From Pine View Farm

The Medicine Show 0

Reka Basu recounts a recent experience with U. S. medical care. She has been dealing with a dermatalogical problem that has cost her hundreds of dollars and many hours with the U. S. Medical-Industrial Complex. Then she was introduced to a cure in an unexpected way:

But after a year of shelling out hundreds of dollars on doctors, labs and medicines to clear up the rough patches on my elbows that had gotten me nowhere, I’d come up with another approach.

Actually, a beautician giving me a facial in an Indian beauty parlor had come up with it during my recent annual visit to India. Seeing my elbows, the woman dispatched a pedicurist to the drugstore next door to get me an over-the-counter ointment she said would bring signs of improvement in a week. And it did.

I bring this up not because my skin problems are of much consequence. On the contrary. If a beauty parlor employee can recognize symptoms and suggest a treatment that works after two doctors, a biopsy and several medications couldn’t, it suggests a larger problem with our profit-obsessed medical care system and pharmaceutical industry.

Follow the link for her theory as to why that particular over-the-counter salve is not available in the United States.

Note:

If you are using an adblocker, the Des Moines Register may ask you to turn it off. I don’t use an adblocker, but I do use NoScript in conjunction with a hosts file, so I needed to tell NoScript to “allow all” scripts on the page. I’m am quite willing to let legitimate newspaper websites think that I’m reading their ads. Newspapers need all the help they can get.

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