeptic of the Year for 2007.
She edits the website www.healthinformation.com.au.

The history of healthcare is dominated by aggressive therapies conducted on desperate and health-compromised patients.
These cruel and deadly practices included bloodletting, intestinal purging and blistering and were sometimes followed by large doses of highly toxic mercury and arsenic.
They were useless and barbaric treatments and more often than not contributed to the death of the patient.
These days, as unproven therapies seep back into our communities, some of our pharmacists are ignoring science and are putting profit over patient’s health.
This time I’ll talk about the new wave in modern day pharmacy blood suckers.

Even primitive man would have understood the importance of blood. Whether it was from a fight with another tribe, a close encounter as a tasty menu item for a hungry carnivore or an accident with something sharp and pointy, if for any reason a major artery was torn open, a red, sticky, soggy end was inevitable.

Bloodletting started in Ancient Greece where it was the choice of the ‘in-crowd’ for health problems. Medicine in those times was based on the concept of an imbalance of four bodily fluids, called ‘humours’, that they believed caused problems with both personality and health. Blood was the ‘humour’ that was thought to be associated with being optimistic and as such, the practice of severing a blood vessel or two supposedly cured every ailment. This ancient legacy continued as a mainstream intervention until relatively modern times. In 1799, as President George Washington lay dying, primarily from the practices of his overenthusiastic bloodletting physicians, a court case was raging that supported this treatment and, as a consequence, it remained popular until its gradual demise in the late 19th century.

The legacy of bloodletting remains with us today. The red and white poles we still see outside barber shops date back to the position of the barber/surgeon as a bleeder. “The red represents the blood, the white is the tourniquet, the ball at the end symbolized the brass leech basin and the pole itself represents the stick that was squeezed by the patient to increase the blood flow”.

Thanks to these slippery little suckers, business boomed for centuries for many entrepreneurial medical providers. Apothecaries, those early pharmacists, did a roaring trade in them. They “were so popular early in the 19th century in countries like Britain and France, that millions of leeches were imported to keep up with the demand.” Leeches have once again been reintroduced into modern medicine, but this time they are sourced from sterile laboratories, so in the ‘leeches for sale’ department, the pharmacy cash registers now remain silent.

These days extracting blood is now providing new business opportunities. Live blood Analysis is the latest trend in pharmacy blood sucking strategies. Also known as live blood imaging, dark-field video analysis, hemaview and nutritional blood analysis it is used to perform alternative diagnostics. A blood sample is taken from the patient and put under the microscope and examined. Specialised equipment enables blood to be magnified for analysis. Viewing the sizes and shapes seen in the patient’s blood is claimed to assist with diagnosing problems “from bacterial, fungal and viral infections, increased “acidity” in the blood, organ-system dysfunctions, gut permeability & digestive health, evidence of hormonal imbalances to atherosclerotic plaque! “ .

Companies such as Health World Limited , who sell Metagenics nutritional products, also stock ‘hemaview’ equipment. Try to find out anything technical about this device by surfing the web and you will draw a blank, but it seems to be a standard laboratory microscope attached to a computer monitor with a fancy badge attached. There is no scientific evidence that live blood analysis can detect any disease state, and it has been described by an expert on complementary and alternative medicine as a fraudulent means of convincing a patient that they are ill and require treatment with expensive and usually unproven dietary supplements.

Not ones to miss lucrative business opportunities, some pharmacies are actively promoting live blood analysis as they continue to widen their collection of dodgy, money-making services and products. Evidence-based medicine clearly doesn’t seem to matter to them as they offer this as a diagnostic tool which generates more sales in often unproven natural remedies. These pharmacists continue to ride on the coat-tail of their reputation to capitalize on yet another useless alternative therapy which targets their trusting, and often elderly, patients.

Blood related therapies have been very profitable for pharmacists and their predecessors for centuries and it seems that will continue while the money flows in as they ignore their role in providing evidence-based medicine. So who are the ‘blood suckers’ now?

Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst “Trick or treatment Alternative Medicine on Trial’, p7-14, ISBN 987-0-59305-904-3

Niagara Apothecary http://www.niagaraapothecary.ca/client/ocp/Apothecary.nsf/web/Artifacts

Dr Rachael Dunlop http://skepticzone.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

Health World Limited http://www.metagenics.com.au/

Friendlies Chemists The Natural Choice in Pharmacies http://www.friendliessubiaco.com/3.html