The medical progress is coming to brick wall.

[Prometheus]

Doctors are trained to be clinicians, not scientists or statisticians, which is an entirely different skill set, both of which time a lot of time and effort just to become competent. Being a good clinician and a good scientist is beyond what we should expect. We shouldn't be surprised the medical field struggle with practicing science. Surely the solution is to allow people who actually trained as scientists to undertake medical research, allowing doctors to do the job they trained for: administering to their patients. Like physica noted, biomedical engineering is one field that seems to be taking this view - we'll see if it pays dividends.

[nec209]

 

Doctors are trained to be clinicians, not scientists or statisticians, which is an entirely different skill set, both of which time a lot of time and effort just to become competent. Being a good clinician and a good scientist is beyond what we should expect. We shouldn't be surprised the medical field struggle with practicing science. Surely the solution is to allow people who actually trained as scientists to undertake medical research, allowing doctors to do the job they trained for: administering to their patients. Like physica noted, biomedical engineering is one field that seems to be taking this view - we'll see if it pays dividends.

 

 

 

I know 5 friends this year that died with cancer !! Also when the NDP leader Jack Layton in Canada died with cancer and rich man like Steve Jobs and man like Patrick Swayze that leaves you in shock how primitive the health care is.

Also disease like motor neuron disease , amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) ,MS, Parkinson's, strokes or spinal cord injury and disease like HiV and autoimmune diseases.

All despite many drugs and vaccines in the late 19 century and early 20th century using a blindfold approach in baement of your home lab.All these fancy powerful computers and better understanding of the human body and chemistry and nice state of the art lab with army of chemists and scientists working on the problem. With little drugs coming out there now.

I hear three theories explaining slow down.

1.government retriction , once a chemists finds a computer model that shows results and you doctor prescribes medication add 10 to 15 years to it.Alll running lab rats tests ,clinical trials and testing. You wont it faster , have people sign up for guinea pigs and lower the testing and you will get 5 year mark than 10 to 15 year mark.

2.The easy diseases have cure and now on to the hard to cure diseases.

3.pharmaceutical incentive conspiracy. More profit making dugs to finght problems they know and easer than speding millions dollars on mystery diseases they don't know hoe to cure.

Edited April 17, 2014 by nec209

[physica]

 

 

that leaves you in shock how primitive the health care

I think you need to broaden your concept of primitive healthcare and look at the bigger picture. Practicalities play a big role. I work in A and E (ER) and our hospital in London has one of the best survival rates for stroke in the UK. This isn't because we know something special about strokes that we're not telling anyone else, it's because we have a call ahead of time before they come in and we have a dedicated stroke team with two functional and maned CT head scanners on standby. A bleed or a clot in the brain has the same symptoms, the sooner we scan them the sooner we know and the sooner we can treat. Other hospitals don't do so well because they don't have this set up. I don't know why this could be down to funds etc. Healthcare quality is not a scientific issue but more of a political issue, this is why politicians get heavily involved in it. The proof is in the pudding, the differences in healthcare from country to country differs far more than the understanding of the body from country to country.

 

For cancer there has been great advances, photodynamic therapy is were they inject a light sensitive drug, it gets absorbed by the cancer cells and then you hit the cancer cells with a certain light frequency, this causes a chemical reaction that destroys the cells. The reality isn't a pitch perfect as my simple explanation but there are some promising case studies.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22673101

 

A famous case was Aine Shaw, she had inoperable lung cancer. She had the cancer removed by photodynamic therapy in a couple of out patient sessions and there has been no regrowth. The problem now is pushing it through the regulation, buying these machines, training the right amount of people, regulating it, coming up with standardized treatment protocols for clinicians to follow (we are certainly not individual thinkers, medical and nursing school is all about memorizing physiology and practical protocols, graduation shows that you've memorized enough not to be too dangerous) and setting up a service will take years. As I tell my students and my patients, healthcare is all practicalities and politics.

 

As for the concept of primitive it is a subjective one but we have to take into account the Easterlin paradox.

 

The Easterlin paradox makes the point that an increase in wealth will momentarily increase happiness but then the subject will become used to this increase and treat it as standard thus the increase in wealth doesn't improve overall happiness. The same can be said for medicine. Many of my patients have complained because they have to wait 2 hours for the results of the bloods i've just taken. Having a heart attack, stroke or cancer 5 years ago would be fairly different to having it now. Personally I think healthcare is advancing but it could be more effective. The situation is complex and I do not claim to have all the answers but one thing I am confident about is that clinicians should get out of scientific bio-medical research and focus of improving their team, delivery of their service and effectiveness of the structure of their service.

