Four things doctors and modern medicine have got completely wrong

The doctor doesn’t always know best.

In his new book, Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health, Dr. Marty Makary examines how some of the medical establishment’s biggest health recommendations in recent decades have been unfounded and even dangerous.

“Much of what the public is told about health is medical dogma—an idea or practice that has been given irrefutable authority because someone decreed it to be true based on a gut feeling,” writes Makary, a surgeon. and professor at John Hopkins University.

Here, we look at four cases where many doctors got it wrong.

Misconception: Young children should avoid peanuts to be safe

In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation that children under the age of 4 and pregnant and lactating women avoid peanuts if there is a potential risk of allergy.

This recommendation was based on a UK recommendation regarding a 1996 study from the British Medical Journal that actually found no link between pregnant mothers eating peanuts and their baby developing an allergy.

Additionally, the study’s lead author, Jonathan Hourihane, told Makary that he disputed the guidance. “I didn’t want people to believe,” he said. “It’s funny.”

In the wake of the AAP’s guidelines, peanut allergies saw a huge increase — and became increasingly deadly.

“Suddenly emergency department visits for peanut anaphylaxis — a life-threatening allergic swelling of the airways — skyrocketed, and schools began enacting peanut bans,” Makary writes.

In 2007, approximately 5% of medical claims for anaphylactic food reactions were to peanuts; by 2016, 25% were.

As of 2019, there were reports that one in every 18 children in America had a peanut allergy.

“The AAP recommendation had created a vicious circle,” writes Makary. “The more widespread peanut allergies became, the more people avoided peanuts for young children. This, in turn, caused more peanut allergies. “

Today, many doctors recognize that early exposure to peanuts is best, but “remnants of the recommendation to avoid peanuts still remain,” Makary writes. The US and UK have the highest rates of peanut allergy in the world.

Myth: Hormone replacement therapy is dangerous

For decades, HRT was considered a godsend for menopausal women, helping with symptoms such as hot flashes and depression, while also lowering the risk of heart attacks and Alzheimer’s.

But in 2002, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stated that HRT resulted in a “26% higher incidence of breast cancer.“

The statement came from a study of nearly 17,000 women by Stanford and Harvard researchers, but it was not supported by actual data.

There was “no statistically significant difference in the rate of breast cancer among women on HRT compared with those who received a placebo,” writes Makary. “The authors had misinterpreted their data. But surprisingly, no one noticed.”

Those who did and spoke were drowned out by the masses. “US prescriptions for HRT fell by 80%, and they remain low to this day,” notes Makary. “Tragically, a generation of millions of women were denied life-changing treatment.”

Myth: Antibiotics are harmless

There’s no doubt that antibiotics save lives, but Makary notes that they’re mistakenly thought to have no downside — and are being prescribed with potentially devastating effects.

With ear infections in children, doctors used to do a careful examination to distinguish a bacterial from a viral infection, the latter being much more common and not treatable with antibiotics.

Today, doctors other than specialists may not have the knowledge or time to make such a distinction—or it may be a telehealth visit—so they’ll just write a prescription for antibiotics to cover their bases.

But, he writes, “the overprescribing of antibiotics is causing more harm than we realize”—namely, to gut health, which can potentially lead to a host of health issues.

For a study published in 2021, the Mayo Clinic followed all children born in Olmsted County, Minnesota for 11 years. Of these children, about 10,000 were given an antibiotic in the first two years of life. They had significantly higher rates of obesity, asthma, learning disabilities, ADHD and celiac disease compared to about 4,000 children who did not receive antibiotics early in life.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic recently repeated the study and it produced similar results.

Other studies have suggested that everything from increasing numbers of food allergies to higher rates of breast and colon cancer in recent decades may be due in part to our declining microbiome health.

Misconception: Fluoride in drinking water is essential

Fluoride was first added to tap water in America starting in the 1940s to prevent tooth decay and is now in roughly two-thirds of American homes. (In Europe, only about 3% of residents have it.)

An analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration – an international non-profit organization that reviews medical research – found “very little contemporary evidence” that water fluoridation successfully prevented cavities, noting that studies suggesting otherwise were dated, poorly designed and not took into account the fact that many people now use fluoride toothpaste.

Meanwhile, some research has raised concerns about fluoride’s effect on gut health and IQ in babies, as it can settle in fetal brain regions and affect neurotransmitters.

A 2019 study in JAMA Pediatrics found that “maternal exposure to higher levels of fluoride during pregnancy was associated with lower IQ scores” in young children.

More research is needed, but Makary notes that this is another assumption we shouldn’t take for granted.

“If someone tells you that fluoridation of the water supply is completely safe and essential to public health, that is an opinion, not a fact.”