The Complete Patient

The key to changing America's approach to healthcare from obsessing about curing disease to encouraging robust health as a way to avoid disease is education. The best way to educate people about the problems of our conventional health system may be to regularly expose examples of its contradictions and weaknesses to the light of day. That is what wellness advocate Mike Adams, who calls himself the Health Ranger, is thinking, except he is doing more than thinking about it. He wants to do something, and he's come up with a clever journalistic approach: he is seeking "whistleblowers" among Big Pharma employees, health insurance workers, teachers, patients, and others who are in a position to witness wrongdoing.

He wants to get the word out, so if you think you have a story to tell about wrongdoing in the healthcare system, look at his site and send him your story. He seems a bit dramatic, such as when he states: "The Berlin Wall of medicine, that has for so long isolated people from the truth about health and healing, is about to come crashing down. Now is your chance to leave your mark. Pick up that whistleblowing sledgehammer and help us tear down this wall by exposing the fraud, corruption and criminality in medicine today."

 There's one other thing I don't care for about Adams' approach to healthcare education: his conviction that because he is a physical specimen, everyone else can become a physical specimen. He has posted photos of his impressive physique, along with his admirable medical statistics (cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.) to make his argument. The approach reminds me of entrepreneurs who trumpet their success as evidence that anyone willing to follow their regimen can be similarly successful. But just as not everyone is cut out to be a successful entrepreneur, not everyone is blessed with good health, no matter how well they eat and how much they exercise. Sometimes, genetics and/or environmental factors outweigh all else.

But what the heck. With millions of blogs and sites, you've got to stand out. Let's see if Mike's idea about whisteblowers gets some traction, and helps in the education process.