5 ms·

On the other hand, the story is not upvoted to the top of HN for no reason.

grandalf 16y ago
I think it's due to a fascination with the failure of medical science to "fix" this guy after 18 years. If there is one bias that intelligent, technologically oriented people suffer from, it's an over-confidence in medicine and an excessively mechanistic view of the human body. The body is more like an aquarium full of a variety of species than an engine in which a part may or may not function.
- ledger123 16y ago
  Homeopathy takes the body as a whole instead of independently working parts (hearts, lungs, brain etc.). You cannot prescribe correct homeopathy medicine for headache, for example, without taking into account all the mental and physical symptoms. Though I am not going to start another controversial thread (about homeopathy), I just wonder why the mainstream medical science does not looks at human malfunctioning as a whole system. In other words why there are so many organ/tissues/functions specialists? May be (with main stream medical science) we are on wrong path and have made things so complicated that it has impossible to consider the whole human body in one shot in any particular disease. Though we fully know that analyzing/treating the parts in a complex system won't take us too far.
  - amalcon 16y ago
    Though I am not going to start another controversial thread (about homeopathy), I just wonder why the mainstream medical science does not looks at human malfunctioning as a whole system. In other words why there are so many organ/tissues/functions specialists? I'm only answering this part, because I also don't want to get involved in a homeopathy debate. They do look at human malfunctioning as a whole system. The people who do this are called "internists". Your primary doctor is probably one of them. The reason that there are so many specialists is that the human body is really complicated. As much as we would like it to be simple, there's just too much to know about it for any one person to know everything, even if all the information is available. For the same reason that mechanical engineers specialize in things like mechanism design, aerodynamics, or materials, doctors specialize in different areas of the body. An internist simply does not know enough to figure out everything that could possibly be going wrong with a person's body. To my mind, the big problem is not with the specialization; it's with the coordination. All of the above specialties, and more, were involved in the design of any given vehicle you're likely to encounter, from a performance bicycle to the Concorde. Yet, it's really hard to get doctors from different specialties to collaborate to tackle a complicated disease. This is not a problem with medical science, so much as a problem with the way things are done right now.
    - grandalf 16y ago
      That is true, however even your internist is interested in your "primary complaint". There is this idea that one problem should be addressed at a time.
      - amalcon 16y ago
        Not so much for anything serious or unusual, in my experience. If you have multiple complaints, the first thing doctors look for (in my experience) is something tying them all together. If you only have one complaint, they often ask if you're having other symptoms that you've just overlooked. I found out that a number of... corner cases that my body has just always had, were not normal, because of this. (There was fortunately nothing serious). Of course, for very common symptoms (like headache and nausea), they usually just treat the symptom.
        carbocation 16y ago
        We always try to balance Occam's razor vs Saint's Triad.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    Homeopathy as it's commonly known describes the practice of giving very small doses of chemicals known to cause a problem in an attempt to cure it. I think you should clarify what you mean by homeopathy before arguing that it is superior. I suppose it's possible that someone administering homeopathic remedies may have a belief about the body as a whole, but I think it's a stretch to consider homeopathy an improvement on western medicine in any way.
  - jedbrown 16y ago
    You know what they call 'alternative medicine' that’s been proved to work? Medicine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw
- hariis 16y ago
  All the ancient treatment modalities treat the body as a whole. It only makes sense. Holistic care is what is missing in the Western medicine. Having said that, no one modality is better than the other. Each one has its own place. There is one more striking difference also between the Western and other modalities and You made it clear by using the word "fix". For certain conditions, "fixing" does not work. If my arm is broken, sure you can fix it but for chronic conditions, certain lifestyle changes will have to be made and that requires the individual to be willing to undertake shifts in their behavior. For example, what you eat, when you eat, where you eat, how the food is cooked, when you sleep, the ambiance of your work, home and not to mention exercising etc. So in that sense, the holistic medical practitioner becomes more like a guide and the individual takes on a active role. For most people, this is too much to do. So they prefer Western Medicine where the mindset is, someone is going to "fix" me while I am busy with my life getting stressed up. The role is passive. Big difference. It is funny that Western Medicine practitioners are called doctors whereas holistic practitioners use the term heal and are called healers. (The root of the word heal is related to whole)
  - philwelch 16y ago
    To be fair, Western medicine has completely eradicated multiple fatal viral epidemics, developed a rather good series of antibiotics to handle bacterial infections of all kinds, kept a lid on flu epidemics year after year, and made vast strides in the treatment of multiple cancers. Now that Western medicine has got most of the low-hanging fruit and is now banging its head on the hard problems, it may appear to fall short in the "what have you done for me lately?" sense. But that's just because we take it for granted that we aren't going to get polio or smallpox.
    - dgordon 16y ago
      I thought that was the parent's point -- Western medicine has done superb work for acute diseases and injuries, but doesn't have solutions yet, and may not even have the right approach, for chronic ones.
      - 16y ago

