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Comment by dubbed | Hacker News Reader

Medicine is the only industry that can sell flawed products, offer no guarantees, and charge arbitrary prices for services without any consequence. Anyone else see parallels to organized religions of old? They even operate in the same space... curing the sick, promising long life, dictating the right way to live, holding the key to life and death. They have ordained priests that hold exclusive rights to practice the rituals. There is even a tithe in the form of medical insurance... I speak heresy, I know. I will repent before I am burned at the stake.

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Sounds kind of like software.

Sounds like literally every living system.

we live in a world of cults, but somehow think we're more enlightened than our ancestors.

our ancestors saw patterns in the stars; we see patterns in molecules and such. Only the tools of observation have changed, our minds stayed the same.

If you want 100% guarantees and no side effects make sure your creator is your doctor.

I am 100% enthusiastic about my doctor, if I want my actual experience to be ignored, an unwanted prescription for early-cholesterol junk to be pushed upon me, and a useless colonoscopy that ends with me just taking what's over the counter anyway.

> Medicine is the only industry that can sell flawed products, offer no guarantees, and charge arbitrary prices for services without any consequence.

Where do you frame mandatory requirements for clinical trials along with your personal assertion regarding "flawed products with no guarantees" ?

Did a doctor ever give you a guarantee that their treatment would heal you? Contrast with almost any other industry... the baker telling you "this piece of bread might cure your hunger, but there is a 10% risk that it will kill you instead". Clinical trials are in many cases smoke and mirrors - very elaborate and inscrutable, but provide no guarantees in the end. When it comes down to results of medical treatments, your mileage will vary and you take the responsibility upon yourself.

The baker cannot guarantee I won't discover a gluten sensitivity, or choke on the bread, or any number of other things.

Very little in life is guaranteed. Vaccine efficacy fitting this rule shouldn't be surprising.

Professionals hedging their bets with asterisks isn't helpful.

> Did a doctor ever give you a guarantee that their treatment would heal you?

You don't get a guarantee that a brand of paint will work with your walls, but that does not mean paint doesn't work.

Meanwhile, personally I've enjoyed a 100% success rate in all medical treatments I was subjected to. I might be lucky, but I'm under the impression that everyone around me has been fantastically lucky as well.

Does this mean there are no conditions for which modern medicine does not have a good answer to? Absolutely. But it's my understanding that patients are indeed briefed on relative chances of success.

There are certainly some treatments that work - setting a broken bone for example - but there are many that don't work. The problem is that the truths are mixed with the untruths, and unfortunately the treatments that don't work tend to be the expensive and, by definition, the risky ones.

It comes down to overreach by the "experts". This is also not a novel concept - Socrates' famous saying "I know that I know nothing" actually refers to how most "experts" DON'T know what they don't know, and thus overreach their authority. By recognizing what he doesn't know, Socrates thus establishes his intellectual superiority. Interesting story that I don't feel like writing out in full right now, but highly relevant.

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