The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 30.E, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (25)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2022

Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 1,781

ISSN 2369-6885

Abstract

Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI is an Ivy League academic physician and scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Mega Society, the OlympIQ Society and past member of the Prometheus Society. He is the designer of the cryptic Mega Society logo. He is member of several scientific societies and a Fellow of the American College of Radiology and of the American Heart Association. He is the co-Founder of the Arrhythmia Imaging Research (AIR) lab at Penn. His research is funded by the National Institute of Health. He is an international leader in three different fields: cardiovascular imaging, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. He discusses: cruelty; burn out; treatment of physicians; ‘alternative’ medicine; ignorance; masquerading as knowledge; Dr. Oz-ification of culture; scientific illiteracy; deceased or now-disabled colleagues; UDHR; International Labour Organization; Dr. Oz; defense mechanisms or infrastructure to protect themselves from the litigious patients; and those with fewer means and less authority in medical institutions.

Keywords: American, Benoit Desjardins, Medicine, physicians, quack medicine, science, United States.

The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture

*Please see the references, footnotes, and citations, after the interview, respectively.*

*This interview represents Dr. Desjardins’ opinion, combined to the current content of the published medical literature, and not necessarily the opinion of his employers.*

On the medical-legal system in the U.S.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How is the U.S. comparable to the Middle Ages with patients blaming physicians for illness?

Dr. Benoit Desjardins: It is often taught that the U.S. has been the only country since the Middle Ages in which people blame physicians for their diseases. There is no personal accountability anymore in the U.S. Every problem Americans face is someone else’s fault. They blame most problems on immigrants or rich people, but they blame healthcare problems on physicians. If a woman delivers an imperfect baby, she blames it on the physician and tries to extort money. If a man develops lung cancer after chain-smoking for 50 years, he will often go over his past medical record with lawyers to see if a physician could be blamed for his cancer. Sometimes they discover early imperceptible evidence about cancer and then try to extort money from physicians. Most U.S. courtrooms in medical-legal trials are like the courtroom from the movie “Idiocracy,” where massively ignorant, scientifically illiterate people try to blame top physicians for patients’ diseases. The U.S. medical-legal system has been the laughingstock of the entire planet for more than fifty years.

Jacobsen: Outside of individual violent reprisals by former or current patients, what about the legal repercussions? Where, individual patients may have legitimate claims and may not. However, in a litigious culture, as in the U.S., this can be a major issue. The general litigious culture may become magnified in a context of life-and-death, and general illness, issues. So, what happens?

Desjardins: An entire sector of the U.S. “justice” system has been created to blame physicians for patients’ diseases. There are thousands of primarily frivolous lawsuits filed against physicians in the U.S. every year. Corrupt prosecutors use four well-known techniques of deception to extort money: (1) they suppress published scientific evidence supporting the correct actions by physicians, (2) they commit massive perjury against physicians, (3) they use flawed reasoning techniques from con-artists to fool jurors, and (4) they pay unqualified “experts” to misrepresent the standards of medical practice in court. In addition, U.S. judges threaten physicians with jail time if they try to prove in court that they followed correct science, after corrupt prosecutors suppress published scientific evidence. In other countries, using deception to extort money is a crime. In the U.S., it is the modus operandi of a 55-billion-dollar financial extortion industry against physicians and hospitals, affecting up to 80% of U.S. physicians in some specialties.

Jacobsen: Also, how is the court system in Pennsylvania?

Desjardins: In the past ten years, Philadelphia has been exposed in the medical literature and at medical conferences as having one of the most corrupt, scientifically illiterate medical-legal systems on Earth. The Philadelphia “justice” system frequently commits crimes against innocent physicians.

Jacobsen: What are some fallouts or likely outcomes from this idiocy?

Desjardins: It has led to a severe shortage of physicians in Philadelphia. Physicians have left the city by the boatload, sometimes more than 50% of entire divisions resigning en masse, and we experience significant difficulties recruiting. Several city hospitals have permanently shut down in recent years, and many more are on the verge of shutting down.

Jacobsen: How does this impact the future of the field to recruit sufficiently qualified, even talented, individuals? Where do they go? What about those better physicians in the field who can hack it – the workload and the B.S., but don’t want to deal with the sheer tonnage of nonsense and risks to livelihood?

Desjardins:  In the past ten years, my clinical section, which is in desperate need of more radiologists, has not been able to recruit any radiologists. We have even offered some promising recruits the possibility to work remotely. By never setting foot in Philadelphia, this eliminates their chances of getting assaulted or stabbed in the face by patients. Still, they refused as they do not want to be associated with the city of Philadelphia for the reasons described above.

Jacobsen: How do U.S. physicians keep one another in check, too, in case of malpractice – so back to higher levels of healthcare education and authority?

Desjardins: A tiny portion of lawsuits against physicians are genuine cases of malpractice due to poorly trained or incompetent physicians. Checks and balances are in place to either address the educational shortcomings or remove the practice license if necessary. Most lawsuits are crimes committed against excellent physicians by corrupt prosecutors in cases of bad outcomes or complications, which are part of expected outcomes in medicine. There is no lesson for physicians to learn from these cases. They are discussed in the literature and at conferences to educate physicians about the corruption and scientific illiteracy of the U.S. “justice” system and prepare them to become crime victims.

Jacobsen: Have physicians built any defense mechanisms or infrastructure to protect themselves from the litigious patients, when they inevitably arise, or the top-heavy bureaucratic culture?

Desjardins: There is a malpractice insurance system for physicians, a 55-billion-dollar industry. When physicians become victims of too many frivolous lawsuits, the cost of their malpractice insurance rapidly increases until, at some point, they cannot afford to pay the exorbitant fees and are forced to abandon their medical careers. Physicians practicing in cities with the most corrupt medical-legal systems tend to leave their medical profession early, worsening the massive shortage of physicians.