Edited April 17, 2014 by physica

[nec209]

I think you need to broaden your concept of primitive healthcare and look at the bigger picture. Practicalities play a big role. I work in A and E (ER) and our hospital in London has one of the best survival rates for stroke in the UK. This isn't because we know something special about strokes that we're not telling anyone else, it's because we have a call ahead of time before they come in and we have a dedicated stroke team with two functional and maned CT head scanners on standby. A bleed or a clot in the brain has the same symptoms, the sooner we scan them the sooner we know and the sooner we can treat. Other hospitals don't do so well because they don't have this set up. I don't know why this could be down to funds etc. Healthcare quality is not a scientific issue but more of a political issue, this is why politicians get heavily involved in it. The proof is in the pudding, the differences in healthcare from country to country differs far more than the understanding of the body from country to country.

 

For cancer there has been great advances, photodynamic therapy is were they inject a light sensitive drug, it gets absorbed by the cancer cells and then you hit the cancer cells with a certain light frequency, this causes a chemical reaction that destroys the cells. The reality isn't a pitch perfect as my simple explanation but there are some promising case studies.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22673101

 

A famous case was Aine Shaw, she had inoperable lung cancer. She had the cancer removed by photodynamic therapy in a couple of out patient sessions and there has been no regrowth. The problem now is pushing it through the regulation, buying these machines, training the right amount of people, regulating it, coming up with standardized treatment protocols for clinicians to follow (we are certainly not individual thinkers, medical and nursing school is all about memorizing physiology and practical protocols, graduation shows that you've memorized enough not to be too dangerous) and setting up a service will take years. As I tell my students and my patients, healthcare is all practicalities and politics.

 

As for the concept of primitive it is a subjective one but we have to take into account the Easterlin paradox.

 

The Easterlin paradox makes the point that an increase in wealth will momentarily increase happiness but then the subject will become used to this increase and treat it as standard thus the increase in wealth doesn't improve overall happiness. The same can be said for medicine. Many of my patients have complained because they have to wait 2 hours for the results of the bloods i've just taken. Having a heart attack, stroke or cancer 5 years ago would be fairly different to having it now. Personally I think healthcare is advancing but it could be more effective. The situation is complex and I do not claim to have all the answers but one thing I am confident about is that clinicians should get out of scientific bio-medical research and focus of improving their team, delivery of their service and effectiveness of the structure of their service.

 

 

 

 

We still don't know why people are getting cancer and autoimmune diseases. And why it getting so out of control now.

 

Some theories are bad food ,junk food ,chemicals in food ,being fat and obesity and type of foods people have.But science still can't explain the why and how. What is it in the food.

 

What in the foods that trigger it. What is it about the food.

[Endy0816]

People are generally living longer, so the cancer rates are going to increase. We deal with one thing and what kills people is whatever we haven't dealt with yet.

 

Even if we developed a cure for all types of Cancer tomorrow, we're still going to have people dying from other illnesses.

 

You should feel free to do what you can to minimize your own risk. Relates to your genetics, lifestyle and environment. Dig into the scientific literature and if nothing else schedule regular screenings. Don't fall for the assorted hype. It is human nature to latch on to the easy answer, when in reality the more difficult route will yield the best results.

[HRS]

Not to sound like one of those nanotech bandwagon persons, but you are somewhat overlooking the future contributions of this field. Possibilities and applications include injecting engineered molecules with bee venom compounds that are specifically attracted purely to cancer cells and leave regular tissue alone. Another includes utilizing a ferromagnetic probe controlled by external magnetic fields that can be injected into the eyes and clear up blocked blood passages to cure an ailment which escapes me at the moment. Prosthetic limbs are reaching a very promising point as well. In a recent Popular Mechanics, they outlined prototype contact lenses that measure glucose levels in tears for diabetics and a chip that uses the beating of an artificial heart as a power source for pacemakers such that battery replacement surgeries would be eliminated, hopefully.

 

Not to mention the abilities to cure blindness and deafness which are being neared.

 

But yes, the immediate time is suffering perhaps. But an exciting and incredible new field may be able to solve many of the problems in the medical field today. But it is still in its infancy. Time can only tell if nanotechnology will be as promising for the medical world as some hope.

[physica]

Not to be cyclic for the hell of it but to make a point. When these diseases are cured we will be complaining about the next round of diseases that we can't cure and make us mortal.