Author:
Ned Depew
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Date Posted: 12:22:02 08/03/05 Wed
Tom -
this is a real problem - between medical "accidents" and iatrogenic disease/antibiotic-resistant bacteria our hospitals are becoming a threat to our health.
I agree that at present we should do our best to avoid them - although there are times when they are unavoidable, and at those times they are in fact indispensible - ah, the irony!
Do we have what some critics have called "a sick attitude towards healing" that focuses on ameliorating symptoms at any cost, without regard for the long-term effects of such treatment?
Our wild over-use of antibiotics - even in cases where they are merely palliative, rather than necessary - has created "Frankenbacteria" that resist even the most potent drugs - and these highly-resistant bacteria are proliferating and spreading - even sharing their resistances with other bacteria - as antibiotics kill off competitors!
I agree that the whole approach to health care has to be changed - it is already moving in that direction, in tiny baby steps. We need to spend as much money on avoiding illness, on keeping people healthy and helping them to avoid known health hazards like smoking, pollution, carcinogens, etc, as we do on treating the avoidable diseases they then contract.
Our "Health Care System" needs to place as much emphasis on "health" as it does on illness! The fact of the name change - while on the one hand it could evolve into Orwellian "newspeak" - could presage that change of attitude - which many people are already embracing, in the form of taking dietary supplements, eating healthy diets, exercising and otherwise trying to promote their own health rather than waiting till they have to deal with "illness."
Hospitals should be a "necessary evil" - the "last resort" of the truly ill - rather than a routine source of care for all. Every industrialized country on earth - except our own - has universal health care for all its people that is based on public free clinics - not hospitals - that supply routine care. It's a model we should have started following long ago.
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