Medical Science

[Melendez]

A friend had to have two valves replaced in his heart on Tuesday. This involved splitting open his breastbone, and being hooked up to a heart and lung machine while the valves were replaced. After a five hour operation he was put on a ventalator and transferred to ICU. The ventalator was removed yesterday morning and he sat up and ate a bowl of porridge. He moved out of ICU yesterday evening to a high alert ward and is expected to leave the hospital next week.

I don't know how much the people who are responsible for these procedures get paid, but it can't be enough. I imagine it is not nearly as much as money dealers or stockbrokers who contribute less than nothing to society.

 

[Bar the Bull]

I work in an investment bank, and my mot works in a hospital, and I couldn't agree more with your remarks.

 

[Colin Phillips]

Mel, I felt exactly the same as you when a neurology team removed a brain tumour from my daughter 10 years ago.

Now that's what I call job satisfaction.

 

[PDJ]

Impossible to praise these people enough for the job they do.

 

[krizon]

At what point does 'medical science' become an end in itself, with no regard for the practical outcome for the patient? I'm delighted to hear that certain surgical procedures were life-prolonging, but sometimes I do wonder if medical science hasn't fallen too much in love with itself and not enough in love with the humanity behind its ethos. I'm wondering this, because two meetings ago at Plumpton, there was a fund-raising drive for a baby girl who'd had meningococcal septicaemia. Because this very serious illness, in trying to save the body's vital organs, shuts down peripheral blood supplies, the toddler's feet and hands were starved of circulation. The result: she is now a quadruple amputee. Her arms were severed below their elbows, her legs above her knees. Her life is 'saved' by medical science.

Years ago, the baby would have died, everyone would have grieved, of course, but now the parents have an entirely dependent child who will gradually grow into a highly-dependent adult. Will she find love, happiness, a guy who'll see past the metal hooks and the need to strap his wife into them every day, and who'll put up with the need to take her to get them changed frequently, as amputees have to? Will she really thank medical science for saving her life when she goes to school, and has to put up with what will inevitably be, from some quarters, some cruelties on top of the ones she's suffered?

Medical science often reduces older people's lives to no more than that of a circulating pump. It can keep people 'alive', but not living a life.

There is a lot to thank medical science for. There are many aspects of it, though, that as it strives continually to deny us the natural processes of life, the artificial result it produces is actually counter-productive to the essence of its enjoyment, since being alive is so much more than just breathing.

 

[Shadow Leader]

You make a good point, K. However, I think that in the main, medical science is a wonderful thing & performs daily what would have been seen as miracles only a few short years ago.

My mother was saved from cervical cancer 17 years ago when she was given a 5% chance of survival. In years past she would have been lost & I would be without a mother. It is incredible what can be done nowadays - to the extent that I do wonder sometimes at people who choose not to be treated, knowing they will more than likely die, for what wouldn't necessarily be a terminal illness.