Old Medicine vs. New Medicine

A Janitor's View ^ | July 16, 2017 | Reasonmclucus

[kathsua]

Poor baby Charlie Gard and his parents are caught in the old battle between compassionless medical traditionalists who are satisfied with existing medical knowledge and the experimentalists who are trying to advance medical knowledge to reduce the number of disorders that cannot be successfully treated. Traditionalists who don't know how to treat disorders tend to deny the possibility that patients like Charlie whom they don't know how to treat can be treated by anyone. They are like selfish little children who don't want to let other children play with toys they aren't playing with at the time. Traditionalists would rather have a patient die than allow someone else to treat and cure "their" patient.

Traditionalists often call themselves "experts", but they are incapable of being experts because experts must be familiar with the latest knowledge as well as the traditional knowledge. Development of new treatments can intimidate traditionalists because they don't know if they can learn the new knowledge.

Traditionalists don't understand that parents can accept a child's death more easily if they know they have tried every possible treatment. Parents can accept death more easily if they know doctors have gained knowledge from their child's death that might help other children in the future.

[kathsua]

I wonder how much of the decision is because health care is paid by government.

[Seruzawa]

BS. When my dad had a stroke the older doctors on the case said that with time and therapy he might recover a lot of function. The younger croakers said it was hopeless and not to bother. The younger ones are indoctrinated into “quality of life” bs more than the older ones.

This is way too broad of a brush.

[amihow]

I agree with you 1,000 %. The old Hipocratic Oath takers knew about medicine as an art. The new docs art of medicone is akin to Picasso not Michalangelo.

[Seruzawa]

It’s not medicine. It’s medicate.