My heart goes out to Dr. Peter Attia for the experience he gained from his own error, and the life challenges that left him questioning all of his assumptions.

I can’t thank him enough for voicing the problem of Idea Resistance in our North American medical profession. Licensing boards seem to be the most engaged in this, with draconian measures taken against any doctors not toeing the “give them drugs” line. If an MD isn’t protected in a research institute, he or she can lose the license to practice; even in a research institute, he or she can lose the funding that allows research to continue along drug-industry-challenging lines.

How can we better support the brightest and best, and protect them from their own institutions?

How can we give training to new doctors that sustains their curiosity instead of burying them in dogma?

How can we give M.D.s and researchers the grace to question everything, every little assumption, if the existing protocol is failing to address the core of the problem?

This crevasse goes wider and deeper than diabetes or metabolic syndrome, serious as these conditions and their potential ramifications are.  The problem with our North American medical system is affecting all chronic diseases, and all of the chronic ‘mental’ problems as well.  

People with Lupus cannot get medical help that turns the disease around and cures it; for that they have to go to complementary and natural health practitioners.  The same is true for cancer.  And the same is true for arthritis, for chronic fatigue, for Lyme’s disease, for schizophrenia… and for Autistic Spectrum Disorders such as dyslexia, ADHD, and Tourette’s.  

As hard as it was to see Dr. Peter Attia weep for his regret at his attitude for a patient, I am sincerely praying that it will not take long for other MDs to open their eyes, weep and apologize, and begin to question the mechanistic and incomplete models that they have been forced to swallow whole, by their educations and their governing bodies.