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Is medicine keeping up with Science?

What do you think of our current methods of medicine as it relates to our overall scientific knowledge?

Howcome 4 Mar 29
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21 comments

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5

This is a complex question to answer; but here goes...

  1. Modern western medicine tries to be evidence based
  2. Realistically there is a lot of "Art" to medicine - ie tricks of the trade, esoteric diagnoses, rules of thumb, personal preference, off-label prescribing...
  3. The scientific method is based on controlled (reproducible) observations and there is always uncertainty (e.g.. Ican't say the sun will rise tomorrow, all swans are white & other problems of induction)
  4. Because MD's deal with human(who have pesky things like autonomy, feelings, consent, want hope ... ) they don't/can't act like scientists.
  5. because of the nature of the heath system, its size, ETHICS, cost etc, it takes decades for things to be implimented (they still use pagers & Fax machines) . So medicine will beyears behind cutting edge science

And there is a big lack of proper scientific experimentation. E.g. there aren't any RCT for the effectiveness of emergency surgeries...but thats akin to doing a placebo controlled trial on the effectiveness of a parachute

4

Medicine would be better able to keep up with science if so many people didn't believe in
gods and religion. It would also be better if insurance companies didn't hold so much sway
over what healthcare people could receive, and how much they have to pay for it.

3

In regards to the immune system, medical research is way behind the ball, especially in the USA. I have Western European friends with similar clusters of disorders as myself (thank you, Facebook). They were:

  1. All diagnosed a minimum of ten years earlier.
  2. All receive IVIG for low cost or free, IgA free IVIG would cost me thousands of dollars a month in "co-pays" alone.
  3. Fecal transplants aren't routine treatments yet, but they're not uncommon and their doctors will refer them to specialists for the therapy. Here, FDA guidelines EXCLUDE me from clinical trials!
  4. Their doctors all remember not to push vaccines, since they're ineffective in us at best.

Bloody ridiculous excuses for insurance here don't help.

3

Wouldn't we rather spend our tax money on a half-ass ark?

2

Here in the USA our population is growing older and is plagued by more degenerative diseases. Stem Cell research offered a great way to possibly cure degenerative disease. Unfortunately Under President Bush W he stopped all research on stem cells because the Christians believe it is against God's law. President Obama attempted to reinstitute stem cell research and was partially successful but the Christians kept sueing and getting injunctions to slow down the research. Medical Science has lost 16 years in the search for stem cell cures because of the crazy beliefs of Christians. If you have a degenerative disease like Alzheimers, or Diabetes, the Christians will be responsible for your death.

only in the states. europe is moving ahead

@markdevenish It may turnout that to get up-to-date healthcare we might have to go to a foreign country.

@nicknotes Many already are going to foreign countries for affordable healthcare. I have at least two friends who go to Mexico for their dental care.

2

I do love the people bypassing the durable medical equipment field and doing things like designing and manufacturing artificial limbs with 3-D printers for people.

2

Cloning body parts would be a big boon for us old people. My wife says I need a new heart. I think they are getting closer to cloning teeth so they can grow new teeth for us snagletoothed.

1

Medicine often advanced science. I have a pacemaker and am going to get a defibulator, so medical inventions advance science

1

follow the money

1

Nope.
Just like any other technology they are spoon feeding it too us.

There is no money in giving people too much too soon.

1

I don't mind dying of natural causes.

1

I don't know and there's always corruption

1

Medicine is the by-product of science. When energy is stuck it creates a blockage which leads to sickness, medicine is just to relieve or supress the pain it is the mind that focused correclty on the blocked energy and releasing that blockage can clear the pain and sickness
ex when DR gives patient saline drip and tell them that they are putting medicine drops into your stream the patient feels relieve and get better but in actual fact is just saline water drip The DR tricked the mind into belieiving it is medicine drip

Rosh Level 7 Mar 29, 2018

I felt a disturbance in the woo.

1

In Europe, yes.

Here we can't use stem cells because Jesus says so.

1

$$$$$$ Nothing seems to get developed unless there is a profitable market for it.

1

The evidence I have recently heard says: NO!

The success rate of Chemo in the 70s? 26% (if I recall correctly)
The success rate of Chemo today? 26%

The FDA approves trials for chemotherapies that are shown to EXTEND life. Not for drugs that could cure the disease. The thing is, a cure doesn't really extend life. It merely lifts AN expiration date. So, we have a real road block in medicine, which is, truthfully, intended to safeguard us (think about what it would be like if we had NO safety check of any kind for new drugs). This is one place where we desperately need to discuss updating the rules.

I heard this from an interview of a Dr, a pioneer in cancer research, I think this was Inquiring Minds but might've been TED Radio Hour.

If you want, I'll go digging?

1

Genetic profiling is being done in a very basic way in the doctors offices, surgeons are using a more sophisticated rather "Darwinistic" (I may have just made that word up) profiling to decide whether to operate & how to treat. I think funding may get in the way of scientific discoveries becoming medical breakthroughs....!?

0

Define "keeping up". In my general experience it takes about 20 years for successful lab results to reach practical application. That lag has remained fairly constant. Just now we are seeing computers of reasonable complexity applied to cars, the computers of that complexity have been available for more than 20 years. I'm sure the same lag exists in medicine.

0
0

Not publically. I'm one of those conspiracy theorists that believe some things are kept quiet just to keep the population down and slowly weed out weaker links.

If that is true it is failing on both counts.

0

I think scanner technology is doing a good job of keeping up. Nuclear medicine is doing pretty well, too.

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