All anti-nature interventions have killed more people than they have saved
I had come across the title of a book What if Medicine Disappeared? by Frances B McCrea and Gerald E Markle, but could not lay my hands on it. I had written an article along those lines, some time back, titled “World without Drugs”, and got into the bad books of the editor of a popular international magazine for no good reason. I thought of completing the mission I had started. My plea to the thought leaders in medicine is to ignore this article or treat it as fiction!
The first effect on society will be that the population will go up as less people die at the hands of their saviours. All the anti-nature interventions have killed more people than they have saved. The ‘divine interventionists’ do not seem to see the writing on the wall. The Harvard experience—when senior interventional cardiologists went away for their annual conference, deaths in the intensive care unit (ICU) came down (JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015; 127: 237) has been cited often. The medical establishment has become the leading cause of death and disability on the whole, according to statistics of the Institute of Medicine in the United States.
Adverse drug reactions, and the resultant deaths, would also come down completely. The vaccine industry will suffer a lot. The normal contagious disease often gives life-long immunity. Some half-baked scientists must have cooked up the theory that if we could introduce a smaller dose of the same antigen artificially, it will give rise to antibodies against that disease and people do not have to suffer from the disease again. Now we know that childhood diseases, like measles, mumps, chickenpox, etc, could protect people from adult killer diseases like heart disease and cancer.
The field with maximum human benefit, if medicine disappears, will be routine screening of the healthy. For obvious reasons, the statistical mean of any parameter is only the average of the multiple readings that go to make the Gaussian Curve in the first place. We have conveniently converted that statistical average into the so-called ‘normal’ and have been labelling anyone deviating from the average as ill! The result has been that anyone who goes for a medical screening ends up as a patient and never ever comes out of that grand label! Once inside the chakravyuha (multi-layered trap), one is cursed to suffer and lose all rights enshrined in any country’s constitution like life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. ‘Once a patient, always a patient’, seems to be the axiom.
Another area that might have some negative impact is the area of emergency quick-fixes. Even there, I feel that we have been overdoing things to patients’ detriment. Nature will, eventually, find its moorings in emergency care as well, like it succeeded in doing while we were hunter-gatherers in the forest. Nature evolved the autonomic nervous system which does most of what we do in the ICU without any fanfare.
There is nothing like trying to fix diseases but keeping the healthy well, the essence of Ayurveda—swasthashya swastha rakshitham (preserve the health of the healthy)—is more useful to society. They will be the real healers who will have to cure rarely, comfort mostly, but console always. In this setting, the most powerful drugs would be the two genuinely kind words of a doctor, who is also a friend, philosopher and guide of every patient. Aided and abetted by a humane doctor, the body heals itself most of the time as it has got the in-built power to do just that. Doctors also will have plenty of quality time to listen to patients who will then tell them what is wrong with them. It will be a win-win situation, when medicine disappears.
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Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS.)
The growing influence of technology and medicines is inevitable. Its up to its users and its consumers to either control it or get controlled by it.
But I think this article is only one sided view of the medical field and its impact on human life. I would like to emphasize the tremendous impact of modern day medicine on human life. Since your article states "What if Medicine Disappeared?' I would like to also emphasize the achievements:-
1.Decrease in maternal mortality :- At the beginning of the 20th century, for every 1000 live births, six to nine women in the United States died of pregnancy-related complications, and approximately 100 infants died before age 1 year (1,2). From 1915 through 1997, the infant mortality rate declined greater than 90% to 7.2 per 1000 live births, and from 1900 through 1997, the maternal mortality rate declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported death per 1000 live births (7.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1997)
2.Better care for Pre-mature babies in NICU - Which has a significant impact on their quality of life of the babies as our understanding grows. My own son was a beneficiary of the modern medicine and has a healthy childhood.
3. Vacinnation - has had a tremendous impact on the life of the babies who do not have to suffer the dreaded disease of Polio, or other childhood diseases which limits their choices in life. We used to earlier in our culture attribute it to Karma or other notions of parental sins.
4.Current diagnostic techniques can avoid invasive surgeries as you well are aware of.
5.Increases knowledge of human body and the agents of disease - also enables a more healthy life.
My point of view is the medicine like Science in itself has no motives, no evil design. But the morals that govern humans will lead to abuse or alleviation of human suffering.
I work as an engineer in Healthcare IT. I am aware of the advances in Medical technology and the abuses prevalent in the field. But we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.