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Yes and no. No doubt the medical profession requires talent and rigor, but I think to some extent the hurdles which are placed in front of students who want to
by skohan 3y ago
Yes and no. No doubt the medical profession requires talent and rigor, but I think to some extent the hurdles which are placed in front of students who want to become doctors are artificially high to help justify the small number of graduates medical schools put out, which protects the artificially high salaries.
For instance, if you read up on the frankly cruel residency process which doctors are forced to clear in the US, the insane hours are in large part because one of the doctors who was influential in shaping the current practice was an abuser of stimulants.
So I think it's a bit of a "just so" story to assume that the version of the medical profession we have is the best possible version.
And indeed Cuba is a good counter-example to your argument. Unless Cubans are just a lot more clever and resilient on average than Americans for example.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoYeah I'm not convinced. I've worked adjacent to the healthcare and pharma industries most of my adult life and I can tell you the complexity of the human body beggars belief. You aren't going to run the equivalent of a coding bootcamp for healthcare and get good results.
- skohan 3y agoNot all of medicine is dealing with the full complexity of the human body. A lot of it is applying wrote knowledge to essentially follow a flow-chart to map a set of symptoms and details about the patient to a diagnostic / treatment plan. Doctors are trained to not deviate from medical orthodoxy, and for instance it's been studied that if doctors are told another doctor has already come to a given conclusion about a diagnosis, there is a strong effect that they will confirm the diagnosis even in the face of contravening evidence. I.e. I don't need "Dr House" to tell me to take 2 and call him in the morning. There is a whole large swath of routine medicine which AI could probably do. And I am happy if you and your family have been lucky to be blessed with good health and good care, but many people have experienced having a mysterious medical condition, and going to several doctors or waiting months before it can be properly diagnosed. Human medicine is far from perfect.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoYeah. Would you like to review a graph over time of medical outcomes in the US based on this approach to healthcare (we see you minute clinic)? Hint: there's a reason we consistently rank dead last when compared to other industrialized nations.