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from the getting-sick-is-hazardous-to-your-health dept.
Seamus O'Mahony, a gastroenterologist from Cork, has written the most devastating critique of modern medicine since Ivan Illich in Medical Nemesis in 1975. O'Mahony cites Illich and argues that many of his warnings of the medicalisation of life and death; runaway costs; ever declining value; patients reduced to consumers; growing empires of doctors, other health workers, and researchers; and the industrialisation of healthcare have come true.
[...] Unlike Illich, who believed that modern medicine counterproductively created sickness, O'Mahony does see what he calls a golden age of medicine that began after the Second World War with the appearance of antibiotics, vaccines, a swathe of effective drugs, surgical innovations, better anaesthetics, and universal health coverage for most of those in rich countries. It ended in the late 1970s, meaning that O'Mahony, who graduated in 1983 and is still practising, enjoyed little of the golden age. We are now "in the age of unmet and unrealistic expectations, the age of disappointment."
[...] O'Mahony begins his dissection with medical research, "the intellectual motor of the medico-industrial complex." Governments see life sciences as a saviour of economies, and charities urge us to give more to cure every disease. Big Science, which appeared after the golden age, has provided jobs and status but "benefits to patients have been modest and unspectacular." A study of 101 basic science discoveries published in major journals and claiming a clinical application found that 20 years later only one had produced clinical benefit. Big Science is corrupted by "perverse incentives, careerism, and commercialisation."
[...] No disease is better marketed than cancer, and after Richard Nixon's War on Cancer, Barack Obama launched his Cancer Moonshot, which is now renamed Cancer Breakthroughs under Donald Trump. As O'Mahony writes, the language around cancer "is infected with a sort of hubristic oedema." For Big Science cancer is a blessing, leading to huge investments in molecular biology and genetics, but, as cancer researcher David Pye put it: "How can we know so much about the causes and progression of disease, yet do so little to prevent death and incapacity."
[...] "The medical profession," he writes, "has become the front-of-house sales team for the [drug] industry." He argues that "doctors' professional culture obliges them to do something—anything," but he is too easy on doctors, who could push back. Society, he says, displays "childishness" in going along with these expensive treatments: "we must have higher, and better, priorities than feeble, incremental and attritional extension of survival in patients with incurable cancer."
[...] The first thing that I ever had published in a medical journal was a letter to the Lancet in 1974 asking why there had been no response to an article in the journal by Ivan Illich describing in detail how modern medicine was a threat to health. (It would cost me $35.95 today to access the letter, about 50 cents a word from memory.) As a medical student I expected that the leaders of medicine would carefully dissect Illich's argument and with evidence show him to be wrong. But such a response never came. I was naive: I know now that it's easier simply to ignore cogent criticisms. I hope that O'Mahony's book, a Medical Nemesis for 2019, will not be ignored. It deserves to be taken very seriously.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @06:12AM (9 children)
Wrong [wikipedia.org]: "HIV/AIDS has become a chronic rather than an acutely fatal disease in many areas of the world"
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But didn't eliminate yet the HPV infections or eradicate the virus and, based on the effectivity of the current vaccine alone [theconversation.com], we may never will
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That's wishful thinking, marketdroid speak and/or the brainwashing result of the latter.
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Theoretically, yes.
In practice, this is yet to happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @06:19AM (3 children)
In other words, we've all but cured it! (and then some?)
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Please fund herpes cure. Make America Kiss Again.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @06:23AM (2 children)
In other words, we made it almost non-lethal, provided that you take medication all your life. And no strong warranty offered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @12:01PM (1 child)
FTFY.
Like with cancer treatments, life expectancy flats out on HIV/AIDS. Some make it longer. Some don't. Averages under 10 years. Diet and other "healthy life style choices" barely add a couple of years over the average.
It's why they charge so much for the drugs: They're priced for how many years the insurance covers and how many years you'd last. So many dollars for so many years you're expected to last. Average dosage and presto.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday February 18 2019, @01:37PM
I think they are priced to maximize profit. With cancer drugs the societal pressure is high to re-reimburse these. There are cost-benefit calculations made and (in Europe) the acceptable cost seem to be around 50k Eur/yr. That's what the drug companies aim for no matter the actual cost (cost per QALY).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @07:05AM (2 children)
A study [hjf.org] ten years ago in Thailand had an HIV vaccine that managed a 32% success rate. That's still not good odds but you don't even get bad odds on something this complicated unless you're on to something.
And I expect you'll keep thinking that right up until we finally get one out of trials and being used regularly. You're a pessimist. Me, I'm happy that it's being looked at hard enough that we get false alarms so often. Eventually one of them will turn out not to be false.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @08:35AM (1 child)
Cynical, to be more precise
'Pictures or it didn't happen. And, until someone shows pictures, it just won't happen'
Liitle chance to be negatively surprised with such a position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @09:45AM
I prefer hopeful but not expecting it to happen tomorrow. It'd be nice if it did but I'm good just as long as it eventually gets taken care of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @11:43AM (1 child)
There are 50+ strains of HPV. The vaccine is against 2.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday February 18 2019, @05:56PM
Actually, with a virus, what counts as "a strain" is a bit artificial. And with the rate of mutation of the HIV virus, whatever definition you use there are probably strains you haven't noticed.
But that doesn't mean that working toward vaccines isn't a good idea.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.