Was medical culture ever healthy? Experiences with misdiagnosis, medication side effects, wrong-side surgery etc. fuel a gigantic medical malpractice industry in the United States. In Canada, the malpractice angle is stifled for various reasons, and instead our discussion revolves around wait times.
Medicine seems to work much better as a small business, in places where practitioners are also socially interconnected with patients. "Big" medicine is fraught from the very start and vulnerable to capture/corruption. It also is conducive to seeing patients as things to be processed, rather than beings with essential worth (not to mention souls...).
The problem is that medicine, until quite recently, didn't know much. But the placebo effect is powerful. So doctors could heal though it. To do that, they had to show confidence, not doubt or uncertainty - the hallmarks of science.
So doctors have a tradition of being unscientific and showing undeserved confidence in their own knowledge. Until recently (20th century), that was best for patients. Now things are different, but traditions are slow to change.
This and the other systems of accepted dominance will break everything. That's the only way out of this, I'm afraid. Then we or our posterity, after much trouble, can start again. Let's hope they don't end up at the same place.
The arrogance and lack of humanity in some health care workers is the cause of this distrust. I know from experience with mom. It sickens me. I have zero trust in the system.
Medical system in the US went off the rails when Rockefeller helped create the AMA which then went on to stamp out herbalism, homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, and naturopathy. AMA focused on pharmaceuticals to alleviate symptoms instead of focusing on true healing. Today Pharma OWNS the AMA, FDA, CDC, NIH, and WHO which are all acting as marketing arms for Pharma products. The corruption is so deep and all pervasive in these bureaucratic organizations, the only solution I see is to disband them all. Unless we uncouple doctors and the medical system from Pharma, the system will stay broken in my opinion.
Medicine seems to work much better as a small business, in places where practitioners are also socially interconnected with patients. "Big" medicine is fraught from the very start and vulnerable to capture/corruption. It also is conducive to seeing patients as things to be processed, rather than beings with essential worth (not to mention souls...).
The problem is that medicine, until quite recently, didn't know much. But the placebo effect is powerful. So doctors could heal though it. To do that, they had to show confidence, not doubt or uncertainty - the hallmarks of science.
So doctors have a tradition of being unscientific and showing undeserved confidence in their own knowledge. Until recently (20th century), that was best for patients. Now things are different, but traditions are slow to change.
This and the other systems of accepted dominance will break everything. That's the only way out of this, I'm afraid. Then we or our posterity, after much trouble, can start again. Let's hope they don't end up at the same place.
The good thing is, you can't fix something until you know just how broken it is and where, now we know.
The arrogance and lack of humanity in some health care workers is the cause of this distrust. I know from experience with mom. It sickens me. I have zero trust in the system.
Medical system in the US went off the rails when Rockefeller helped create the AMA which then went on to stamp out herbalism, homeopathy, chiropractic, osteopathy, and naturopathy. AMA focused on pharmaceuticals to alleviate symptoms instead of focusing on true healing. Today Pharma OWNS the AMA, FDA, CDC, NIH, and WHO which are all acting as marketing arms for Pharma products. The corruption is so deep and all pervasive in these bureaucratic organizations, the only solution I see is to disband them all. Unless we uncouple doctors and the medical system from Pharma, the system will stay broken in my opinion.