Modern medicine tends to target the pathology of an illness rather than preventing it
In 1940, Albert Alexander, a London constable, was the first human to receive a dose of penicillin for an acute facial infection that had spread to multiple abscesses and claimed his eye. Left untreated, it would have been fatal. His response to the medication was āremarkable.ā But it didnāt lastāthe infection relapsed within six months, and Alexander died a year later. Nonetheless, the āGolden Ageā of Modern Medicine was launched, and medical reductionism took hold. Therapy targeted to the pathology. The right antibiotic could kill the right bacteria, and people got better. Screw prevention, which takes time, infrastructure, and investment. Now you could achieve cure. Thereās a pill for that. Targeted therapy via personal intervention became the unyielding goal of Modern Medicine. I find this characteristic of left hemisphere cognition in that it involves a narrow spotlight consciousness, which results in reductionism, as well as how The left hemisphere sees things abstracted, isolated, and stripped of context. Also, the The right hemisphere sees the whole first, and then the left hemisphere separates it into parts.
That first Golden Age of Modern Medicine didnāt last even a decade. In 1947, four years after mass production of penicillin, the first bacterial species to develop resistance to the antibiotic reared its ugly head. And so the race was on to develop the next antibioticāmethicillin. And on and on. Since then, weāve continued to chase the concept of targeted therapy, we think we have it within our sites, and yet cures continue to elude us. Here, we can also see how when solving problems, the left hemisphere tends to rely on a single solution that fits what it already knows. Weāve now reached critical massāof drug-resistant bacteria, that is. There are so many resistant species that they now can share intelligence; that is, they can transfer resistance genes between species; a Rise of the Resistance that would terrify all minions of the Empire. Our current crop of antibiotics is coming close to being useless. Add that to the fact that viral diseases are now even more dangerous and harder to control than bacteria ever were, as exemplified first by HIV in 1979, hantavirus in 1993, Ebola in 2014, and coronavirus in 2020. Even so, these arenāt even the biggest problems with Modern Medicine.
We believe weāre in a new Golden Age of Modern Medicine, as we now use high-tech screening of drugs, Big Data informatics, and genetic editing like CRISPR-Cas9 in an attempt to target therapy to the individual and the pathology. For certain genetic diseases, such therapies that are targeted to the pathology will likely result in actual ācure.ā And thatās greatāfor these one in ten thousand to one hundred thousand diseases. Weāre even looking to use viruses to program an individualās own immune cells to kill cancers in that same individualāthe ultimate targeted therapy. Weāre using robotics and cyberknives to reach surgical outcomes previously unimagined. At UCSF, researchers are harvesting stem cells from individuals with type 1 diabetes, using growth factors to differentiate them into pancreatic beta-cells in a petri dish, and then injecting them back into the patient to attempt to cure their diabetes. Itās true that patients who previously had no hope now have hope. Which is absolutely greatāfor those patients, and only if they can afford these treatments.
References
- Lustig, Robert. (2021). Metabolical Chapter 2. āModern Medicineā Treats Symptoms, Not Disease (p. 37). New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
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Type:š“ Tags: Biology / Medicine / Pharmacology Status:āļø