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Medicine- A blessing or a reproach?
Posted by sgenius • 10/01/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: christian doctors, christian student, doctors, health, medical student, medicine, wellness
With advances in medicine and unethical methods of investigation, can one say that medicine has improved our livelihood or not?
Take for instance, the German investigation of the holocaust, where JEWS were subjected to various conditions all in the name of medical research. Some, I mean, many passed on. Eg soaking a grown man in -40 degrees water to see the impact on BMR, creating a control and recording findings after testing much subjects, many of whom didn't survive.
User Comments
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That's relative. Malaria, a killer disease, is now a minor ailment considering the advances in medicine. That's not to say that unethical investigation methods like testing an/some unproven drugs on the human organism is right.
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If they are terminally ill, and have less then 6 months to live, I don't see how testing can really be that much worse. There is, of course, the risk of additional suffering, but this is a risk well worth taking for years added to your life.
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Life expectancies are longer, diseases are cured, pain is healed, most pandemics, avoided or managed. Even the criticisms (narcotics) are usually the result of failed responsibility and thus of no interest to society. How can this be anything other then a plus?
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methods of investigation irrespective, medicine will fail from the very long term perspective. 100 years from now I see people leaving most present forms of treatment and medicines and subscribe to Survival of Fittest-
Why?
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I think the opposite. As bionics get more advanced, medicine will no longer be relegated to merely treating diseases but all human non-capacity. There will be medicine for low IQ, medicine for replacing amputated limbs, medicine for stamina, medicine for everything.
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You kill bacteria, and it returns stronger and you are weaker and more dependent on medicine. The more you harm the nasty little critters the more you make them strong.
Then one day the weak mankind gets into an epidemic spiral from recombinant forms of germs and loses majority of its members and the World Medicine Council says no more! We will not take these medicines and become weaker. We will surrender to Nature and allow her to dictate our course -
@CT: Yes but that's with our current system of antibiotics. Further, those antibiotics are still a step up from being infected and dying at the first infection, rather then after several, and we have dozens of them. Also, antibiotics don't weaken your system much - they create an upset stomach and that's pretty much all. But with nanorobots in the future, you will have a device that bacteria cannot kill without equipment too advanced for them to evolve quickly. They would evolve to eat human flesh long before they evolved to eat our robots.
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So then your body can lay off its WBC's so they can create trouble in some other way.
If today they are replacing the function of your WBC's tomorrow or day after tomorrow they will make you lay off your brains and you will be implanted with external brains from birth
How do you like the trend?
"modern" medicine thinks it knows too much, but all it does is, fix something at the expense of something else. It is too myopic! These people are like little kids and they treat real people as their toys -
@cT: Your body is, in general, only as strong as its weakest system. Strong Lungs do you no good if you are anemic, and a strong immune system does you no good if you have cancer. Therefore, it makes sense to redistribute strength from one section to another. As bodies get stronger, strengths builds strength, and a feedback loop brings you back to where you were.
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And by increasing our life expectancy are they increasing the sustainability of our environment?
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@CT: Actually yes. Longer more productive adult lives mean greater gains from investment in people during childhood. Also means that thinkers of every sort can continue to make progress and thought long past their natural bedtime. Further, greater wealth in general means greater ability to preserve the environment - you don't know industry to destroy an ecology, as Medieval Europe proved when they destroyed 90% of their forest land and killed off several species including Canis Familiaris (the Common Wolf.)
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Probably fall back to ancient natural cure.
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I presume you mean medicine has improved our lives, not our livelihoods.
In medieval times, the average life expectancy was 30 (except for celibate nuns in convents who lived to 60 on average). Apart from disease, unwanted, endless pregnancies killed young women and endless war killed young men.
By the 19th century, the average life expectancy in Europe and the New World was 49.
Now in the Western World it is approximately 78 for men and 83 for women. And those extra years are mostly healthy, productive years!
So although decent nutrition and clean water are probably equally as important, I would say that modern medicine has had impressive results. Thankfully. -
Meds have improved some lives,but at the expense of another's life or health. I also think ct has a point where you shouldn't pop a pill for a runny nose or get hooked on something like xanax because your depressed. Everything you put into your body is gonna have some sort of effect.-
"but at the expense of anothers life or health." Not usually. I mean, yes, we do spend quite a bit of money on health care but we should. What's the point in money anyways?
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Some medical problems go beyond what you put or don't put into your body. Take for instance, you had a fracture of the femur (thigh bone), surgery is imminent, and that's part of medicine. Medicine has played a major role in our lives and will continue to play a major role in our lives.
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We are making progress. Now social medicine has been introduced to take care of the ethical issues.
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With the new discovery of a vaccine for HIV, I think medicine is headed in the right direction, except for ethical issues.
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