“Does medicine still need breakthroughs? Is research still worth doing? Medicine should try its utmost to prevent premature mortality; I would arbitrarily set this as anything below eighty. More importantly, medicine should deal better with pain, suffering and disability. I do not believe, however, that better ways of relieving suffering will emerge from molecular medicine.”
Seamus O’Mahony skewers the delusions that make modern medicine so overweening and so insecure. He writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be ‘conquered’ ad infinitum. He punctures the fallacy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals as if they were customers in a supermarket.
He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project that promise to isolate a gene and a cure for every ailment. O’Mahony insists that Freud created a climate where we all see ourselves as needing therapy, and the world as a vast clinic where non-medical difficulties deserve to be treated.
Comments from other readers:
“This book, more than any of the others we have read has made me question everything about my chosen career. So much that we presume is rigorously researched based and carried out for the good of the patient… the truth is a lot more sinister. It is challenging to be providing treatments which this book reasonably argues are generally ineffective.”
Filed Under Uncategorized Posted by devcore on 26 January 2021
