h Their main motivation was in learning about and understanding the science of medicine in order to cure diseases and bring health and well being to their patients.
Unfortunately this is no longer the case.
Now days many people choose the medical profession because of the income potential. Of course it is not possible to do a survey of doctors to discover the exact proportion of doctors who chose that profession purely for its income potential because no-one is going to admit to that.
My own personal opinion is about 50% of doctors chose to be doctors because of income rather than because they want or aspire to be a healer and carer.
Of course it is a touchy subject and most doctors reading this will no doubt erupt with righteous indignation at my assertion that money is their primary movitive for being in their profession.
Why do a I claim this? Why do I even bring it up?
Because of my experiences over the last year.
Let me explain.
When I first started helping people in the UK to access generic Hep C medicines I was under the (false) impression that they required a doctors prescription to be able to import generic Harvoni for personal use.
So I, and the people with Hep C, were desperately trying to find doctors in the UK who would write a prescription for Sofosbuvir + Ledipasvir or for generic Harvoni.
No-one had any luck and things looked grim until I was contacted by a London based doctor whose best friend had Hep C and this doctor was desperate help him.
So he wrote a prescription for his friend and I organised the meds for him and asked him if he would mind writing scripts for other people with Hep C. He said “Sure, but it will cost 200 British pounds for the consultation.”
I thought that was a bit expensive but if it saves a life it was worth it.
So I contacted a couple of people in England and gave them the doctor’s phone number and address.
A few days and then I received emails from the patients who had contacted the doctor informing me that he was refusing to see them.
He told me he had contacted his insurance people and they told him that writing prescriptions for generic would increase his insurance premiums.
Another UK doctor contacted me for information on getting generic Sofosbuvir and Daclatasvir. This doctor had Hep C himself.
I helped him get the meds and when he started treatment I asked him if he would mind writing prescriptions for other British people with Hep C.
He said he would wait until he got the results of his first blood tests and if they were good then he would.
He got blood tests at 14 days into treatment and his viral load had dropped to “undetectable” and his liver enzymes had returned to normal levels.
So he agreed to write prescription for other people in the UK with Hep C.
So I passed his contact details on to British patients and a few days later I got an email from this doctor saying that he had looked at the cost of his insurance and that it was not viable for him to write prescriptions for generic Hep C meds.
Of course I then discovered that a prescription is not needed to import Hep C medicines into the UK for personal use so that problem was solved and since then we have bypassed doctors and many hundreds of people in the UK have cured themselves of Hep C without any help from their doctors.
However when people imported the medicines themselves and started treatment the next big shock was that UK doctors and the British National Health Service refused to monitor their treatment.
So even though the NHS refused to treat these people and by treating themselves these people with Hepatitis C are saving the NHS about 20,000 pounds per treatment the bloody minded doctors in the NHS refuse to monitor the patients treatment!!!
Now lets go to the USA.
I have to first say that the situation with US doctors is better than the UK. Whilst I would describe about 90% of UK doctors as being selfish and cowardly I would say that this probably only applies to 70% of US doctors.
In other words about one out of three people in the USA is now able to get a prescription from their doctor for generic Hepatitis C medicines. Now this is people who have a good and understanding doctor however I have not been able to find a doctor who will put his or her hand up and say:
“If people are having trouble getting a prescription for generic Hep C meds then send them to me and I will help.”
Well that is not entirely true.
I got an email from a US doctor a few weeks back. He wrote and said that he admired my work and had read about the fact that a lot of people in the USA are having trouble getting a prescription for generic Hep C medicines.
He wrote and told me that he was nearing retirement and wanted to do something really worthwhile before he left the profession.
He was really sick and tired of the way that Big Pharma was running the medical world in the USA and he wanted to stick it to them.
He wrote and told me that I could send patients to him and that provided that they had all the supporting lab reports and it was the appropriate treatment then he would write them a prescription for either generic Harvoni or Sof+Daclatasvir and monitor their treatment and support them if there were any issues.
Wow, I thought, At last a really courageous doctor who is prepared to make a stand on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of US citizens with Hep C who need a supportive doctor to help them access generic Hep C treatment.
Brilliant!
Because of all the emails I get from the USA I immediately sent this doctor’s contact details to a patient who was having trouble finding a doctor to write him a prescription.
His own doctor had point blank refused because he did not want to risk trouble with Big Pharma.
Well surprise, surprise this patient wrote to the doctor and then wrote back to me saying the doctor had changed his mind about it and would not see him.
I immediately wrote to the US doctor to ask what was wrong, what had changed... it took two weeks for him to gather the balls to reply.
When he did eventually answer my email he said that, whilst he still felt strongly about the terrible situation for people with Hep C in the USA, he was not prepared to risk his financial future by writing prescriptions for generics and withdrew his offer.
Maybe on the day he wrote his original offer to me he had been drunk or stoned???
I don’t know why people do stuff like that. I am not asking doctors to write prescriptions for illegal drugs or some weird concoction made out of monkey’s brains and herbs from the Amazon jungle...
We are talking about licensed generic Hepatitis C medication made in FDA approved factories.
What is going on with the medical profession?
