Gonzaga: Modern medicine: Warfare or wellness?
IN THE fight against Covid-19, the struggle to keep alive those infected with the virus have shown graphic images of doctors and nurses garbed in spacesuit-like attires treating patients enclosed in heavily secured rooms. As seen in the pictures shared by the Wuhan Hospital handling Covid-19, their treatment approach shows that a sickness is a form of warfare, an “attack” against an enemy. Drugs, vaccines, and immunization work like magic to kill “the enemy germs”. Yet, despite the emergence of various types of antibiotics, different surgical operations, radiation and chemotherapy in the treatment of illness like cancer, the few who truly get well from these procedures are greatly disproportionate.
In modern medicine, gone is the concept that a sickness is a form of healing itself. As recognized nutritionist and naturopathic doctor Paavo Airola described, Disease” is a self-defensive effort of the body to restore impaired health”, not a negative condition which should be combatted and suppressed with all available means, but a positive, constructive process initiated by the body’s healing forces aimed at restoring health. Incredible as it may sound, we actually need disease to get well! When the body becomes ill, only the disease (which more correctly should be called health-restoring activity) can bring it back to health again. Thus, we do not cure a disease, but cure a sick body, and restore health—which is nothing but nature’s own way of getting you well!”
Healing as essentially process of restoring chemical imbalance in the body has been lost in the practice of modern medicine which roots —the drug and surgery-based mainstream medical procedures, reflect rationalistic, dualistic view: the separation of the ‘mind’ from the ‘body’. This view ultimately led to the various specialization in modern medicine —one that focuses exclusively upon particular branches and the organ system it treats, “usually without regard for how the organism and life itself are interwoven.”
Crisis in modern medicine
High-tech medicine excels in the handling of emergencies-- a number of bacterial infections, trauma care, and many daring complex surgical techniques, but, “it has failed miserably in the areas of disease prevention and the management of chronic, and myriad new illnesses like Covid-19. Highly industrialized nations like the US and Canada, pay more for medical care, and accomplish less than most other nations of comparable living standards, while health-care costs continue to skyrocket.
In the US where there is catastrophic healthcare, over $1 trillion annually, the treatment of chronic disease accounts for 85 percent of the national health-care bill. The greatest indicator of the depth of the medical crisis as P. Bergner and K. Kail report is that the Americans “have come to accept such levels of chronic disease a normal, despite evidence that much of it is preventable.”
Former US Surgeon General Dr. C. E. Koop pointed out that dietary imbalances are the leading preventable contributors to premature death, and recommends the expansion of nutrition and lifestyle-modification education for all health-care professionals.
Koop based his recommendation on this statistic: 54 percent of heart disease, 37 percent of cancer, 50 percent of cerebrovascular disease, and 49 percent of hardening of the arteries is preventable through lifestyle modification. The depth of the medical crisis is a widespread reality, not only in the West but also in Asia.
Ironically, doctors themselves brought about this serious medical crisis. Confronted daily with many patients suffering from sicknesses, these modern doctors offer only superficial treatment of symptoms. Yet, the magic of antibiotics is vanishing as a host of resistant infections emerge. AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, have shown, that present treatments are simply not effective, and hint at new health problems that may lie ahead. The metaphor of a modern plague may be appropriate. Countless people lack vitality and suffer from a host of complaints difficult to define-- adults and many children suffer allergies, headaches, lack of energy, excessive fatigue, various digestive and respiratory disorders, along with different emotional states, from mild depression to mood swings and anxiety.