Whether you’re “HIV positive” or “HIV negative,” the day will likely come when you seek a medical doctor’s opinion on a health condition. Just how independent from flawed official standards of care will that doctor’s judgment be? Are doctors allowed to think independently at all? Will they “first, do no harm,” as the Hippocratic Oath pledges? “How Positive Are You” co-host Elizabeth Ely asks Drs. Jane Orient and Donald Miller these vital questions and more. You’ll learn about the dire, Kafka-esque situation in American medicine that the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) would like to improve.
Dr. Jane Orient is Executive Director of the AAPS, a post she has held since 1989, and the current president of DDP. Her 1974 medical degree is from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Orient has been an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. Since 1981, she has been in private solo practice in internal medicine and remains a clinical lecturer in medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. See her book Your Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism About National Healthcare, for the full rundown on mandated health insurance and its effect on the practice of medicine; the short version of it is in this article. Her novel Sutton’s Law examines how and where medicine makes its money. She has published more than 100 papers on subjects including risk assessment, natural and technological hazards and nonhazards, and medical economics and ethics. She is the editor or managing editor of several journals and newsletters, including the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS).
Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr. retired from teaching and practicing heart surgery after a career spanning more than 40 years. He has had a distinguished career as chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, medical director of the Swedish Heart Institute, and director of the cardiothoracic surgery program at the Seattle VA Medical Center. He was educated at Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School and Harvard Medical School and served on active duty as a surgeon in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.
In addition to authoring two textbooks on heart surgery, Dr. Miller wrote Heart in Hand, a book considering music, religion, the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, the films of Woody Allen and his own life as a heart surgeon. Dr. Miller continues to write articles on a variety of medical and non-medical subjects for the Libertarian Web site LewRockwell.com. His own website, donaldmiller.com, offers a stimulating reading list on topics as far-ranging as contrarian nutritional advice, the U.S. economy and the beat generation.
Dr. Miller’s recent article on the current state of AIDS dissidence, “Fallacies in Modern Medicine: The HIV/AIDS Hypothesis,” appears in the Spring 2015 issue of the JPandS. His other articles raising inconvenient questions on a variety of topics, including HIV and AIDS, are available here.
Membership in the AAPS and DDP is open to doctors, of course, but not just in the U.S. and not just for doctors. They offer several membership levels including “associate memberships” for related and alternative-health professions. Recently it came to light that Drs. Ron and Rand Paul have been members of the AAPS.
Those 70 or so different conditions that can cause a false-positive “HIV test,” cited often here, are listed in Christine Johnson’s classic survey of mainstream scientific literature.
Correction: Beth gives the Episode number in error on this Podcast. This is Episode 102.