A new book critiques medicine

I agree with you but in a different way :) (what follows its a long text written in bad English but I hope I'll manage to make my idea clear)

Regarding your idea that "By any standard of effectiveness, this is not looking good for pharmaceuticals": This is a very complex topic and I don't think anyone has a clear and objective view/explanation about this.

For example, we have a big problem with the antibiotics. We eat a lot of meat from animals that where treated with antibiotics. We "overuse" antibiotics. Etc. Because of this, new antibiotics-resistant bacteria appeared and classical antibiotics became less and less effective in fighting against them. How should we categorize this issue? Should we see it as a proof of the fact that medicines are not as effective as advertised? It's not a problem with antibiotics per se. Or as a proof that modern medicine is overrated? Medicine correctly identified the problem(bacteria) and the treatment(antibiotics). In reality it is a problem generated by mostly by the rising popularity of automedication, lack of basic medical/pharmaceutical education and urban myths (antibiotics are good for anything), medicines used on animals (which is not a problem of human medicine), and, I would say, only a tiny part of the problem is the treatments that unnecessarily include antibiotics and are prescribed by medicine doctors. But, let's say that we don't know anything about the above mentioned facts and we study some statistics. What would we think when seeing a clear correlation between the increase in the number of antibiotics and decrease of the effectiveness of the treatments? We could see it as a proof that "the quality of medicine drugs has decreased resulting in an increase of ineffective treatment".

The point I'm trying to make is that the reason why the effectiveness of many treatments decreased and now we have a decline in life expectancy it's a very complex issue and it's not fair to see it as simple as a fact failure of pharmaceutics or/and medicine.

Regarding your last statement, I think that we are not seeing improvements because our modern environment and life style has changed and is changing in such a rapid and unpredictable way that medicine can keep the pace. Medicine it's improving, but it's improving too slow. It is as out environment and lifestyle is traveling by plane while medicine and pharmaceutics are traveling by bus...

> I'm not sure there's a huge distinction between "how we structure and pay for our healthcare systems" and "western medicine."

Given that different 'western' nations structure and pay for their health care systems entirely differently, there must be, mustn't there?

Or are you conflating "Western medicine" with "US medicine"?

Indeed you are:

> Medicine is an example of a huge market failure.

> So the conclusion is that scientist say that perhaps vaccines cause earthquakes? [What is a good answer here?]

Is this a similar comparison to what I've said (or implied), in the slightest? Might your imagination have added a bit of extra color to your reading of the actual words I wrote?

It may be enjoyable to mock lesser intelligent people, but if the intent of pro-vaxxers was purely concern about the prevalence and risk of vaccine misunderstanding throughout society, I would expect more willingness to understand what is really happening within the community you're worried about, and less (apparent) glee at simply telling people they're stupid.

At the end of the day, you will reap what you sow.

To add to this profane, yet important point: When you talk with NICU docs, their biggest complaint is the wires and tubes.

Often in a NICU there are wires and tubes everywhere. Operating or trying to help a babe invariably ends up with some person standing on some line and pinching it or ripping it out of the many many machines.

I'm super not kidding here. There are a TON of machines trying to keep the kiddo alive. Imagine a 5m sized cube filled with machines all trying to keep a kid the size of a breadbox breathing and the heart beating (or not, sometimes). It's a lot of carts, wires, amps, and waste heat in these rooms.

Wireless is not possible as a lot of the machines aren't sheilded properly or are activley trying to jam some frequency band for a medical purpose (MRIs). Wires are the only solution. Tubes filled with some form of fluid are also, obviously, not able to be wireless. Especailly when things get desperate, there are liquids, fluids, blood, tissues, urine, and saline everywhere as frantic nurses and docs trip over the tubes and pull them out of their machines.

You want to help the victims? Get rid of the wires. Stop dicking about with matrices.

Don't worry. (Almost?) All the traditional drugs that are effective have been stolen by Big Pharma and are now produced in mass and distributed in a more pure form (or perhaps with some chemical tweak to make it more safe, reduce the side effects, make it cheaper or easier to produce, or as part of an evil trick to get the patent).

So the effective ancient drugs are now part of medicine. Only the leftover are still classified as "traditional" medicine, so don't expect to find too much useful things there.