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I'm thinking of compiling a list of conditions that modern medicine treats well, and conditions where doctors try real hard to help their patients. For example

I'm thinking of compiling a list of conditions that modern medicine treats well, and conditions where doctors try real hard to help their patients. For example, my neighbor wrecked his bicycle a few months ago. His doctors decided he needed a couple implants to help his leg bones grow back together optimally. I went over to look for my supposedly-delivered package this evening. He's recovering, slowly. Today he was hobbling around with a cane, and told of going to all the rehabilitation he can get (physical therapy, etc). I don't have formal medical training, but I think the rod in his leg was a reasonable intervention. Trauma surgeons do amazing work in keeping people alive who in prior centuries rapidly expired from similar injuries. I don't think modern medicine does well with multi-factorial conditions that develop over long periods of time. Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor.

killjoywashere 8y ago
> Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor. As a military officer who researches cancer and has lost a number of friends and family to both war and cancer, I think you may misunderstand both the way we live with and treat cancer, and what war is like. They are quite similar: all the outcomes take time off your life, there is often a significant risk to your life, there is liable to be a lot of blood at some point, and most of it is waiting to die while experts who know precious little more than you mutter and make pronouncements. (and I include myself in that definition of 'expert')