醫生通常會對你隱瞞的10件恐怖事情(上)

As a modern culture, we tend to put our faith wholeheartedly in doctors. They're the experts, and more often than not we take their advice without question. But what we don't take into account is that many of these doctors either don't have a clue or actively withhold information that could be putting your life in jeopardy. And if you think that sounds sensationalist, take a look at these facts—facts that doctors know about but which they conveniently forget to mention as you sign the bill.

處於現代文明中的我們總是傾向於毫無保留地信任醫生。他們是權威般的存在，我們通常會毫無異議地採納他們的意見。但沒被我們納入考慮的是，很多醫生要麼對一些可能會威脅我們生命的重要信息毫無頭緒，要麼就竭力隱瞞這些信息。如果你覺得我說的這些話有點聳人聽聞，那就看看下面的這些事實——這是醫生都知道但卻在你簽單時忘了提的一些事實。

er Isn't Always Cancer

10.癌症並不總是癌症

The worst possible outcome of a trip to the doctor is a diagnosis of the Big C. We're so terrified of it that even the word is taboo in some places, and the medical community lives by one maxim: early diagnosis. The earlier you find the cancer, the more easily you can treat it. But such enthusiasm can easily lead to false positives, and treating something that isn't there can be dangerous.

一個醫生可能犯過的最大錯誤就是對癌症的誤診。癌症總是令人恐懼的，有些地方甚至忌諱提到這個詞，而醫療團隊卻以一個信條賴以爲生：早期診斷。癌症發現得越早，治療起來就越容易。但這樣的熱忱卻極易導致假陽性錯誤（false positives），而且對根本不存在的疾病加以治療是極危險的。

We're not just making that up. Mammograms are famous for misdiagnosing breast cancer, since every little anomaly in the breast can look like a tumor. The most common misdiagnosis is with DCIS, or Ductal Carcinoma In Situ. Despite the "carcinoma" in there, DCIS isn't really cancerous ; only rarely does it turn into cancer, and practically everyone with DCIS survives, no matter what kind of treatment they when doctors quote cancer statistics, they usually lump in DCIS, which now accounts for about 30 percent of breast cancer "cases" in the US. And when faced with that option, most people choose to undergo "needless and sometimes disfiguring and harmful treatments" to get rid of something that, statistically, will do less harm than the treatments themselves.

那並不是我們瞎編的。乳房X光檢查就容易誤診出乳腺癌，因爲乳房的任何一點小異常就可能會被視爲腫瘤。最常見的要數對乳腺導管原位癌（DCIS）的誤診。儘管有"惡性腫瘤"的存在，乳腺導管原位癌也不會真正癌變；只有在極少的情況下，它纔會病變成癌症，而且不管這些患有乳腺導管原位癌的人接受的是什麼樣的治療，他們幾乎都活了下來。但當醫生統計癌症事例時，他們通常會將乳腺導管原位癌納入其中，目前美國就有30%的乳腺癌"病例"。此外，當被診斷出患有此病，多數人都會選擇"不必要甚至有害健康的治療"，而據相關統計數據顯示，這種治療對人體造成的傷害遠大於"癌症"本身。

Vaccines Fail

9.一些疫苗接種失敗

In 2012, the US saw the worst outbreak of whooping cough since 1955. And that's strange, considering that we've been vaccinating against it for over 50 years. Whooping cough is caused by two types of bacteria, Bordatella pertussis and Bortatella parapertussis, but the vaccine—the DTaP—is only designed to fight the first one, B. Pertussis. Which doesn't seem too bad. Getting rid of half the problem is better than doing nothing, right?

