5 ms·
Arguably the best approach to dealing with this sort of thing is not the hair shirt use less medicine line of thinking, but rather to focus much more effort on
by reasonattlm 10y ago
Arguably the best approach to dealing with this sort of thing is not the hair shirt use less medicine line of thinking, but rather to focus much more effort on creating therapies that work more effectively and for more people and under more circumstances. Then you won't see non-beneficial treatments in action so often.
Sadly, much of the present generation of medicine was created in an environment that prioritizes a focus on late stage disease state, discovery of proximate rather than root causes, and adjustment of disease state without addressing root causes. Making a damaged machine work better and longer is really, really hard if you don't fix the damage. Medicine is one illustration of this point.
- wtbob 10y agoI think your idea misses the point that every one of us will eventually be in a 'late-stage disease state' (for a fairly broad definition of 'disease,' to include trauma). When we're young, we tend to think that our bodies just work; as we get older (and I'm nowhere near old yet), we realise that they don't, no matter what therapeutic regimens we devise for them. In the end, every one of our bodies will be failing; physicians and/or surgeons will have all sorts of last-minute interventions to try, but in the very end, our bodies will fail. We might be able to use all sorts of preventive therapies to get almost everyone to, say, 85 — but eventually, everyone's body will fail, and we all will die.
- taneq 10y agoI've read some interesting articles about how doctors face their own old age and deaths. In contrast with the general approach of "buy more time at any cost (financial or quality-of-life)", doctors, especially those who work in hospitals or palliative care, tend to go for treatments which extend their quality-of-life for as long as is practical and then give them a quick, peaceful death.
- bcoates 10y agoWonkblog recently posted about a study that claims to refute the "how doctors die" thing with evidence that doctors have roughly the same medical experience as everyone else when dying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/how-doctors-really-die/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/how-d...
- taneq 10y agoInteresting, thanks for that! While the original claim is more optimistic, it sadly seems more believable that doctors face their own demise in a manner not unlike that of any living creature - with messy desperation.
- adrianN 10y agoThere is no reason to assume that we can't fix damage before it causes functional impairment. Our bodies' self repair mechanisms are pretty good, but evidently not perfect. If we put more emphasis on researching these imperfections and figure out how to augment the repair mechanisms, we'll be able to live without the diseases caused by age related breakdown of essential systems. Right now we don't really do that.
- Practicality 10y agoYes it's ironic that we're close to the first time in history when we might actually be able to make progress here and yet it seems a large portion of people are simply giving up on the prospect.
- dhimes 10y agoWhat's really weird is being aware of all of this and being at the age where the transition is happening- the systems really don't work as well any more. I can still fake it, and I take care of myself so I do really well for my age, but it's there and I know it....