Doctor Oppenheim Explains the Meaning of Life

I believe that things happen because they happen. We weren’t put on Earth for a purpose. You’re born, you do your best, you die.

This is not a popular point of view. Every writer and TV personality you’ve heard of disagrees, including several with a medical degree. Yet I’m convinced that searching for an explanation is the best way to understand natural phenomena but useless as a personal philosophy.  

“I’ve got cancer!...  Why me?” This is the first question every victim asks. If you believe the universe (God for those less cool) cares about you, everything happens for a reason, so this question has an answer.

But now the cancer victim has an extra job. Besides confronting the disease, he must look deep inside and learn how this is part of the plan. If he’s successful, he’ll feel better. Or she.

You’ve read essays by people who have (1) gotten cancer, (2) reexamined their lives, and (3) achieved inner peace. I’m sure this happens, but in my experience most of us do not find misfortune a chance for spiritual growth.

Exhorting patients to find themselves only adds to their burden. I especially dislike media doctors who urge victims to fight their disease, asserting that a positive attitude aids healing. Be happy or die.

Most cancer patients pull themselves together and deal with immediate problems. That’s the best they can do, and it’s not bad. 

Why Doctor Oppenheim Isn't Rich

The better we conventional doctors handle a problem, the less you’ll read about “alternative” treatments. Your local health food store doesn’t sell an herbal remedy for appendicitis. Don’t laugh. Until a century ago victims died after weeks of agony. Then we discovered that snipping off the appendix (something any bright high school student can do) cured it. This is one of many genuine medical miracles we take for granted. Some of us remember the herpes panic of the late seventies. The AIDS panic that followed overshadowed it, but Time magazine and Newsweek published cover stories on herpes, and the New York Times described it as the twentieth century bubonic plague. Alternative remedies were everywhere, not a few sold by entrepreneurial doctors. Then a good drug appeared, and the market for herpes cures dried up.

On the other hand, doctors don’t do so well treating obesity, arthritis, aging, or senility. If you want a superb treatment that conventional doctors ignore, check the internet or a bookstore. You’ll find plenty.

Many alternative healers are M.D.’s like me. They have names like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil and Mehmet Oz. They agree that scientific medicine has much to offer but insist that it is merely one of many routes to healing. 

They assert that it’s equally important to tap our spiritual energies, maintain a healthy optimism, promote natural healing with balanced and pure nutrients available through their web sites, and keep an open mind to cures wrought by eastern religion, nonwestern medicine, and pioneering researchers ignored by the establishment.

It is my belief that this is not true and that they are quacks. In my opinion (my lawyer insists that I add this). But as someone convinced that science is the road to truth, I’m obligated to present evidence. So….

I write an obscure blog. Weil, Oz, and Chopra write bestsellers. My books never sold much (I’ve written five, all commercially published). There are no ads on my blog. Weil, Oz, and Chopra have plenty. They sell wonderful stuff on their web sites. They appear on TV all the time. No one asks for Doctor O.

It doesn’t look good for me.