2012年，美國出現自1955年以來最嚴重的百日咳疫情。考慮到我們已經使用百日咳疫苗長達50年，因此這次百日咳疫情的爆發相當奇怪。百日咳有兩種病原菌，即百日咳博多氏桿菌和副百日咳博多氏桿菌，但百日咳疫苗——DTaP 疫苗——卻只針對百日咳博多氏桿菌這一種病原菌。這似乎也並不壞。能對抗一種病原菌總比什麼都不做要好，是這樣嗎？

Not quite. In all these years of exclusively pounding away at one of the causes, the second type of bacteria has been flourishing, to the point that receiving the vaccine causes B. parapertussis lung infections to grow 40 times as large as they would normally. And recently, the vaccine has also been less effective on the things it's actually supposed to treat. In 2011, the CDC nearly doubled their recommendations for the vaccine, saying you need three initial shots of DTaP followed by three additional shots if you expect it to work. That's because vaccines can actually strengthen viruses. They can't rewire the human genome (and you can dismiss links to autism as alarmist nonsense) but vaccines can stimulate mutations in the viruses they fight. China found that out in the worst possible way when their Hepatitis B vaccines caused the virus to begin mutating twice as fast as it normally would. We've been seeing the same thing happen with the flu virus—vaccines basically just fuel the virus's instinct to survive.

這樣的看法不完全正確。這些年來，我們總是專門致力於對抗其中一種病菌，而另一種病菌則伺機活躍起來，以致接種疫苗會促使副百日咳博多氏桿菌的肺部感染率上升到正常情況下的40倍。並且最近，此種疫苗的效果遠沒有所預想的那般好。2011年，美國疾病控制中心（CDC）建議接種兩倍劑量的百日咳疫苗，他們聲稱如果想要接種的疫苗奏效的話，那麼起初注射過三次疫苗的人還要再注射三次。那是因爲這些疫苗實際上會強化體內病菌。它們雖然並不能重建人類基因組（你也許對疫苗可能導致孤獨症的看法嗤之以鼻，認爲其是危言聳聽的胡扯），但卻能刺激病菌突變。中國以一種糟糕的方式明白了這點，他們發現他們的乙肝疫苗會促使病菌以正常情況下的兩倍速度發生突變。我們在流感病毒上也見過同樣的情形——疫苗基本上是爲病菌的繁衍提供燃料的。

cription Drugs Can Cause Diabetes

8.處方藥會導致糖尿病

Type 2 diabetes is caused when your body either doesn't make enough insulin or can't effectively use all the insulin it makes. The result is a buildup of glucose, or sugar, in the bloodstream, which starts damaging nerves and blood vessels over time. About 2.3 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, and the numbers rise every year.

2型糖尿病是由患者體內所產生的胰島素相對缺乏，或是由體內胰島素不能得到有效分泌所導致的。這樣就會造成血流中葡萄糖或是糖分的增多，隨着時間的推移，這些增加的糖分將會破壞神經和血管。在美國，約有230萬2型糖尿病患者，並且這個數字還在逐年上升。

It turns out that some of the most commonly prescribed drugs, like antidepressants, might be causing it. In 2011, there were 46.7 million prescriptions given out to treat depression in the UK alone. When researchers at the University of Southampton looked at the numbers, they found that people who took two of the most common types of antidepressants, SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants, were twice as likely to develop diabetes. And sure, those findings were released in 2013, but we've known about the link since 2008 and yet millions more are prescribed on a monthly it gets worse—some of the most common drugs used to treat ADHD in children can triple the risk of type 2 diabetes. More often than not, that's a lifelong condition, and kids don't even get the choice to refuse.

有結果表明，不少常見的處方藥，比如抗抑鬱藥物，就有可能會導致糖尿病。2011年，僅英國這一個國家就給出了4670萬張治療抑鬱症的藥方。基於這串數字，南安普敦大學的研究者發現，服用了選擇性血清再吸收抑制劑（SSRIs）和三環抗抑鬱藥（tricyclic）這兩種較普遍的抗抑鬱處方藥的人患上糖尿病的可能性是沒有服用這兩種藥物的人的兩倍。當然，那些發現在2013年才被公佈出來，但從2008年開始，我們就已經知道處方藥與糖尿病之間的關聯，可數百萬乃至更多的人仍會每月定期地服用處方藥。更糟糕的是——一些被用於治療少兒多動症（ADHD）的常見處方藥會使服用者患上糖尿病的機率增加三倍。而且那又多半是不可根治的終身病症，可孩子對此卻連拒絕的選擇都沒有。

Medications Increase Cancer Risk

7.一些藥物會增大致癌機率

Now that we've assuaged some of your worries about cancer, let's go ahead and kick everything back up again.

