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Malignant Medical Myths: Why MEdical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA each Year, and How to Protect Yourself

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Joel Kauffman exposes 11 common medical myths we all think are true in his book Malignant Medical Myths.

Okay, admit it! You know you've done it and I don't want you denying it. We've all done it.

You're flipping through the television channels and you stop on a station with a man in a white coat talking about what he recommends for his own patients.

"Take an aspirin a day to ward off heart attacks and live longer."

"You need to take this cholesterol-lowering drug to prevent heart attack or stroke."

"This exercise equipment will give you the workout you need to live a long and healthy life."

Sound familiar? Isn't is strange how we rely so heavily on a slick 30-second spot we see on the boob tube to give us our surface knowledge about what is good and healthy for us? But what we don't know about how wrong some of these common medical myths are has led to 200,000 deaths a year in America and there is one man who has set out to help you protect yourself from becoming the next victim in this national marketing scam.

His name is Dr. Joel M. Kauffman and he has written a controversial eye-opening book called Malignant Medical Myths.

It is very similar to Kevin Trudeau's bestselling book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About and will appeal to fans of that book.

But unlike Trudeau's book which requires you to visit his various web sites and pay a subscription fee to find out about all the medical myths he talks about in his book, Kauffman lays it all out there in his book and provides the scientific facts to back up what he claims are lies coming from the medical community, drug companies, the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the United States Department of Agriculture, and even the National Institute of Health.

Revolutionary to say the least! But Kauffman is convinced Americans need to be aware of these things to protect themselves and their families from falling prey to the ignorance that pervades our society regarding common medical claims.

In Malignant Medical Myths, he questions the following medical myths, as he calls them, put forth by health and medical "experts":

1. Taking an aspirin a day will make you live longer.
2. Low-carb diets are unsafe and don't work for weight loss.
3. Using statin drugs to lower cholesterol will improve health.
4. People over 50 should take medicine for hypertension.
5. A drink a day keeps the doctor away.
6. Exercise! Run for your life! No pain, no gain.
7. EDTA chelation therapy for atherosclerosis is dangerous.
8. Radiation is dangerous except when administered by an oncologist.
9. Yearly mammograms extend life.
10. Cancer treatments have cure rates of 60%.
11. Fluoride in the water prevents tooth decay and is safe.

If you believe ANY of the above statements as medically accurate, then you need to get Malignant Medical Myths. Kauffman outlines for you his extensive research on each of these and explains to you the truth using scientific studies and information so you can be armed for battle when you come up against these myths again in the future.

There are several appendices in the back of the book that include additional resources for you to continue to learn more about these medical myths along with some more in-depth information comparing the low-carb diet programs (I especially enjoyed reading Kauffman's analysis of the various plans) as well as the chemical make-up of statin drugs. You will be amazed by what you learn from this book.

So the next time you're flipping through those channels and you see a man in a white coat who looks like a doctor making a claim, you might want to reference Malignant Medical Myths to see if the doctor is selling you a bag of goods or not.

THANK YOU, Dr. Kauffman, for sharing this important project with the world. It's high time the medical community stops monopolizing the medical information they want to distribute just to appease their own special interests.

Malignant Medical Myths is hopefully just the beginning of the tide turning towards the truth.

With medical 'interventions' and drugs dominating our thinking about 'health care' and not far from $1 out of every $7 generated in some Western countries spent on it, this book is an important one that takes a scientific look at the underpinnings of some of the most common avenues that may well be proposed to you by your doctor.

If you are 'placed on' aspirin, cholesterol or blood pressure drugs or are facing chemotherapy, this book will give you the perspective you need to help you make your own informed choices and to educate your doctor as well. When you think mammograms and prostate testing or fluoride in your water are established health benefits, this book is for you.

Dr. Kauffman is from that old scientific school where data and studies must be examined in detail rather than taking the words of the drug-representative educated medical world, or from those in the business of promoting their own commercial products, from inflammatory vegetable oils to fluoride toothpaste for all.

This is not an easy book to read, or to review, but it has nicely divided chapters that give the low-down on specific subjects, the 'eleven myths'. Leave it on a coffee table and read the chapter about the type of drug you're on. If you benefit by just dropping one expensive non science supported drug from your daily regimen, this book is worth many times its price, and you'll likely be healthier for it. For example, if you're a woman or older person, you'll learn that your $3/day cholesterol-lowering drug will not extend your healthy life --so say the studies. And, 1 week of Lipitor saved pays for this book!

Knowledge is power and Dr. Kauffman has done a remarkable job assembling of some of the more vital studies and this with surprisingly few (minor) glitches for a book of this type. With 'modern medicine' arguably the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States, can you afford not to know this book?

