Medical science and its benefits

Rat

Not bored. Never bored.,
Rat
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So I'm attempting on and off to argue with someone about the benefits of medical science, both now and through history. Though an atheist and otherwise rational, she has a grudge against scientists, and especially doctors and other medical scientists, and against science in general. I can't pin down the root of this grudge, but I guess that might help.

I don't need help in pointing out the irrationality of her viewpoint, but I am after specific examples and resources therefor. Can people enumerate specific advances in medical science over the last 100 years or so? She is fairly adamant that cancer is still more or less invariably fatal, and feels the same about heart disease, so without specific figures, those ideas are hard to counter. She will give vaccination, but puts any other increase in life expectancy over the last however long solely down to improved sanitation, which is not medical science, it seems.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Antibiotics
Organ transplants (including immunosuppresants)
Treatment of diabetes using insulin
 
That's three good ones. Particularly diabetes, which would have been almost certainly fatal not so long ago.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Increased sanitation? Has sanitation increased in the last, oh, say, six decades? Well, life expectancy has.

How can she separate vaccination from medical science (or sanitation, for that matter)? So whatever works doesn't count? (this is a bit like Kumar).

But to continue the list (sure, they all have a dangerous side, so does anything that works):

Cortizons
Hormone replacement
Simple analgesics
Vitamin supplements
Antidepressants
Blood pressure regulators

And of course, statistics will show that cancer survival rates are rising.

Hans
 
Not always the most glamorous side of medicine, but advances in diagnosis have been monumental. MRIs, CAT scans, PET scans, innumerable blood assays, sonograms, genetic tests, etc.

You can't fix what you don't know is wrong.
 
Vaccines deserve mention yet again, because they're worth it.

There was that surgery I went through to not become a hunchback later in life, though it doesn't quite make me a titanium superhero. (Imagine we have one somewhere who can swoop in add a lot, though. :D)
 
MRC_Hans said:
...Blood pressure regulators
..
Click to expand...

I would like to expand on that particular bit with a couple of anecdotes:

1) My stepmother's family has a genetic form of hypertension. She explains that they would "drop dead" sometime after their late 30's, never living past age 45. That is not quite accurate, because her father and one of her brothers were in a great deal of agony during their last few weeks of life as they died from hypertension. Then in the 1950's the first blood pressure meds came out (essentially diuretics). Since then she and three of her remaining four siblings lived well into their 80's and 90's (one brother married a Christian Scientist and did not take meds... he did make it to his early 60's by avoiding tobacco and alcohol, and by being careful what he ate). My stepmother was the youngest in her family, she is now 81 years old --- all of her siblings have passed away (the first one died before she was born during the 1918 flu pandemic).

2) My oldest son has a genetic heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It is one of the leading causes of sudden death in young people... especially since one of its first symptoms is "sudden death". Because our family doctor detected a heart murmur, the kid got an echocardiogram where he was diagnosed. He is now on betablockers which has decreased the blood pressure differential across the mitral valve and is preventing any further damage. More information at http://www.4hcm.org/WCMS/index.php .

So let me add to the list: Imaging technology, especially ultrasound for pre-birth sonograms and heart imaging with the echocardiogram.
 
For cancer statistics (in the US), see SEERs annual report to the Nation: http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/jnci;97/19/1407

My first job involved writing, verifying, and running the software that produced these statisticsfor the ACSR - Annual Cancer Statistics Review, that was published yearly from SEER cancer data. I can't find any recent web hits for that publication; I don't know if it is currently being published. It looks like this report may have supplanted it? Dunno, been a long time since I was in that game.

In any case, the short answer is, in general cancer survival rates are up, death rates are down, and incidence rates fluctuates.


ETA: ah, here we go, now they are calling it the SEER Cancer Statistic Review. Just seeing those tables gives me the shudders. Spent too many hours formatting them!:

http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2002/sections.html
 
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Rat said:
Though an atheist and otherwise rational, she has a grudge against scientists, and especially doctors and other medical scientists, and against science in general. I can't pin down the root of this grudge, but I guess that might help.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hijack:

My wife has an 'education' degree. They study a lot of stuff like art, history, culture, etc. She has little time for both religion and science! Some liberal-arts professor, somewhere along the line, has told her that science is a religion. She thinks science and technology are, at best, "shifty."

If she wasn't so smart and hard-working and witty and funny (let's not forget good looking), etc. I'd divorce her! :D

She just got some bad info from someone she respected... :(

Even smart Profs can be stupid (I realized this (idolizing them, previously) when a History of Technology prof started misquoting a book that I had, coincidentally, just read), just like everyone else. ;)

Could something like this be part of what's going on?
 
I think that's more or less exactly what's going on. I also think a large part of it comes down to a dislike specifically of doctors. The only way to justify such a dislike of an entire group of people is to dismiss whatever it is that makes them such a group, and that's medicine.

Some good things here to bring up next time, anyway. I like everything said so far, and it will give me some specific things to point out, whereas previously I have been too flabbergasted to be able to come up with a serious response; I often have this problem when dealing with such attitudes.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Incidentally, "The Scots Magazine" is still published monthly.

Rat I'd suggest dentistry. And anaesthetics. If she really thinks medical tech is no use, she might try foregoing the latter.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Make sure people don't mistake "there is more cancer because people are living longer" with "we can't cure cancer."

~~ Paul
Click to expand...
I'd already noted while looking for figures on cancer statistics how easy it would be to fall into that trap. Here's medical science trying its best to tackle cancer for decades, and cancer rates are just increasing.

Reminds me of the Onion story along the lines of "Despite the best efforts of medical science, the death rate remains steady at 100%".

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Why not point your friend to Fowlsounds' "Doing the least to save your life"? There's also a very eloquent piece from CaveDave about Polio and the effect vaccination has had.

Also it's worth rummaging around the pharmacy and seeing what's available over the counter for minor ailments, a quick peek at NetDoctor can give you a good laymans summary of how drugs work and how our better understanding of the human body allows us to tailor drugs for specific purposes. Having taken one or the other for a while looking up Lansoprazole and Ommeprazole are both good examples of a tailored drug, it does one thing very well with minimal side effects.
 
Infertility treatment would seem another good example, to my mind.

And how about separation of conjoined twins?
Or cosmetic surgery treating people disfigured after accidents or major surgery?
 
X-rays.
Pacemakers.
Ultrasound imaging.
The pill.
Defibilators.
Cataract treatment.
Blood transfusions.
The smallpox vaccine.
 
Rat said:
She will give vaccination, but puts any other increase in life expectancy over the last however long solely down to improved sanitation, which is not medical science, it seems.
Click to expand...
I'm not clear what her stance on vaccination is from reading your statement but a common argument among anti-vaxers is that reduction in the incedence of disease is attributable to improved sanitation and not to vaccines.

This (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7455/1513?etoc) is an example of the incidence of polio increasing following suspension of vaccination on religious grounds in parts of Nigeria.

Yuri
 
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