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Gallstones are one of medicine's great travesties. Nearly one in every seven adults suffers from attacks of gallstones every year, attacks in the main due to the diet. Nevertheless, the primary way that medicine goes about solving this problem is to chop out the gallbladder altogether. This is akin to curing a cold by cutting off your nose.

Increasingly, patients are being lured into having this operation (gallbladder operations are up nearly a third) with the assurance they need only have a "keyhole" operation. These are the operations where a miniature video camera is attached to the eyepiece of a laparoscope and a surgeon operates by directing the surgery on screen. A tiny incision, a plaster over it, and the patient is back to work in a day. However, what doctors don't mention is the added risk of complications, including bile-duct damage that can occur so far up the bile duct passage that it's impossible to fix. In Ontario, where an over-whelming majority of gallbladder operations are performed through laparoscope procedures, bile-duct injuries have increased by more than 300 percent. A recent study showed that complications - including hemorrhage, pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas, a potentially fatal condition and perforation of the bowel - occur in one in every 10 operations. Mary was one such victim, and is now in constant horrific pain, making it impossible to swim, dance or even drive. " I feel as though something has pierced my chest and is now 'digging' into my spine", she wrote, describing her operation.

The other so-called revolutionary treatment is extracorporeal shock lithotripsy, where gallstones are crushed by sound waves. This commonly causes internal bleeding, sometimes so severe as to require transfusion. It's also been known to leave residues of stones in the body - a breeding ground for bacteria - or to cause high blood pressure in the kidney.

With these types of 'easy' solutions, medicine tends to turn a blind eye in its own role in causing this disease in the form of a variety of drugs taken over the long term. It's long been shown that oestrogens, from the pill or HRT, greatly increase a woman's chances of developing gallstones. but the most outrageous scandal of all is the role of cholesterol drugs development of gallstones. One such drug has been shown to cause gallstones in half it's patients.

It's well known that certain of the so-called miracle 'statin' drugs, which are now being used from stroke to osteoporosis prevention, prevent the gallbladder from emptying after every meal high in fats. And today's hysterical anti-cholesterol climate, many patients whose cholesterol count is only slightly elevated are being placed on statin drugs more or less for life. This means that our zeal to lower cholesterol we aren't eliminating it, but just shifting it around, from blood to the gall bladder, where it unhealthily collects into stones. Indeed, gallstones are nothing more than chunks of cholesterol and other debris which gather in the gall bladder and then solidify into a ball.

Thus, patients with no symptoms of heart disease except a vaguely high cholesterol level (a dubious association, in any event) are being given a drug which ends up permanently damaging a useful organ and consigning it to the surgical scrap heap.

Besides cholesterol drugs, oral contraceptives and other oestrogens double a woman's chances of developing gallstones. Progestogens, the pill and HRT, are also implicated. For instance, Medroxyprogesterone acetate causes gallstone development.

Certain antibiotics like ceftrianxone and anti-transplant drugs rejection drugs like cyclosporin increase your chances of forming gallstones. Besides cholesterol drugs, the other big villain in the gallstone story is thiazide drugs, or water pills, commonly handed out for high blood pressure. These increase the possibility that patients with gallstones will suffer acute gallbladder attacks. This category of drugs even predisposes children, who don't ordinarily suffer gallbladder problems, to gallstones.

As with tonsils, doctors of the when-in-doubt-whip-it-out persuasion act as though the gallbladder is a superfluous bit of tissue. No one stops to ask about the long term effects of removing this organ. The gallbladder acts as a regulator of bile for the liver, increasing or decreasing it to suit, depending on your diet. Without this handy little squeeze pump, bile trickles at an even flow from the liver into the gut. Patients who often aren't told to avoid fatty foods once their gallbladder is removed, end up feeling ill every time they have an egg or a spot of cream.

More than half of all gallbladders could be saved if people just stopped taking cholesterol or thiazide drugs or modified their diet. It's essential that patients begin looking for the solution in the cause: what they put in their mouths.