| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Thursday 28 August 2008: |
I've been pondering and researching medical things for various reasons recently, and the main thing I've noticed about mainstream western medicine is that it has a horrible tendency to treat (and diagnose) symptoms rather than causes. Some specific examples I've seen first hand include:
Now, I'm not saying that chinese or alternative medicines are the best things in the world, or a flawless solution, but one thing they are better at is trying to focus on causes rather than symptoms. It's easier to make a diagnostic mistake at this point, obviously (it's very easy to diagnose a symptom! "Hey doctor, I have itchy skin." "Itchy skin you say? That sounds like the disease we call "itchy skin" in Latin!"), but assuming you do manage to make a good cause-diagnosis you're going to have a much better chance at curing something by attacking the cause not the effect. Seemingly tangentially, the other day I was talking to someone about political things; they are a staunch right-wing-leaning Libertarian type, someone who thinks in single-step consequences and no further, with the common key argument of "don't punish the hard-working rich by taking more of their money, that's not fair." I'm sure we can all pick at least three gaping holes in that argument, but that's not why I'm posting. The thing is, it struck me that the reason this position is increasingly popular is because the government in the US is getting more bloated, inefficient and greedy. And the knee-jerk reaction, the apparent way to treat that symptom is to vote in a "small government" government, someone who will cut taxes and de-bloat things. But that won't work. That's just like applying hydrocortisone to scabies or to poison ivy. You'll get ten minutes of itch-relief and then it will come back worse than before because you've just made the area more sensitive. So then I got to thinking, what's the cause? And the furthest back I could figure it, the cause seemed to me to be overpopulation. And then it struck me, China's been trying to reduce population for a while now. Just like Chinese medicine, they've done their best to find a cause for societal struggle, and then to try to find a cure for the cause, not a cure for the struggle. Sure enough it hasn't done a great job yet, but when you treat the cause the results are slower but longer-lasting than when you treat the symptom. But watch over the next fifty years, as the US flares up with angry itches and infects other countries with its metaphorical scabies, and China settles down and goes back to a comfortable night's sleep. (And of course, China's not just treating 'overpopulation' as a cause, they go one step further - birth-rate is the cause of overpopulation. Which is why it'll take 50 years to cascade down to curing overpopulation, then maybe another 50 years for that to cascade down and cure economic woes.) [18:51] |
| Digi |
| I agree with what you're saying about treating causes, but I think the China example is a bad one. The China example is "Doctor, I have a hang nail." "I prescribe amputation at the shoulder". I agree that reducing population has been a good thing for them, I just don't go along with the way they have achieved it, but it's a small point. I think that bloated government is its self just a symptom as well. It's a symptom belonging to any country that has an at least partially private central bank. It creates a system whereby a few people - the richest, most powerful people - have an interest in money being spent wastefully. Bloated government, or war are good ways for them to see this happen, but still just symptoms. I guess you might paradoxically counter that a private central bank is a symptom of bloated government. |
| deaths embrace |
| One thing that seems to also be a problem in the idea of western Medicine versus Cultural Medicine, is the West's lack of acknowledgement that most medicines came from the natural world. They have only learned how to create synthetic equivilents to the natural process, which has only increased the amount of uneeded chemicals that are introduced into a body daily. An example of this is Aspirin. The chemical term is acetylsalicylic acid. We use this in tablet form everday. Created by harmful chemicals that are found in an everyday kitchen. Some may have even created it in a lab as a chemistry experiment in high school, I did. However, the natural forms of this "drug" are found in the bark of the willow tree. Willow tea has been prescribed by Eastern Medicine and Native Americans, for Fever and pain, for centuries, and the pharmacuetical companies have made large amounts of money for this naturally occurring substance. These are the same companies that give kickbacks to health care providers to use their products on the public as guinea pigs,for off-market usages, and I believe that is why doctors are more apt to treat symptoms, versus finding cause. There is no money in it for them, if they cure the patient too soon. The West's corporate philosophy to healthcare, that it is supposed to be a profit based business, has undermined the whole idea that the main goal is to CURE a patient, not make them pay for the next stock holders meeting in Aruba. |