Medical Intelligence and the Healing Art.
Is intellect the agency for a medical cure?
Is the patient the sum total of his illness?
These questions invoke, provoke and ultimately revoke the
currently held sway, which rings freely today.
The modern human mind is plagued with the notion that all problems
can be solved through enumeration. The increasing value being placed on
technology is a testament to the desire to farm that thought into action. It is
all about creation, replication and enumeration. The science of discovery has
taken a back seat to the numbers game.
The computer generated data, with all
its wonderful gains and purported ills makes for a charting scheme. Charting the numbers
to create a graph to prove an unproven hypothesis is the call of today’s
intelligentsia.
In medicine we lord over and frown upon, with impunity,
those that want time and discussion, a moment with the patient, unencumbered
with the contrivances of “fill this form and appeal that one.” Time has been
force-morphed into money. Everything, even diseases have been converted into a series
of 1 and 0s and dollars. But dare I ask the question? Dare I inquire whether knowing this
hefty bag of minutiae harbors any benefit for the patient?
Didn’t think so.
Our knowledge too has become superficial, yet deeply filled
with mindless data. We feed off of each other, nuances of this and that and
when it comes to the original calamity that we hope to fix, we turn our eyes
away from the other set of eyes and stare into the flickering screen with
nothing left but a deeply furrowed forehead, eyes reduced to slits and all
nose, and the screen in front of us. We have become the caricatures of our own creation. Oh yes we may know that a certain
Wnt signaling mechanism is needed to create and possibly propagate colon cancer
and even prostate cancer, but what does that do for the patient? Or for that
matter the knowledge of the manifest KRAS mutation in a large percentage of
pancreatic cancer patients, or the SHANK-2 or -3 gene mutation and the haplo-insufficient Copy Number Variants (CNV) known as a
disruptive influence in brain neural network leads to Autism Spectrum Disorder, but what of that?
Can that mutation ever be fixed and if so, might that lead to some other
downstream malady? Especially when we don’t even know whether the genetic
mutation was a cause or an effect of nature or nurture. The SCN5a (Sodium
Channel gene) at 3p24-p21, one of 30 such mutations in coronary artery disease
is well known and we would look awfully smart when we propound that information
to the laity, but does that fix any problems? My point is, information is
coming at us in zeta-fold containers of bits, yet we still have to fight each
illness one patient at a time. Don’t we?
And each disease manifests differently in different patients because of
many, many underlying factors. Don’t get me wrong; new scientific information
is good and one-day the accumulated knowledge will presage the dawn of newer
therapy. But until such time, let us tend to the problems at hand and use the partial information wisely.
by Brian Christie
And there in lies the conundrum of intelligence. What is
medical intelligence? Is it the bookish data of this and that, which impresses
rather then seeks to heal? Is that why modern medicine considers a patient a
sum total of his or her illness, rather then a human being with illness? Is
“healing” just another art form defined by someone in some esoteric journal
with a given set of data-points?
No wonder our primitive brain where human emotions and
connections reside, is atrophying at a grand scale. Forgetting, for a while
patients, the society has built and fortified a wall between humans, Human
affairs have undergone a paradigm shift of sorts. We are isolated, more and
more, from the emotions of his and her. We seem attracted to every disaster, or
morbid event broadcast on television and revel with goose pumps and shrieks
watching scary movies about, death and dismemberment, about vampires and
vultures and aliens that grow inside and suck life away. Maybe in some
surrogate way our lives are being lived via this art form. Human life is now a game. Maybe what we have imagined has become
us.
Where is the connection? Where is the warm kind hand placed
on a shivering shoulder? Where is the comfort of an embrace? Where has knowing
the essence of a human through his or her life, gone? Where are the details of
his or her marriage, birth of a child, divorce, loss of a livelihood, the very
quintessence of each person’s humanity logged in the medical chart? Where is
that historical reference of a patient’s real call for help? Where? Who really
cares anymore? Why should they? Information is everything and time is money.
Maybe we need to exploit that limbic connection once again.
Maybe we should have mothers mothering, so that no more “Columbines” happen.
Maybe we should have father’s attentive to the needs of their children and not
their wants. Maybe we should spend time as a family reveling in each other’s
daily exploits, rather than glued to the macabre flickers of far-away disasters,
tragedies and inhuman behavior on the television screen. Maybe we should
rejoice in the birth and not spend countless years worrying about death. Maybe
we should smile more and frown less. Maybe we can say, “Hello friend” and shake
someone’s hand without wanting something in return. Maybe we can rejoice in the
hard work and creativity rather then in the greed, desire satisfaction and
selfish pursuits. Maybe we can think about the patient and only about the patient. Knowing that all
grand pursuits of pure thought and action ultimately lead to great joy in health, wealth and human connections.
Maybe we can. Maybe we will. It lies within us. Dig deeper
and find that humanity once again. Therein lies the salvation for our species.
Dream Big.
Live life to the fullest.
Help those in need.
And your fortunes will multiply manifold.
"Oh I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings..."
Live life to the fullest.
Help those in need.
And your fortunes will multiply manifold.
"Oh I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings..."
Be a Daydream Believer.
http://youtu.be/mJMyXxiBR1Q
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