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> Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. Just the first counter examples that comes to my mind: "Western medic

> Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. Just the first counter examples that comes to my mind: "Western medicine" eradicated smallpox and polio; what was the hell price for those? "Western medicine" really only means medicine based on the scientific method, and shouldn't be conflated with the profit maximisation mechanisms which are so prevalent in the US medical system.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Overpopulation is one of the consequences of actually solving problems. Birth rates fall after mortality rates fall. The result is a bump in population size. This is a known phenomenon. It's very well documented. It's not a reason to keep letting people die, but the transition comes with costs. That's just reality. Antibiotics were supposed to be the end of disease. Now we are brewing antibiotic resistant infections. It's common for diseases to jump species when adequately threatened. Organisms don't like being eradicated and will fight back. You see more genetic mutations in diseases, fomenting resistance, when they are under pressure. We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. I have no idea if that's directly related to the eradication of small pox or polio. I haven't specifically studied those cases. Change comes at a cost. That doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing. It does mean that cavalier attitudes about how, clearly, this is all upside have a tendency to be dangerous.
- zo1 6y ago
  > We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. Which practices are you referring to here?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    When I was growing up, medicine was more focused on social elements. It more explicitly recognized that people spread disease from person to person. At one time, the way we stopped STDs was we took the names of all your recent hookups, contacted them and let them know they had been with someone who had just tested positive for a particular STD and offered them testing and treatment. In my teens, the AIDS crisis hit. In the US, it was mostly associated with gay men and IV drug users. These populations had reasonable concerns about giving a list of contacts to authorities and pushed for drug research and stronger privacy policies. My understanding is we largely no longer use this proven method of stopping the spread of most STDs. I can also remember going to a doctor with a sibling and a couple of cousins and all of us getting treated so that the issue wouldn't just go round and round through the family. I feel like that was a fairly common practice at the time and we mostly don't do stuff like that anymore. Historically, doctors did house calls and were one of the smartest, best educated people in town and towns were relatively small. They could address issues that helped contribute to your medical problem beyond just prescribing drugs and surgeries. Now we act like human beings are specimens in a petri dish and like their physical health is unrelated to their lifestyle or the fabric of their life. I think this is a big problem. The phrase "We've thrown out the baby with the bathwater" comes to mind but doesn't quite fit. What we've done is tossed aside wisdom and context to worship at the alter of ooh shiny diagnostics. The high tech diagnostics are useful but the largely unnoticed loss of wisdom and context is a serious problem and we aren't even trying to solve it because we mostly haven't noticed that it matters.
- danmaz74 6y ago
  There are cavalier attitudes on one side, and alarmist attitudes on the other side, and in my humble opinion saying that "Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay" falls in the latter. What's the hellish consequence of eyeglasses?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    What's the hellish consequence of eyeglasses? That's a misreading of my statement that talks about killing a thing in an ecosystem and thereby upsetting the balance of the ecosystem.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Overpopulation is one of the consequences of actually solving problems. Birth rates fall after mortality rates fall. The result is a bump in population size. This is a known phenomenon. It's very well documented. It's not a reason to keep letting people die, but the transition comes with costs. That's just reality. Antibiotics were supposed to be the end of disease. Now we are brewing antibiotic resistant infections. It's common for diseases to jump species when adequately threatened. Organisms don't like being eradicated and will fight back. You see more genetic mutations in diseases, fomenting resistance, when they are under pressure. We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. I have no idea if that's directly related to the eradication of small pox or polio. I haven't specifically studied those cases. Change comes at a cost. That doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing. It does mean that cavalier attitudes about how, clearly, this is all upside have a tendency to be dangerous.

zo1 6y ago
> We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. Which practices are you referring to here?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  When I was growing up, medicine was more focused on social elements. It more explicitly recognized that people spread disease from person to person. At one time, the way we stopped STDs was we took the names of all your recent hookups, contacted them and let them know they had been with someone who had just tested positive for a particular STD and offered them testing and treatment. In my teens, the AIDS crisis hit. In the US, it was mostly associated with gay men and IV drug users. These populations had reasonable concerns about giving a list of contacts to authorities and pushed for drug research and stronger privacy policies. My understanding is we largely no longer use this proven method of stopping the spread of most STDs. I can also remember going to a doctor with a sibling and a couple of cousins and all of us getting treated so that the issue wouldn't just go round and round through the family. I feel like that was a fairly common practice at the time and we mostly don't do stuff like that anymore. Historically, doctors did house calls and were one of the smartest, best educated people in town and towns were relatively small. They could address issues that helped contribute to your medical problem beyond just prescribing drugs and surgeries. Now we act like human beings are specimens in a petri dish and like their physical health is unrelated to their lifestyle or the fabric of their life. I think this is a big problem. The phrase "We've thrown out the baby with the bathwater" comes to mind but doesn't quite fit. What we've done is tossed aside wisdom and context to worship at the alter of ooh shiny diagnostics. The high tech diagnostics are useful but the largely unnoticed loss of wisdom and context is a serious problem and we aren't even trying to solve it because we mostly haven't noticed that it matters.
danmaz74 6y ago
There are cavalier attitudes on one side, and alarmist attitudes on the other side, and in my humble opinion saying that "Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay" falls in the latter. What's the hellish consequence of eyeglasses?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  What's the hellish consequence of eyeglasses? That's a misreading of my statement that talks about killing a thing in an ecosystem and thereby upsetting the balance of the ecosystem.