Let us not underestimate the difficulties it would present to modern medicine were the whole edifice of cardiovascular surgery to come tumbling down. (US chelation/vitamin C therapy proponent, Professor Cheraskin of Alabama Medical Centre, quotes the current value of bypass surgery alone in America as $3.5 billion. The total value of the cardiac industry to the US is estimated at $6 billion.)
A Canadian journal puts the dilemma more graphically when it lists the people whose jobs could be threatened: 'cardiac surgeons and theatre staff; life support machine and technical staff; cardiac care units and specially trained personnel; angiographers and other diagnostic staff; makers of technology, such as electronic firms who supply monitoring and diagnostic equipment; aftercare units and their adjuncts, for example, physiotherapists, masseurs and
counsellors, etc; specially equipped ambulances and staff; resuscitation staff; teaching posts, research groups; spare parts organizers; blood suppliers...and last, but not least, and quite possibly the sting in the tail, pharmaceutical companies who supply the cardiac industry with drugs.'
In view of classic trials, such as the Veterans, CAST and finally RITA (not yet completed), all of which question in one way or another the advisability of much of heart surgery, is it not incongruous to call for a four-fold increase in heart surgeons to meet this health-care crisis, as has the Joint Cardiology Committee of the Royal Colleges of Britain?
There are some positive signs, however. After decades of alternative therapists insisting that dietary and nutritional measures are the two main weapons we have against all degenerative disease, at last recognition of this is being reflected in small trials and studies receiving funding.
Upward Trends-The government in Britain has decided to increase its support for research into antioxidant nutrients and two new projects are to be funded at the Free Radical Research Group led by one of the world's leading researchers of free radicals, Professor Anthony Diplock.
News from the British Heart Foundation indicates that it is funding a trial at an Oxford hospital to study the effect of garlic on reducing cholesterol levels. And research was begun in Cardiff to investigate the protection against heart disease offered by eating oily fish and fish products.
These kinds of projects may seem more like a breath of fresh air than the actual winds of change, but they are nonetheless steps in the right (preventive) direction.