One final remark: it is smart to know the medical facts beforehand since hospitals now pride themselves with how few minutes it takes to get a balloon with a metal stent into your artery. This book is indeed about preventing Malignant Medical Myths, a catchy name well chosen. Recommended and may it serve you well.

Malignant Medical Myths by Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D, is an eye-opening expose that shatters many common and deeply ingrained health myths. Kauffman explains how these myths are born and how they are kept thriving by favorably designed and selectively cited research.

Kauffman articulates in a convincing manner:

--Why taking an aspirin a day is unlikely to make you live longer if you don't already have diagnosed heart disease;

--Why low-carbohydrate diets won't cause you to keel over from heart disease, nor cause your kidneys to explode;

--Why cholesterol-lowering will typically cause more harm than good, and why overglorified cholesterol drugs are useless for the vast majority of people who take them;

--Why hypertension drugs are similarly useless for the majority of folks they are prescribed for;

--Why the current scare campaign against any level of ionizing radiation is misguided;

--How cancer statistics are carefully 'massaged' to favorably portray modern cancer treatments as far more effective than what they really are;

--Why the evidence used to support the continued fluoridation of public water supplies is highly dubious.

Unlike many other health commentators, Kauffman isn't spruiking any alternative services in which he has a financial interest, nor does he market his own line of nutritional supplements; he simply believes people should have access to the facts.

Malignant Medical Myths is a great antidote to so much of the medical misinformation that dominates our information networks today.

In Joseph Conrad's famous novel, "Heart of Darkness," Marlowe, the narrator of the central tale travels to the Congo in search of the enigmatic and elusive Kurtz, a renowned European ivory trader who went to Africa as an idealistic "emissary of pity, and science, and progress." Marlowe finally encounters Kurtz on his deathbed, in a compound surrounded by a ruined fence, the posts of which are capped with shrunken human heads. Kurtz, having succumbed to primitive, destructive forces-- both external and internal-- utters his last words-a withering realization of truth: "The horror! The horror!"

Readers of Joel Kauffman's book "Malignant Medical Myths" should prepare themselves for an analagous journey of discovery. Not only will they learn of the specifics: that taking an aspirin a day may not make you live longer; that low carbohydrate diets are beneficial, not dangerous; that statin drugs, while effective in reducing cholesterol-an irrelevant endpoint-do little to reduce mortality-and then only in a very select population; that high blood pressure is over-treated; that the benefits of moderate alcohol use, exercise, and mammograms are exaggerated; that chelation therapy is unfairly maligned; that fears of radiation are overdone; that cancer cure rates have not changed much in the last forty years.

More important than these specifics is the totality-the picture of the medical establishment which emerges from them. That establishment, like Kurtz, is often seen as a beacon of pity, and science, and progress, but, when examined more closely, seems corrupted by greed, an aversion to truth, and a kind of tribalistic conformity; it seems to lack the structures which would provide an ethical backbone, and promote a commitment to scientific thinking. The hospital compound, with its white coats and gleaming machines is shadowed and compromised by an ominous fence of grievous errors and unpleasant truths.

The first subheading in Dr. Kauffman's introductory chapter is: "You Do Not Have To Trust Your Doctor." The reasons gradually become clear: Doctors' recommendations often rely on information which is "outdated, biased, flawed, and sometimes based on outright fraud."
Drug companies manipulate the results of clinical trials by careful selection of volunteers, by elimination of those who show initial adverse side-effects, by publishing only favourable results, by dealing only with surrogate endpoints, by failing to use placebos, and by failing to provide total mortality figures. Relative risk statistics, which are often highly misleading are used to advantage. Abstracts of medical papers, and hence press releases, may contain selective and hence misleading information. Doctors may not only rely on information given by drug company representatives; they are feted, gifted, and even paid by drug companies. Doctors on decision-making committees and panels often have conflicts of interest because of financial ties to drug companies. Doctors have great difficulty in exercising independent judgement, because conformity to current thinking, no matter how mistaken, is the safest course.

"The horror! the horror!"

We should be grateful to Dr. Kauffman for the research he has done to expose these medical myths, and reveal the corruption which initiates and maintains them. I became aware of Dr. Kauffman's work in 2005, in researching the causes of heart disease. Dr. Kauffman is a former professor of Chemistry at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and (according to biographical information on the back cover) has now "turned his attention to exposing fraud in medicine."

I think everyone should read this book, but there is no doubt that many will find it troubling. At the end of Conrad's novel, Marlowe meets with Kurtz's fiancee. When she asks what Kurtz's last words were, he responds: "The last word he pronounced was - your name."
He lies, because, in the end, the truth is too difficult. (It is the "necessity" of this lie that is the "Darkness" referred to in the title.) Dr. Kauffman is a Marlowe who has the courage to tell us what really happened.

