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Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga

Dr Vernon Coleman is a medical doctor with an attitude. He wrote the bookHow to stop your doctor killing you. That should give you an idea of what kind of person he is.

He holds very strong views on the medical profession, vaccines, government and politicians.

He is of the opinion that anything that the government organises is required to be inefficient, uncaring and incompetently run.

Coleman qualified as a doctor in 1970 and worked as a general practitioner for 10 years in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.

He quit the profession more than 20 years ago because he wanted to try and change the world.

“You can’t do that working inside the system,” he says.

The controversial author believes that the medical profession in its present state has become a danger to mankind.

“Which of these people do you think poses the greatest threat to your life: a burglar, a mugger, a drunken driver, a drug-crazed lunatic or a temporarily insane relative running amok with a sharp knife?” he asks.

It’s none of them. The person most  likely to kill you, Coleman says, is your doctor.

He makes the shocking claim, at least to the profession itself, that a staggering amount of evidence  shows that modern western doctors, equipped with fancy drugs, exotic forms of surgery and impressive sounding radiotherapy techniques, are ranked alongside cancer, heart disease and stroke as major killers.

He could have coined the proverb which says: A young doctor means a new graveyard had it not been attributed to the Germans.

An opponent of the UK national health system, Coleman believes that this has stolen the intimacy and privacy of the doctor-client relationship and not only made it public, but patently dangerous to the patient.

Coleman, a popular columnist and author of more than 100 books goes against the medical grain by informing his readers that at least two thirds of all tests and investigations ordered by doctors and cost patients a fortune are useless.

Now there goes the analytical laboratory business out of the window.

For example, he says, one survey showed that the routine examination of blood and urine contributes to only one per cent of diagnoses made.

This reminds me of the case of a business partner who after a car accident went for a battery of tests that came out with negative results implying that his injuries were not that serious.

That was until exactly three months later when another practitioner accidentally discovered a life threatening pulmonary embolism that was a direct result of the accident.

So why does the doctor order these tests even if they were useless? Coleman says that it’s because doctors are trained that way.

Young and newly qualified doctors are encouraged by consultants to order all available tests perhaps to keep the laboratories in business, a case of one hand washing the other.

Little thought is given to the costs of all these tests to the patient.

Secondly, doctors order tests in order to impress their patients, colleagues, students and, of course, themselves, Coleman says.

Thirdly, doctors frequently order unnecessary tests because they are planning to write papers for medical journals and they need lots of data to fill up the pages and make themselves look clever.

Lastly, tests are done to protect doctors from litigation or possible accusations of negligence.

The moral is simple, Coleman says, if your doctor arranges for tests to be done, ask him or her if they are really necessary. If the answer is no then what is the point?

My personal experience with doctors is instructive. I was mugged some years ago and found myself at the out-patients section of Mpilo Hospital.

The same one that has been shut down. I prepared for the worst.

Despite it being full with people having all manner of injuries, there wasn’t a doctor in sight.

It might have been very late at night but a doctor was supposed to be holding fort. He was AWOL.

Luckily, my bleeding had stopped but my face was swelling from the injuries I had suffered.

After what seemed like eternity, the said doctor appeared, smelling like a brewery.

This could not have instilled any confidence in us, the petrified patients.

To my added horror, he was to stitch my wounds in that inebriated state.

I had to endure almost an hour of beer breath since I was given a local anaesthetic.

The next morning, my face looked like a football.

I am not sure what the cause was, the alcohol fumes or the intoxication of the doctor. I am just glad I survived the ordeal.

Let me be clear on this. I am not painting all doctors with the same brush. Blame Coleman.

Some of my friends are the best doctors around. I could mention them here but that would be free advertising angithi?

They know who they are, and keep up the good work.

So when I come knocking, missing an eye or something, ignore what I wrote here.