Jacobsen: How does this – the litigious patients out there and the maltreatment of healthcare professionals by institutions – impact those with fewer means and less authority in medical institutions, e.g., nurses, nurse-practitioners, and the like?

Desjardins: Nurses and nurse-practitioners have their own malpractice insurance system, although physicians and hospitals are the main targets of prosecutors. Nurses also have difficult working conditions, including forced overtime. But they cannot be exposed to working conditions as poor as physicians, as nurses have a union. For example, nurses are “officially” not allowed to work more than 12 consecutive hours in most states. It does not include occasional forced overtime. Some physicians are required to work up to 72 straight hours. It would be illegal and inhumane to make nurses work as long as physicians.

On medical quackery in the U.S.

Jacobsen: What are common cases of individuals able to use the term “doctor,” “physician,” etc., by law, or not, when, in fact, no legitimate training or grounds for the claims to the titles exist?

Desjardins: Many professions outside medicine use the term “doctor.” Any Ph.D. in any field has the right to be called a “doctor,” for example, Dr. Jill Biden has a doctorate in educational leadership. Dr. Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil) is not a physician but provides medical advice on T.V. He has a Doctorate in Psychology but is not a licensed psychologist. In the healthcare field, Doctors of Osteopathy (D.O.s) have the right to be called “doctors” and practice medicine in the U.S. but cannot practice medicine in some other countries. Chiropractors and naturopaths are called “doctors” and practice healthcare but are not physicians. They constitute a hazard to healthcare and are not allowed to practice in most countries. There are cases of individuals pretending to be physicians who practice medicine without training until they are exposed.

Jacobsen: There’s plenty of bullshit remedies out there in the public sold by the boatload. What about medical institutions who buy into them and begin to practice them? What are cases of this? Are there any consequences for individuals engaged in giving out known ineffective treatments?

Desjardins: The medical community scientifically assesses remedies to determine their effectiveness. If they are proven ineffective, respectable institutions will not adopt them. Some physicians dispense some ineffective or dangerous therapy and can lose their license. Recently U.S. judges forced physicians to administer ivermectin (horse deworming medicine) to COVID patients, an act of pure idiocy. It reflects the mindboggling scientific illiteracy of the U.S. justice system. Physicians who have administered such medication have been fired for incompetence and stupidity.

Jacobsen: Also, what are the problems with ‘alternative’ medicine, naturopathic medicine, and so on?

Desjardins: They don’t work. Just look at the late Steve Jobs.

Jacobsen: I wrote a short article critical of Naturopathy in British Columbia, Canada, a while ago – a quickie. A while goes, I received a lengthy email or digital letter from the President of the British Columbia Naturopathic Association (B.C.NA.) at the time. Obviously, the person was displeased. I responded with the same so-called baseless critiques towards this individual, once, saying I would only do it a single time, but covered the territory well.

It was enough to deal with the issue. They were orthogonal to the evidence-based claims, so wrong, pointless – by my estimation, and such lightweight critiques, even a young independent journalist could deal with them. Yet, these forms of alternative practice are present, proliferating, and have been with cultures forever, though more complex in the nonsense with technology.

It’s simply less excusable as medicine and meta-analytic studies’ powers give, not deep insight but, a modicum of reasonable thou-shalts and thou-shalt nots of good health guidelines in general, as you stipulated earlier.

People seem entitled. Professionals who spend their time thinking and researching narcissism claim a rise in narcissism over decades. Entitlement is a facet of narcissism. How is the Dr. Oz-ification of culture and medicine halting progress on the front of proper treatment of dis-ease in American society?

Desjardins: Some individuals with top credentials in a specific field sometimes become self-appointed experts in entirely different fields. Dr. Mehmet Oz is one of those. He is a retired Ivy League Professor and cardiothoracic surgeon fro Columbia University. He is a scholar with top credentials in a highly specialized field, who has become a television personality and started providing general health advice. He has promoted pseudoscience, alternative medicine, faith healing, and paranormal beliefs. Dr. Scott Atlas, a prominent neuroradiologist from Stanford, was appointed by Trump as a coronavirus advisor, an area in which he had no expertise. He then spread massive misinformation about COVID and advised against the official policy of the CDC. Pseudo-experts are tools that ignorant, corrupt people use to spread misinformation in the U.S. These pseudo-experts halt progress of good evidence-based medical policy and affect the quality of care.

Jacobsen: Other than Dr. Oz, who are other ignorance-mongers becoming rich off offering fake medicine?

Desjardins: There are several, especially given the rapid growth of social media. But the most prominent media personalities doctors are Dr. Andrew Weil, a physician and expert in integrative medicine, and Dr. Phil McGraw, a T.V. unlicensed psychologist. Weil has a net worth of $100 million (similar to Dr. Oz). McGraw has a net worth of $460 million. They both offer good and bad advice and are both very entertaining.

Footnotes

[1] Academic Physician; Member, OlympIQ Society; Member, Mega Society.

[2] Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2022: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022: https://in-sightpublishing.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture[Online]. May 2022; 30(E). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2022, May 22). The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture. Retrieved from http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.E, May. 2022. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3>.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2022. “The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.E. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 30.E (May 2022). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 30.E. Available from: <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3>.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 30.E., http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 30.A (2022): May. 2022. Web. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3>.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. The American Medical System and Physicians 3: Professor Benoit Desjardins, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACR, FNASCI on Burnout, Quack Medicine, and Litigious American Culture[Internet]. (2022, May 30(E). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/american-medicine-3.

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