"Doctored" Official Movie Trailer. 2012 Documentary.

Doctored.  Official movie trailer.



 

New Film 2012: Doctored. Here is the Film Review

This should be good...

Film Review: Doctored

Doctored, as the title implies, blames doctors for America’s failed healthcare system.

Sept 19, 2012

-By Maria Garcia

For movie details, please click here.

Doctored is a documentary about the chiropractic profession primarily, and the American Medical Association’s longstanding opposition to it. Chronicling the suits and countersuits filed by the AMA and a group of chiropractors (beginning with Milk v. AMA in 1973), director Bobby Sheehan leaves the impression that the final outcome legitimized chiropractics. Actually, the lawsuits were filed and resolved under federal antitrust legislation. The judge found evidence that the AMA and some healthcare providers were guilty of restraining “trade,” of trying to put chiropractors out of business; her 1987 decision ended their campaign. Having sufficiently demonized doctors, Sheehan then blames them, rather disingenuously, for the unwillingness of health insurers to pay for alternative cures.

Less than 30 percent of the nation’s physicians are members of the AMA, so the organization’s views can hardly be said to represent the medical community. Healthcare providers’ policies with regard to which procedures or treatments will be covered are decided by actuarial formulas, not by doctors or the standards of medical practice. Blaming the AMA, and physicians who harbor prejudicial views of alternative medicine, for what ails the American healthcare system, as Sheehan does here, is as simplistic as believing that what will repair it are chiropractors and enlightened doctors who embrace alternative therapies. As other documentaries on this subject point out, including the upcoming Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare (from Roadside Attractions), the fault lies with lawmakers who have failed to reform profit-oriented insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

Sheehan will succeed with TV viewers accustomed to ripped-from-the-headlines “journalism”; in fact,Doctored opens with a 1980s broadcast of “The David Susskind Show.” Aired when alternative therapy generally referred to chiropractic intervention, the program pitted a sneering doctor against a composed and articulate chiropractor. Through a mix of archival footage and interviews with doctors, chiropractors and their patients—sometimes in ineffective, staged conversations—Doctored, as its title implies, appears to put Western medicine on trial. Employing conspiratorial thinking rather than thoughtful commentary, in the end the documentary is actually little more than a deftly edited commercial for the chiropractic profession.

Sheehan gets some candid interviews with doctors in which they admit to unholy alliances with drug companies, and failures in Western medical practice that compel patients to seek alternative therapies, but these startling disclosures are edited to within an inch of apprehension, undermined by the film’s proselytizing. Ironically, the most effective criticism of America’s healthcare system comes from doctors, not from the self-aggrandizing chiropractors. Doctored offers no fix for the problems it identifies, beyond a visit to your local chiropractor. 

STANDARD OF CARE: Just my two cents.

STANDARD OF CARE:  Just my two cents.

Alan Himmel, DC. PA

If there is one thing I am very sure of by now, it is the fact that not all patients respond the same to medical treatments.  For example, if you have five patients and they all come in with the identical complaint of lumboscacral radiculopathy, caused by the identical thing, you will find that each one of these patients will typically respond different than the next patient to medical care.  I have learned over the years to respect this fact.  This, by the way, is a fact across the entire list of medical conditions.  There is no such thing as a guaranteed success with any medical treatment, because each patient is unique.  Any physician who tells you otherwise is lying to you. The treatments given to a patient for any one particular reason, are usually one that comes out of a bag of questionable tricks.  I use the metaphor "bag" here, because that's exactly what doctors have--a bag of tricks or treatments in their arsenal which they grab from, when a condition calls for it.

Within the arsenal of treatments that doctors have, is what is called "standard of care."  In other words, the standard of care treatments are treatments that all your doctor's colleagues do, and so, since everyone else is doing it, it makes it the treatment of choice.  Since the standard of care is the treatment that everyone else does, it is therefore reasonable and correct for your doctor to do the same.  In fact, many doctors are reluctant to step out of the box, and prescribe a medication, or do something, which is not considered the standard of care.

Reaching for the standard of care each time, in my opinion is problematic and can also be dangerous to a patient's health.  This type of thinking by doctors opens up several issues because physicians are well aware that standard treatments do not always equate to resolution of  a medical condition.   Treating patients is not like mathematics where you can predict the outcome, every time.   If you think about it,  if it was as simple as choosing the standard of care, then we wouldn't need doctors at all.  Could you imagine if we could do away with most docs and create a computer program which people would keep on their home computer, or even as an app for the smart phone, that would do everything, including calling in a prescription at your pharmacy?    Several years ago, a well respected friend of mine, who is in medical research once told me that most doctors and researchers are like robots.  She used to say that these people have lost their ability to think on their own, that they have no curiosity, and they don't question anything.  She asked me once, how many physicians do I think go home at the end of the day and do research, and try to find the BEST options and treatments for their patients?  This is something that I never thought of before, but certainly with the advent of the internet, this type of research is pretty easy to do, and reasonable, especially with a patient with a life threatening condition.

If you ever want to stop a physician in her tracks, look your doctor straight in the eyes and ask her what she would do if her mother or father or child was the patient.  This usually works.  If the doctor is giving her honest opinion of the best treatment, then she will confidently look you right back in the eyes and stick to her original recommendation.  If the doctor seems uneasy with the question, or looks away or down, I would be concerned and would seek another opinion.