既然我們在之前紓緩了你對癌症的擔憂，那現在就讓我繼續講下去，讓所有憂慮都回復原位吧。

Blood pressure medications can almost triple your risk of aggressive breast cancer. In the US alone, about 58.6 million people take medication for high blood pressure, so you'd think the cancer link would be more well-known. The study that discovered this relationship looked at 1,763 women with breast cancer. Those who used a particular type of blood pressure medicine—calcium channel blockers—were 2.5 times more likely to develop cancer. The risk is greater in elderly women over the age of 55, and it likely happens because calcium channel blockers prevent cells from dying. If cells can't complete their normal life cycle, they go rogue and become even that wouldn't be a problem if the medication weren't so grossly over-prescribed. In a review of one hospital, 150 out of 161 doctors prescribed calcium channel blockers to their patients. But how many of those doctors told their patients about the risks? Only eight. That's a potentially deadly lapse in duty.

降壓藥幾乎會使罹患侵襲性乳腺癌的風險增加三倍。單在美國，就約有5860萬人服用降壓藥，因此你可能會以爲降壓藥與癌症的關聯應該更爲人所熟知。發現降壓藥與癌症之間關聯的研究小組調查了1763個患有乳腺癌的女性。研究表明，那些服用一種特別降壓藥——鈣通道阻滯劑（calcium channel blockers）的女性患上乳腺癌的機率是普通人的2.5倍。55歲以上的老年婦女患上乳腺癌的風險更大，因爲鈣通道阻滯劑會阻止細胞死亡。而如果細胞不能完成它們正常的生命週期循環，那麼這些細胞的活動就會失控，並最終發生癌變。但如果處方藥的劑量並非過大的話，那還算不上一個什麼大問題。在對一家醫院的審查中，我們發現161名醫生中就有150名醫生爲他們的病人開的處方藥中含有鈣通道阻滯劑。但又有多少醫生告訴他們的病人關於此藥的風險？僅僅只有八人。那是他們工作中的潛在致命失誤。

rin Can Cause Internal Bleeding

6.阿司匹林會導致內出血

One of the more common pieces of advice from doctors is that you should take a low dose of aspirin every day. The idea is that it serves as a maintenance treatment to prevent blood clots, which can cause heart attacks and strokes. But what they don't tell you is the small fact that doing so can trigger massive internal bleeding.

我們經常從醫生那裏得到的建議就是，每天服用一小劑阿司匹林。因爲這種維持治療能夠預防血栓的形成，而血栓則會導致心臟病發作和中風。但醫生不會告訴你的是，這樣做同樣也會引起嚴重的內出血。

Researchers found that, out of 10,000 people, a daily dose of aspirin prevented 46 people from dying over the course of 10 years. But they also found that 49 people out of the same 10,000 experienced major internal bleeding, and another 117 started bleeding in their gastrointestinal tract. So there may be some benefits, but there may be an even higher chance that something will go horribly wrong. On top of that, aspirin doesn't actually work for everyone. Some people have aspirin-resistant platelets, which negates any positive effect you might get from the aspirin. But since we have no way to test for that, doctors never know if they're recommending a dud treatment or not.

研究者發現，每天定期服用一劑阿司匹林的10000人中，有46人能在10年內相安無事。但同時他們也發現，這10000人中有49人患有胃出血，另外還有117人的胃腸道有出血徵兆。因此我們不可否認阿司匹林的好處，但同時它也許會使情況變得非常糟糕。除此之外，阿司匹林並不適用於每個人。阿司匹林的抗血小板作用存在個體性差異，一些患者存在阿司匹林抵抗（aspirin resistance），這便使阿司匹林的所有積極效果全被否定。但由於我們沒辦法對那進行測試，因此就連醫生自己也不知道他們正在爲患者推薦的治療藥物是否有用。

翻譯：李念 來源：前十網