I think it's due to a fascination with the failure of medical science to "fix" this guy after 18 years. If there is one bias that intelligent, technologically oriented people suffer from, it's an over-confidence in medicine and an excessively mechanistic view of the human body. The body is more like an aquarium full of a variety of species than an engine in which a part may or may not function.

ledger123 16y ago
Homeopathy takes the body as a whole instead of independently working parts (hearts, lungs, brain etc.). You cannot prescribe correct homeopathy medicine for headache, for example, without taking into account all the mental and physical symptoms. Though I am not going to start another controversial thread (about homeopathy), I just wonder why the mainstream medical science does not looks at human malfunctioning as a whole system. In other words why there are so many organ/tissues/functions specialists? May be (with main stream medical science) we are on wrong path and have made things so complicated that it has impossible to consider the whole human body in one shot in any particular disease. Though we fully know that analyzing/treating the parts in a complex system won't take us too far.
- amalcon 16y ago
  Though I am not going to start another controversial thread (about homeopathy), I just wonder why the mainstream medical science does not looks at human malfunctioning as a whole system. In other words why there are so many organ/tissues/functions specialists? I'm only answering this part, because I also don't want to get involved in a homeopathy debate. They do look at human malfunctioning as a whole system. The people who do this are called "internists". Your primary doctor is probably one of them. The reason that there are so many specialists is that the human body is really complicated. As much as we would like it to be simple, there's just too much to know about it for any one person to know everything, even if all the information is available. For the same reason that mechanical engineers specialize in things like mechanism design, aerodynamics, or materials, doctors specialize in different areas of the body. An internist simply does not know enough to figure out everything that could possibly be going wrong with a person's body. To my mind, the big problem is not with the specialization; it's with the coordination. All of the above specialties, and more, were involved in the design of any given vehicle you're likely to encounter, from a performance bicycle to the Concorde. Yet, it's really hard to get doctors from different specialties to collaborate to tackle a complicated disease. This is not a problem with medical science, so much as a problem with the way things are done right now.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    That is true, however even your internist is interested in your "primary complaint". There is this idea that one problem should be addressed at a time.
    - amalcon 16y ago
      Not so much for anything serious or unusual, in my experience. If you have multiple complaints, the first thing doctors look for (in my experience) is something tying them all together. If you only have one complaint, they often ask if you're having other symptoms that you've just overlooked. I found out that a number of... corner cases that my body has just always had, were not normal, because of this. (There was fortunately nothing serious). Of course, for very common symptoms (like headache and nausea), they usually just treat the symptom.
      - carbocation 16y ago
        We always try to balance Occam's razor vs Saint's Triad.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Homeopathy as it's commonly known describes the practice of giving very small doses of chemicals known to cause a problem in an attempt to cure it. I think you should clarify what you mean by homeopathy before arguing that it is superior. I suppose it's possible that someone administering homeopathic remedies may have a belief about the body as a whole, but I think it's a stretch to consider homeopathy an improvement on western medicine in any way.
- jedbrown 16y ago
  You know what they call 'alternative medicine' that’s been proved to work? Medicine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw
hariis 16y ago
All the ancient treatment modalities treat the body as a whole. It only makes sense. Holistic care is what is missing in the Western medicine. Having said that, no one modality is better than the other. Each one has its own place. There is one more striking difference also between the Western and other modalities and You made it clear by using the word "fix". For certain conditions, "fixing" does not work. If my arm is broken, sure you can fix it but for chronic conditions, certain lifestyle changes will have to be made and that requires the individual to be willing to undertake shifts in their behavior. For example, what you eat, when you eat, where you eat, how the food is cooked, when you sleep, the ambiance of your work, home and not to mention exercising etc. So in that sense, the holistic medical practitioner becomes more like a guide and the individual takes on a active role. For most people, this is too much to do. So they prefer Western Medicine where the mindset is, someone is going to "fix" me while I am busy with my life getting stressed up. The role is passive. Big difference. It is funny that Western Medicine practitioners are called doctors whereas holistic practitioners use the term heal and are called healers. (The root of the word heal is related to whole)
- philwelch 16y ago
  To be fair, Western medicine has completely eradicated multiple fatal viral epidemics, developed a rather good series of antibiotics to handle bacterial infections of all kinds, kept a lid on flu epidemics year after year, and made vast strides in the treatment of multiple cancers. Now that Western medicine has got most of the low-hanging fruit and is now banging its head on the hard problems, it may appear to fall short in the "what have you done for me lately?" sense. But that's just because we take it for granted that we aren't going to get polio or smallpox.
  - dgordon 16y ago
    I thought that was the parent's point -- Western medicine has done superb work for acute diseases and injuries, but doesn't have solutions yet, and may not even have the right approach, for chronic ones.
    - 16y ago