Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Modern medicine is intimidating to most people: the doctors, the facilities, the treatments, the costs. Plus, patients have almost no control over any of it, rising their anxiety level even higher. One of the ways to exert control over your own life is to make your goals subjective, and uniqueness is sought after because it gives control through obscure knowledge that only you know. Medicine is especially vulnerable to these lures because the reality is that placebo, getting fooled into thinking a treatment is helping you when it's actually a scam, is the most effective part of healthcare; professional and quackery.

Chiropractic, naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, aroma therapy, yoga, diet, crystals, massage, positive thinking; all so-called Alternative Medicine depends on the placebo effect and lessened anxiety: how could something you dig out of your backyard hurt you, and massages feel good no matter what. There's usually some smidgen of an idea behind all of these poppycock treatments but it's far-outweighed by the lack of evidence for them, and the fact that someone can receive a Doctor of Natural Medicine borders on malpractice. Professional, accredited, liability-insured medicine is called Evidence-based, but that's a misnomer too; often the evidence is fleeting at best with negative results ignored. Justifying $100K therapies that only provide a minimal chance of improvement would never happen outside of the natural monopoly of medicine where you are literally going to die otherwise. Medicine makes liars out of everybody.