5 ms·

Thanks - I should have been more specific about purely surgical treatments as I was with the other two groups so as to maximise the benefit of your knowledge :)

• robbiep 10y ago
  Look - I get the point you are trying to make. If you discount infectious diseases and surgeries, there are a lot of things off the table as far as a 'cure' full stop goes. But that is incredibly disingenuous to medicine. You're removing all the things we do incredibly well - to the point where infectious diseases, for the most part - until we reach this disaster warned about in the article we are commenting on - have ceased to be a major burden of disease in the modern world. That is just remarkable. The reason people are able to make claims like 'all we do is treat sick people, we don't cure them' is because the things that we do well, we do so fucking well it isn't a major issue anymore. I know very well that my job in a modern first world country hospital revolves largely around treating people with chronic diseases, and that for the most part, I can't do much for them. For example, when I work in the Emergency Department (Most of my work these days) It is rare for me to 'pick up' a patient that has never had a hospital admission. Most people swing in and out and and out and in and out until one day they don't make it out again. They have chronic diseases caused by a lifetime of either 'just living' or living hard (smoking, drinking, eating too much) and the accumulated damage is BEYOND modern medicine's ability to fix it. Personally, I think that for many of these chronic diseases, we are beyond any quick fix ever being developed - i envisage a future world where we literally grow someone a new body and attach their head to it so they can go again... the damage occurs on such a cellular (and slightly above that) level - and is so widespread that it is beyond my comprehension how any treatment we are looking at could fix it - although I am an optimist and who would have ever thought we would have the biological treatments we have now for certain diseases, modern miracles that they are. But we are still WINNING - as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, we now have a cure for Hepatitis C. Hepatitis C is a horrible condition. When I was at med school (graduated 2013) we were taught the 'Rule of 20' for Hep C: 20% clear it, of the remaining 80 20% have no issue, of that remaining 80 20% go on to develop fulminant liver failure. Now we can cure the fucking thing. Absolutely amazing. And there's talk of stem cell injections for damaged cardiac muscle; and since I left Med School the average life expectancy for Malignant Melanoma has risen from <12 months to close to 4 years and growing. This is remarkable. and anyone who says differently doesn't understand the facts, and is being willfully ignorant of the enormous efforts of thousands upon thousands of people who work tirelessly in labs and hospitals all over the world to bring about a better quality of life for the sick
  • majkinetor 10y ago
    The point was that mainstream medicine is good for structurual and acute problems. Majority of other stuff it actually probably makes worse and there is low motivation for actually doing it better given that chronic deases keep the buisnis running. When cancer is in question, it actually can't be worse because price of the medication may destroy not only a person but entire families.
    • zadig 10y ago
      That's because people in general, probably you too, are willing to take the tradeoff for resolution of acute problem over long term consequences. Most people are willing to pay for expensive cancer treatments even with the socioeconomic consequences because the alternative is death. Now whether they should or not is a different discussion altogether. Every medical intervention has associated risks and side effects - from the most routine blood draw to a simple laparoscopic hysterectomy to the antipsychotic to treat your schizophrenia. We are willing to take those risks because we decide that it is worth it. And I would be careful to not make sweeping generalizations about how mainstream medicine makes chronic problems worse. First, most chronic problems are due to population and socioeconomic determinants of health that are often well out of the scope of healthcare providers at least in the inpatient setting. Second, even with chronic problems we have made advances: think about insulin for diabetes, antihypertensives for blood pressure, or statins for heart disease.
      • majkinetor 10y ago
        That is why I said majority of stuff, some are clearly good, like insulin for TDB1. For TDB2 however, the insulin also kills pateints due to the hypoglicemia (as body adapts to its sympothoms) in what I deem to be unacceptable number, while there may be more promissing treatments in "alternative medical circles". Statins are useful only for small subset of patients - clearly overprescribed just like AB and lead to diabetes, dementia and other adverse effects. The points you made about the causes of those deseases are irrelevant when we talk about treatments. The reasons for a disease are not the reasons for clearly suboptimal treatments. And you certainly can't justify destroying family to lengthen the life of cancer patient for few months, maybe a year, in a general case ? > ... are willing to take the tradeoff for resolution of acute problem over long term consequences Meh... majority of acute treatmets have very low long term consequences. AB is not one of those as evidence shows that gut flora may take very long time to recover (or it may never recover) even after single usage (and we know that disfunctional gut flora is bad). But I can probably take a bet that few doses of ibuprofen will not harm me at all. What I am saying is that standard medicine does have many fenomenal things but that people should probably look elsewhere for help about stuff it doesn't handle good at all. This requires everybody to be very well informed, not something most of humans have time or motivation to do. > We are willing to take those risks because we decide that it is worth it. No, "we" are taking those risks because doctors tells us its safe and that risks are trivial or non existent (while at the same time bashing supplements as dangerious?!). "First do no harm" should probably be deleted from mission statement. You don't really think that random person knows anything about medicine or that it questions doctor ? Its mostly buisnis only.