You need this book. It is easy to become so engrossed in Kauffman's easy writing style that you will continue reading and lose track of time. Thumb through and stop at any place and you are guaranteed to find a wealth of information. Detractors to the best toxic-free remedies are provided rebuttals--you can learn a comprehensive approach to what and why. Let's make this required reading in medical schools! The only error I found was a typo misspelling of Antiplatelet in the Fig. 1-2 Treatment Meta-Analysis Table (p. 21). Again, this book is so loaded with useful information you will constantly refer to it. On p. 232 and again on p. 254 we read, correctly, how sunblock contributes to cancer by blocking Vitamin D formation--something that Rodale Press in their vast publishings fail to impart. Rodale Press, whom some may consider a leader in preventive health publishing, recommends sunblock to unsuspecting readers.

The hallmark of clinical observations (p2-3) over random clinical trials [RCT] is a common sense approach often missed in the medical literature and is sometimes used to discredit bonafide treatments that elicit positive results. You will learn of the class-action lawsuit against Pfizer regarding Lipitor [still want to ask you Dr. if it's right for you?](p97) and that statins cause cancer (p98).

The section on fluoridation is a must read. "How Antiflouridationists Have Weakened Their Cause," to only non-English speaking countries having the foresight to reject fluoride, to 60% US public water supplies being fluoridated--we get the good, the bad, and the ugly. As fluorides have been shown to increase cancer risks, adding them to water violated the Delaney Clause of the 1958 Amendment to the Food Drug & Cosmetic Act of 1938. So, the Delaney Clause was repealed in 1996 (p.273). Also, adding fluoride violates the EPA policy on drinking water standards (Safe Drinking Water Act) explaining why the 1990 National Toxicology Program on sodium fluoride was "revised" with findings of "clear evidence of carcinogenicity" to "equivocal" evidence. This was necessary to keep the flouridation program legal (p274).

On mammograms, benefits claim lower breast cancer mortality without providing all-cause mortality. Kauffman reminds that this is also a major fault in "major texts in gynecology and oncology" (p217). However, I was surprised to find thermography cast in such low regard, but then this is coming from the American College of Radiology, who cites a false-positive rate of 25% (p.212). Kauffman clarifies this in Addendum 1, on an entire page devoted to Thermography, in which thermography is better "able to detect breast cancer 5-8 years before mammography with vastly fewer false-positive errors" (p.327).

On anti-oxidents in red wine, Kauffman notes no evidence that moderate drinking offers worthwhile health benefits (p.142). What Kauffman calls "sudden enthusiasm for red wine in the late 1990s," reminds of a medical school course in which the professor remarked his telling the grape juice convention promoters that their product wasn't needed--that wine was preferred. No mention was made by the professor of the far superior anti-oxident capability of 1 gram of Vitamin C--in comparison.

There is absolutely no reason that this book should not sell out and go through several subsquent printings. A valuable edition to your medical library or home book-shelf.

Just some of the information Kauffman provides on blood pressure myths:

A. Did you know that the higher blood pressure reading should be 100 + your age? Neither did I.

B. Older women get higher blood pressure than older men, but live longer nevertheless and there's no need for medication unless blood pressure exceeds 180 (and even then the medication is not really of much help compared to the nutritional supplementation of magnesium, vitamin C and omega 3 EFAs). This is NOT what we've been told - if we had, pharmaceutical companies would make billions less each year.

C. When allowance for age is made, less than 5% of older people should be treated for high blood pressure (and even then the medication is not really of much help, especially compared with the benefits of nutritional supplementation of magnesium, vitamin C and omega 3 EFAs).

D. Conventional advice about exercise and diet does not work, after which they give you the drugs.

E. Diuretics: everyplace you might search, internet or otherwise, is unanimous that diuretics are beneficial for high blood pressure. Kauffman shows that the maximum possible benefit is 1.5 days extra of life after 5 years of taking diuretics! Yet diuretics have awful side effects; that's why you find strong warnings against taking diuretics for weight loss purposes.

F. Vasodilators, Beta-Blockers, Calcium Channel Blockers, ACE Inhibitors and Angiotensiin Receptor Antagonists are all proven to either be more dangerous than beneficial or to be working only because, despite terrible side effects, they help with retention of potassium and/or magnesium. Why not just take magnesium and potassium supplements? Oh yes, of course, because drug companies do not profit from nutritional supplements.

