I have already linked to this 2004 article (“How Ignorant Doctors Kill Patients”) by Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, but after rereading think it deserves a second link and extended quotation.
I recently spoke to a large group concerning the harmful effects of glutamate, explaining it is now known that glutamate, as added to foods, significantly accelerates the growth and spread of cancers. I [rhetorically] asked the crowd when was the last time an oncologist told his or her patient to avoid MSG or foods high in glutamate. The answer, I said, was never.
After the talk, a crowd gathered to ask more questions. Suddenly I was interrupted by a young woman who identified herself as a radiation oncologist. She angrily stated, “I really took offense to your comment about oncologists not telling their patients about glutamate.”
I turned to her and asked, “Well, do you tell your patients to avoid glutamate?” She looked puzzled and said, “No one told us to.” I asked her who this person or persons were whose job it was to provide her with this information. I then reminded her that I obtained this information from her oncology journals. Did she not read her own journals?
Yet, this is the attitude of the modern doctor. An elitist group is in charge of disseminating all the information physicians are to know. If they do not tell them, then, in their way of thinking, the information was of no value.
The incentive structure of modern medicine in action. If you do harm, you are not punished — thus the high error rate. If you do good, you are not rewarded — so why bother to think (“no one told us”)? The similarity to pre-1980 Chinese communism, where it didn’t matter if you were a good farmer or a bad farmer, is obvious. It is a big step forward that the rest of us can now search the medical literature and see the evidence for ourselves.
How does the evidence against glutamate compare with the evidence against all the other myriad foods / substances / lifestyle choices that have been implicated as risk factors in cancer?
Wow! Exactly why I avoid doctors as much as possible. I think the medical establishment contributed to my father’s death last August. He was also a physician and blindly trusted his doctors advice! We also experienced the stone walling, lack of coordination of care and following of protocols without thinking.
I absolutely agree that modern medicine needs to change, and I’m a huge fan of your blog. Fermented food has made me healthier, and flaxseed oil has helped my gums.
However, I have to point out that Dr. Blaylock is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a primarily political organization that publishes “peer-reviewed” research claiming HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and Obama is a hypnotist (seriously). Their journal barely contains any scientific articles, just essays about how Obamacare is a communist menace, and what to do when the FBI raids your practice (again, seriously).
They also published that study you posted a couple years ago showing that autism rates were falling due to the removal of mercury from vaccines, which relied on questionable data and some eyebrow-raising outliers. And of course we know that autism rates have not fallen – they continue to rise: https://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/30/local/la-me-0330-autism-rates-20120330
And just for fun, here’s “A Doctors’ Wives’ Survival Guide, or What To Do When the FBI Knocks at the Door”
https://www.jpands.org/vol16no3/orient.pdf
If “glutamate, as added to foods, significantly accelerates the growth and spread of cancers” Japanese people would be dropping like flies.