[Finnster]

I work in the medical industry, and while I admit there are a lot of F'd up things that go on, I don't think its full of evil. I think there are a whole host of competing incentives and influences and assumptions that make our system far less effective and more expensive than it can be.

Personally I think avg Americans (and many other "1st worlders") have to deal with very busy work lives which leads to a number of very unhealthy behaviors. Lack of time to cook leads to consumption of poor quality food, little time to exercise, little time to sleep. We get impatient and want all our problems fixed quickly and cheaply and with little personal effort. Pharmas are more than happy to promise to give what the people want. Got a problem? We got a pill. Tired, fat, sad or impotent? We've got your fix.
Its my belief that overwork and unrealistic expectations is also a key reason our divorce rate is so high, but that's another thread.

Secondly, I am not always impressed with the people that are selected to go to medical school. The selection process filters for people who have very high grades and test scores, which often means people that are very good at studying and memorization, but not always much else. However, it is a rare person that combines this with creative thinking skills or good social skills. Being in science, I've met lots of pre-med people over the years. While their grades were enviable, they were not always the people I'd want as my Doc. Many tended to be very book smart, but take them away and put them in RL, and they would do some dumbass sh!t. I don't trust many of them to fix my RC, let alone my liver. Some of the most impressive people I know could never make it in, let alone pass boards because their test taking skills were not quite as sharp as those above.
Also, they are trained in school to believe in their own superiority and infallibility, not unlike science PhD students, so they leave school with a large degree of hubris. They are not so well trained to listen to other people and question, as they are not the ones who made it throught the elite schools, so obviously they don't know what the frak they are talking about.

Don't take that I'm saying all Drs are crap, just that a white lab coat does not make one a sage. They can be wrong, don't be intimidated by a title/degree, and you have to go with what you feel is right, either insisting of different treatment, or a different doc that seems to suit your needs and share your philosophy of how you wanted treated. Docs are also under a lot of pressure to run through people like cattle. They get paid to do things, tests, exams, poking etc. They often do not have the luxury of talking and investigating. A private insurance system is ultimately most incentivised to make thier patients just healthy enough to keep making premium payments, pay as little as possible for care, and return the rest of the $ to shareholders. If they are too troublesome or sick, just kick them out and let Medicare or someone else pay for them.

Lastly, our environment is full of chemicals we are not naturally adapted to. As said, additives in food, packaging, but even in the air as by products or pollution, from factories or cars or even building materials. I don't think its acute exposure to any one thing that becomes a problem, but no one can say what the cumulitive effects of such chronic exposure will be. Teasing out those answers is a terribly difficult process. My brother is a professor and cancer researcher, and the work is painfully complicated, slow and frustrating. If he could come up with a cure to any one cancer, no matter how rare, he could become a very rich man. However, its entirely possible he may work his entire life and not make any meaningful breakthru, despite the large amts of money his lab recieves.