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June 20, 2005
I'm back after several days away in Sydney caught up in conference on medicine,health and philosophy. Hence my interest was caught by this conservative defence of modern biomedical medicine (orthodox medicine)and its contribution to our collective well-being.
This passage from the review is instructive:
"Tallis is right to argue that there is a sense of crisis within medicine. But it is not a crisis in the practice of medicine or within the system of our health care. The technical aspects of medical care improve steadily year by year. Instead, the crisis lies within the profession itself. Levels of doctor discontent run high in most countries with advanced high-technology clinical care."
I'm not so sure. There is a pervasive decline in professional self-confidence among doctors associated with a loss in status that doctors have felt in recent years. Doctors are increasingly seen as tradesmen whose income is protected by a very powerful trade union that continually engages in s restrictive trade practices.
However, it strikes me that the modern system of medicine and public health is under a great deal of pressure and is increasingly being placed under question by consumers; consumers who speak the language of rights, want self-control over their health, seek knowledge of their illness and are prepared to question the authority of the benevolent paternal doctor. They are beginning to turn away from orthodox medicine to what manay say is complimentary or alternative medicine.
The conservative response is this:
"....scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine."
Alternative medicine is snakeoil. So says Richard Dawkins.
That does not address the practices of the clinic or the politics of medicine.
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