There's so much more. There's no real evidence that moderate drinking of red wine is beneficial yet the far superior anti-oxidant capability of 1 gram of Vitamin C goes unremarked; cancer cure rates have not changed much in the last forty years, the "success rates" merely refer to a 5-year survival rate but with terrible quality of life after chemotherapy and the like. Perhaps worst of all: for over a decade there has been a quick and simple blood test for many types of cancer, costing just $200, (the Anti-Malignin Antibody in Serum (AMAS) test) but most doctors don't know of it!

The book is not an easy read, but is so loaded with useful information you will constantly refer to it. If you care about your health, or that of those around you, this is a must read book.

[Later note: I recommend a well-researched book called "Outsmart Your Cancer" - anything that can HEAL cancer is also a general healer and should be able to help much else in the body as well as "Trick and Treat" by Groves which turns modern eating advice on its head, backed up by plenty of evidence, and "Never Fear Cancer Again" by Raymond Francis, a brilliant distillation of what is truly needed for health. All 3 should be on the "top 10" of any list of books on health. Also, the supplement Papaya 35, a super concentrate with fermented pawpaw.]

This was exactly what I was looking for, INFORMATION and while it isn't a book for the beach, I will read and refer to it for many days,months and years. Would not part with this book.

One of the most remarkable examples of herd behavior among humans is their tendency to create and believe lore about medicine. Although biomedical researchers consider themselves above all this, as Kauffman shows, they are not. Without engaging in either inflated rhetoric or florid outrage, Kauffman exposes and dissects conventional wisdom in a careful selection of conditions that affect large numbers of people. Despite the occasional misstep, he puts the evidence and argument out on the table for us to see and judge. We cannot ask for more. When you are finished reading it, send it to your doctor.

This book is important and may change the health, for the better, of many readers. It convinced me, for example, that a blood pressure of 150/90 for seniors is not the disaster the medical establishment claims, that it is. Much better to lose weight, lower stress and eat healthily than to take blood pressure pills. Pills are only for seniors with really high b/p. A recent study of octogenarians found that those with "high" b/p lived as long as those with "normal" b/p Yet six years ago the "experts" announced that anyone with a b/p above 120/80 was a "prehypertensive" . With one announcement they made some 50 million Americans drug clients, to the joy of Big Pharma. How greedy the drug companies are can be seen in the b/p pills I formerly took. It was on patent and cost 40 times more per pill than an equally effective ACE inhibitor with a diuretic that was off patent. But my doctor recommended the $4 pill and I bought it. I already knew that statins for elevated cholesterol were a fraud and luckily refused to take them when my doctor recommended a statin 30 years ago. Statins are covered in this book.
Professor Kauffman doesn't ask you to believe him but provides hundreds of studies supporting what he says. Anyone who disagrees with the 11 myths he describes should go to the source materials. Not that you should accept everything he says as the TRUTH. Our bodies are too complex for simple solutions. But you owe it to yourself to get beyond the Big Pharma and Big Medicine dogmas. Don't forget the docs and the drug pushers would starve if everyone was healthy. So be skeptical and use the Internet. Another feature of the book is showing how health information is distorted by researchers and paid "consultants" often professors at respectable universities with big grants from Big Pharma,or government officials who serve Big Pharma. Also, learn how deceiving such an announcements can be as: "The X$X$X pill lowers glaucoma risk 50 percent." Sounds great until you discover that it means 5 persons in 1,000 who took the pill got glaucoma, over a 5 year period, while the placebo group had 10 people get glaucoma in the 1,000 person control group. Seventeen years ago, on the advice of my ophthalmologist, I took drops for glaucoma for a couple of years until I discovered the above research. My eye pressure was "high normal" or borderline the doc said. Would you spend $20,000 over a 20 year period not to be one of the 5 persons in 1,000 or would you take your chances on being among the 990? So the bottom line is that our health system is corrupt and profit-driven and you must investigate for yourself. Did you know that only the USA and New Zealand permits mass advertising of prescription drugs such as you see on TV and the magazines? If you saw an ad for Vioxx on TV and went to your doctor demanding it, should he spend 20 minutes convincing you against it and have you leave disgruntled or should he spend a minute writing out a prescription and have you leave happy? Get educated.

If you care about your health, or that of those around you, this is a must read book.

This certainly isn't a book you can simply skim read. It took me a while to ponder about the impact this might have (I'm a medical student). The arguments are very well presented; he puts all the studies in front of you and analyzes them in a relevant manner.

What I consider to be a minor flaw in the book: the author sometimes concludes that certain differences in mortality are "negligible" when I don't think they are negligible. Certainly though, improvements in mortality rate are far easily attainable via fish oil, magnesium and other quality supplements.

I would love to see a new version of this book, further exploring and digging through the literature on various drugs and supplements.