Medical Protection?

Wrong diagnosis
excerpt from conversation with disciples, Vrindaban, October 22, 1977

But don't walk out in front of an oncoming bus...

Duration of Life is Destined A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Life cannot be prolonged by heart transplant. You cannot increase the duration of life. One can perhaps give some relief to disease, that is another thing, but the duration of life is destined. From the dead body, one cannot bring life. Similarly, it may appear that one is prolonging the duration of life by medicines or heart transplant, but that is not the case. If one lives 4 years after having had a heart transplant, then by nature's law he was destined to live four years with or without having had a heart transplant. So what is the value of heart transplant?

Only by the yogic process can one prolong the life. By stopping the breathing process, keeping in samadhi, the breath period is not being misused, and he increases the life span. Therefore, destiny can only be changed by devotional service or yoga. Otherwise, what you must suffer, you must suffer, and what you must enjoy, you must enjoy. more

PRABHUPADA: Take this, this allopathic treatment, failure.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Yes, it's a failure, allopathic treatment.

TAMAL KRSNA: Srila Prabhupada, would you be interested in hearing any of the Bhagavatam that they have edited? I thought that would be nice.

UPENDRA: I'd like to give Prabhupada a bath.

PRABHUPADA: Yes. That will be nice. You sit down, all, and let us try.

BHAVANANDA: Srila Prabhupada, Upendra wants to know if he can give you a bath.

PRABHUPADA: I have no objection.

TAMAL KRSNA: So after the bath we'll have Bhagavata.

PRABHUPADA: Hm.

TAMAL KRSNA: Okay.

PRABHUPADA: And stop all medicine. [laughter]

TAMAL KRSNA: This is the real medicine.

SVARUP DAMODAR: The trouble with the allopathic medicine is that they have so much side effects that it might make very uncomfortable to...

PRABHUPADA: This is already uncomfortable.

BHAVANANDA: I think that this doctor's desire you have seen through. His desire was to remove you from here somehow or other. First to remove you for an x-ray, then...

TAMAL KRSNA: Another trick they have is that you have one trouble, so they give you a medicine, but the medicine causes a worse trouble. And eventually such bad trouble is created that they get you depending on them, and then they say, "Now the only thing left, you must come to the hospital for operation." Then they kill you.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Yes, injection, operation.

TAMAL KRSNA: He was asking us, "Does your Guruji have any...? Will he take an injection?" So we said, "No." He was hopeless. He was guessing.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Yes, he didn't know the real cause.

PRABHUPADA: They do not know. They use machine. Their means of knowing—machine. They do not know.

SVARUP DAMODAR: I have many medical friends. They frankly admit that oftentimes they kill the patients in the name of treating. It comes out that it was their own medicine that they gave.

PRABHUPADA: Yes. Recently that Dalmia secretary... What is his name?

TAMAL KRSNA: Hita-sarana Sharma.

PRABHUPADA: In pathology his prescription was replaced by another.

TAMAL KRSNA: I don't follow. Recently whose?

UPENDRA: Prescription was replaced by another.

PRABHUPADA: He had some trouble. So, what is called? Pathology?

TAMAL KRSNA: Pathology? No.

PRABHUPADA: No, laboratory testing?

TAMAL KRSNA: What's laboratory test called?

SVARUP DAMODAR: Pathology?

BHAVANANDA: Yes.

PRABHUPADA: So his case was transferred to another.

TAMAL KRSNA: [laughs] Oh, boy.

SVARUP DAMODAR: One after another.

BHAVANANDA: Mixed up.

TAMAL KRSNA: Mixed up. His diagnosis was given to someone else. They made a mistake, and then they treated the other person.

PRABHUPADA: And he was being treated as tuberculosis.

ADI-KESHAVA: Sometimes they make the operations, and they leave the knife in, and they sew the knife up inside after they make an operation. Or the scissors. They take some clamps and they sew them inside the wound. And then the man says, "Oh, I have a pain in my side." And they say, "Oh, new disease," and they make another operation and take out the clamps or the knife.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Sometimes they only depend on machines, these medical doctors. That's why he's mentioning about x-ray. Through these machines you cannot tell the correct diagnosis.

PRABHUPADA: I have got many experiences in my family life. One servant, Kashiram.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Kashiram.

PRABHUPADA: Yes his name was Kashiram. So he was howling, howling. So we took him to the hospital, and so many student doctors surrounded. They diagnosed something, strangulation or something like that.

TAMAL KRSNA: Strangulation.

PRABHUPADA: Yes. Then they were prepared to surgical operation. Then another experienced doctor came. He said, "Let us wait today." So he was kept in the hospital, and we came back. That Kashiram... Another friend, servant of the neighborhood, and so he said, "Babaji, he has drunk this."

TAMAL KRSNA: He got a little drunk.

PRABHUPADA: So I said, "Don't delay. So many doctors..." And next morning he came back and said, "The doctor said, 'You are all right, you can go.'"

TAMAL KRSNA: He was just drunk from liquor.

SVARUP DAMODAR: I had a similar story. It is my own personal experience. In 1974 I came here in India. I got malaria in the United States in summer 1975. Then temperature was very high. I went to the Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. They thought it was a virus, viral infection. They couldn't diagnose. Then they gave some medicine, and then I went. But it started again the following day, and I went to another doctor. He could not diagnose. So they gave me glucose injection, a big bottle, thinking it was a strange viral infection. So about six, seven doctors, they couldn't diagnose for three-four days. Then one day there was a doctor who came from Vietnam, he had some experience in tropical disease. So he thought it might be malarial fever. Then, after that, I was surrounded by many doctors thinking that it was a strange disease before, but they diagnosed... But it was not right. They did all the wrong medicine, thinking it was a viral infection.

PRABHUPADA: Yes.

SVARUP DAMODAR: This is in America just two years ago.

TAMAL KRSNA: I told you the story of my father recently, Srila Prabhupada, how he had the arthritis in the hip, so they gave him a new hip. Then it moved to the other hip, and they replaced the other hip. So after eight weeks he was in bed in the hospital, and then they said, "Now you can try to walk." So they gave him crutches, and they stood him up, and after eight weeks of all these operations, as soon as he stood up he had a heart attack and died right on the spot. They were very sure. "Now you're all right," they told him.

Devotee: My great-uncle, he had tonsillitis, so he went to a friend who was a doctor, and the friend said, "That's all right. We'll operate, and I will not charge you anything." So he went into the hospital, and in the operation the doctor dropped a scalpel, and after that—he was very big, and he became very small, never could eat again.

PRABHUPADA: No protection.

BHAVANANDA: There's no protection.