Dr. Matt Might is one of the few people that I remember from high school [0]. He's the only one from that school whom I've communicated with post-graduation. [e

Dr. Matt Might is one of the few people that I remember from high school [0]. He's the only one from that school whom I've communicated with post-graduation. [edit: one other, actually...] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366288 I think it important to put medicine's lack of progress in adequately treating many conditions in context, and only consider genetic factors as one consideration in the web of causality. Too often doctors make a diagnosis and treat the diagnosis. Much more work needs to be made in respecting the complexity of even the simplest of diagnoses. Consider the simple ear infection. Sometimes children have regular ear infections, but these usually go away as the person grows up. I started having chronic ear infections in college, well after the usual age that one experiences chronic ear infections. The prescribed antibiotics took care of the problem for a few weeks before the infection returned. After a year of this I figured out how to take care of my ears myself with non-prescription interventions, and after maybe 6 years I figured out how to treat the causes behind my ears' poor drainage. The GQ story "Sperm Count Zero" was recently discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942744 GQ didn't really drill down into the causes behind the male population's shrinking sperm counts, because the experts themselves aren't at all sure about the causes behind the symptom. While the causes of an individual man's low sperm count are unique in every case, it is a combination of factors that causes our society's shrinking sperm counts. The causes that I suspect include evolutionary-inappropriate modifications to our diet, mass exposure to endocrine disruptors (xeno-estrogens), etc. The Mayo Clinic's page about this condition [1] shows there's a few known simple causes for a man's low sperm count, but there is no effort to put society's condition in context. [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/low-sperm-count/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20374591 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/low-sperm-cou... Women are having similar responses to the causes behind men's shrinking sperm counts. Because women are supposed to release one egg a month rather than millions, their condition gets a label (PCOS/Endometriosis/anovulation/etc) and standardized treatments. Women are often subjected to palliative treatments for their diagnosis -- frequently this is some form of birth control. While some women find their condition to be helped with these prescriptions, medicine has failed to 'cure' their problem. They've just shut down the symptoms enough to make the patient's life a little more tolerable. Sometimes women think they have "polycystic ovaries" [PCOS] because their mother had symptoms of polycystic ovaries, and think their own condition "must" be genetic. But habits get passed down too, and "stress" is a major factor in many women's conditions. Poverty is not genetic, but it usually gets passed down with all the other habits we learn from our parents. Treating a woman's diagnosis of PCOS with birth control is using hormone analogues to suppress the normal functioning of the reproductive system. The use of these drugs for PCOS is a 'palliative' rather than 'curative' treatment. There are certainly 'rare diseases' with genetic causes, but an effort also needs to be made to clear obsolete and harmful treatments from medicine's tool chest. Sometimes "war" is appropriate, but war can also be prevented with good diplomacy.