3 ms·

It seems like there is a bit of an overestimation of what medicine can do. I don't know if that overestimation is by physicians, patients, society-at-large, eve

It seems like there is a bit of an overestimation of what medicine can do. I don't know if that overestimation is by physicians, patients, society-at-large, everyone? It feels like we are barely out of the dark ages when it comes to medicine. My brother died at a fairly young age (30s) because nobody could figure out what was wrong with him over the course of a couple of years. Specialists investigated a lot of diagnoses. I don't know if it was rare or they just missed things or what. We'll never know if they could have done more or not. I heard many variations of "why can't these useless people figure this out?" And I have wondered if the answer is that, for all the advances and modern technology, we're just not that good at medicine yet, not really.

mewpmewp2 5y ago
I think we are leagues out of dark ages, but it doesn't mean we are perfect or anywhere near perfect, or that it would even be possible to be perfect in the field of medicine. People like to think that some X has the perfect answer to any problem we might face, but in fact we don't have answers to very many problems. The ability to solve various problems is not binary.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  Interestingly both statements are true. We are both in and leagues out of the dark ages. On average we have progressed tremendously over the last 200 years, say. That means for many diseases, we have made extraordinary progress, as evidenced by life expectancy. At the same time there are many diseases where we are simply touching the surface and have a very basic (maybe even incorrect) understanding. An example that comes to mind is we still don't know why we sleep. We have good guesses, and we are excellent at observing sleep and curing many related diseases. But why do we spend 1/3 of our lives asleep? We don't know. In other words, progress is not distributed uniformly over diseases. (On a different note, the dark ages weren't actually as dark [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Big part of the jump in life expectancy is in hygiene, especially around births. Then there is a difference between the life expectancy counted from birth, or counted from 18-20+ yrs up.
DantesKite 5y ago
We're really not. We can barely cure toe fungus consistently. Pharmaceutical drugs are a very poor way of treating the body. Expecting consistent results from it is a losing proposition. Sorry about your brother..

mewpmewp2 5y ago

I think we are leagues out of dark ages, but it doesn't mean we are perfect or anywhere near perfect, or that it would even be possible to be perfect in the field of medicine. People like to think that some X has the perfect answer to any problem we might face, but in fact we don't have answers to very many problems. The ability to solve various problems is not binary.

Pyramus 5y ago
Interestingly both statements are true. We are both in and leagues out of the dark ages. On average we have progressed tremendously over the last 200 years, say. That means for many diseases, we have made extraordinary progress, as evidenced by life expectancy. At the same time there are many diseases where we are simply touching the surface and have a very basic (maybe even incorrect) understanding. An example that comes to mind is we still don't know why we sleep. We have good guesses, and we are excellent at observing sleep and curing many related diseases. But why do we spend 1/3 of our lives asleep? We don't know. In other words, progress is not distributed uniformly over diseases. (On a different note, the dark ages weren't actually as dark [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740489
- the-dude 5y ago
  Big part of the jump in life expectancy is in hygiene, especially around births. Then there is a difference between the life expectancy counted from birth, or counted from 18-20+ yrs up.

DantesKite 5y ago

We're really not. We can barely cure toe fungus consistently. Pharmaceutical drugs are a very poor way of treating the body. Expecting consistent results from it is a losing proposition. Sorry about your brother..