a. Costs of Consultation, Medicines, and Hospitalization
From 1980, people in the west, began to think seriously about alternative medicines. Patented allopathic medicines became very expensive. Cost of surgical procedures and hospitalization were astronomically high and are still rising further. It is officially stated that the USA spends 20 per cent of its gross national product on health care. Yet, nearly 20 per cent of the people do not have access to proper health care and others can only afford it with some difficulty.
b. Inability to cure permanently
Allopathic medicine is unable to permanently cure many chronic diseases such as asthma, sinusitis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardio-vascular problems, irritable bowel syndrome, kidney stones, gall bladder stones, urinary bladder stones, prostate gland enlargement, prostate gland infection, gum infections, and skin diseases like psoriasis etc.
c. Preference for surgical procedures
Allopathic medicine began to prefer very expensive surgical procedures where they are not necessary at all under other systems of medicine. Many of these surgical procedures including bypass surgery for cardio vascular problems are only temporary fixes.
d. Use of multiple drugs
Very few people know that FDA approved drugs may not have the intended effects on 20 to 50 per cent of the patients. So, an allopathic medical practitioner tends to try one drug after the other until some drug has the intended effects on the patient. He also tends to prescribe higher and higher potency and larger and larger doses. A separate drug for each symptom is the height of this approach.
In countries like India, it is not uncommon for general medical practitioners as well as specialists to prescribe 4 to 8 medicines to be taken simultaneously. Drug interactions which are often serious are often ignored.
e. Adverse reactions
Virtually every allopathic medicine has some side effects about which the patient is not often aware. The medical practitioner does not often inform the patient about them.
The General Accounting Office of the USA estimates that 51 per cent of all the FDA approved drugs have major unwanted side effects that are not detected until the drugs have been used by tens of thousands patients. According to the US News and World Report, as many as 140,000 people die annually in the USA from adverse reactions to prescription drugs approved as safe and effective by the FDA.
