As ridiculous as these medical treatments sound to the modern ear, I wonder how people will look back on our "state of the art" 200 years from now.
One example of many:
https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1073
It's not that the principle of peer review is wrong, it's just very hard to apply it fairly and objectively when money - huge sums of money - are involved.
What do you do if you think you have a medical problem? Where do you go for help? Obviously there are mistakes made and some unnecessary or counterproductive treatments are given in some cases. We’re talking about a massive endeavour involving millions of practitioners across the world. But claiming that in general this activity is not beneficial seems a big claim to make based on a single article on an issue with seemingly specific scope.
That's not what the linked article claims. The linked article claims that there are specific procedures that do not help in specific situations, yet these procedures continue to be done in those situations.
This is totally compatible with the claim that medical care improves outcomes on average.
If you want to justify the claim, "future generations will look at modern medical procedure X and remark at how primitive and pointless X is," you don't need to show that all medical procedures are bunk.
Indeed, in Washington's time, not all medical procedures were bunk. Doctors helped people, sometimes. If doctors in Washinton's time never helped people, the average person would notice that, and stop calling for a doctor. Were some of those procedures harmful to patients? Sure, but not obviously so.
The article I posted is the tip of the iceberg. A commonly recommended, unnecessary procedure, which kills or seriously injures one in fifty is a horrible scandal. Hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from errors in hospitals, a risk one avoids by staying home, is an awful scandal. Drugs prescribed long term to improve mental health issues based on short trials, now suspected to make them worse and induce dependence, are a terrifying prospect. Diabetes treatment protocols now absolutely known to kill people, in use for decades and probably still in use in plenty of cases. Suppression of dissent. Suppression of competition. Corrupt and motivated research.
I'm not saying don't go to the doctor. You should for a lot of things. I certainly do. I'm not saying doctors don't help - for a new issue I know nothing about, I'd generally expect them to be able to. But it is certainly true that if you exercise blind faith in the system, it is perfectly capable of cheerfully killing you. The best advice I have, and it is not very good advice, is to read absolutely everything. Review the basic science yourself for and serious condition you are dealing with, commit to no serious and life changing treatments without plenty of research and multiple opinions, DON'T TRUST THE STANDARD RECOMMENDATIONS TO BE SOLUD WITHOUT REVIEWING THE BASIC SCIENCE, and avoid unnecessary hospital trips and medication as much as possible. It is easy to scoff at the doctors of Washington's day - look at all the unnecessary and harmful crap they did! At least things are better now! Well... yes, a lot of things are better now, but we still do plenty of unnecessary and harmful crap.
He then went bankrupt. He claims that was why.
Whether or not it is, in his specific case, this is a coordination problem. Using antibiotics this way has to be outlawed, because any farmer who unilaterally chooses not to use it is leaving money on the table. In an efficient market, that leads to bankruptcy.
It's entirely likely that we use too many antibiotics, but antibiotics have also saved all of us from unbelievable levels of pain and suffering.
I had an ear infection once, and the pain was unbearable. I went to the doctor, who quipped, "if we leave it alone, eventually it'll just burst the eardrum and drain out." And then she prescribed me some antibiotics. And that's not even the worst situation that calls for antibiotics. It's not like my life was in danger.
The alternative to antibiotics in a lot of these cases is death.
Not sure anyone would look at that “unkindly”.
We can’t really expect doctors to do things that aren’t really very possible (yes dna sequencing is somewhat possible today but the results aren’t necessarily very useful and far too little is known about the interaction of different genes with each other and medicine for it to be useful)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4493566/#!po=5....
> but it's one of the few things we know that kind of works
Chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is one of many pseudo-scientific medical practices commonly used by conventional medical practitioners.
Edit: link to NY Times article on Warburg: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-a...
I have. Chemo is horrible. It really wrecks a person. But you know who looks even worse? Someone who died of untreated cancer.
Look, I get it; cancer is no fun. But when the cure is worse than the disease, it doesn't make sense any more.
Except if you profit from disease and suffering, I guess.
> Patient: Kidney... dialysis.
> McCoy: Dialysis?! What is this? The Dark Ages? Here! You swallow that and if you have any more problems, just call me!