Modern medicine has created more co-dependents even than co-pays. We've learned to hold out for a magic bullet such as a new miracle drug, breakthrough surgical procedure or new organ transplant. What rubbish.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your health care.

It's unreasonable to expect medical doctors and pharmaceutical companies to tell you how to avoid their services by trying the alternatives.

It is possible to learn more than your doctor knows, particularly in key areas that specifically apply to you. In fact, you may discover material that your doctor never saw, or did see and never investigated.

he very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me.

A doctor's authority in America often exceeds his or her knowledge. Whole bodies of knowledge in healing are ignored because they are unorthodox and non-medical. A doctor's education seems exhaustive, yet MDs study so much about drugs and surgery - and so little about nutrition, fasting, herbal remedies, spinal manipulation, massage, vitamin and mineral therapy, homeopathy, and more - that we realize their qualifications are incomplete.

We can take more time and interest, and give more attention to our personal health than a hired professional can. We have learned to go get medical help, not to give it. We have learned to relay our body's needs to another, not to provide them ourselves.