Arts, Science, and Medicine

[Alchemist_Happiness]

Actually, the problem goes further than that - most people doing undergraduate degrees in social sciences and humanities are not going to be working in those fields, much less obtaining further education in those areas. I have an honours BA in political science concurrent with my math degree. I don't know which of my classmates are having the most "impact", though in my experience most poli sci students are thinking of law school, journalism, or - and this is the opposite of "helping people" - becoming political staffers and hangers-on of some sort, i.e. future political hacks who will never have a real job in their life.

 

Interesting. So do you feel that your poli sci background provides you anything different than your average med school applicant? Especially considering the kind of institutional problems that Canadian health care is facing, I would think that it would be useful to have an understanding of political systems and how change can be effected.

 

I'm not aware that this has anything to do with eliminating portions of the curriculum. In fact, that's a ridiculous straw man in light of things like Dal's Humanities in Medicine Program.

 

That looks like a really interesting program. At the U of A Hospital, they have a program called "Artists on The Ward" that also seeks to integrate medicine with humanities. I think the fact such programs exist points to the growing realization that we need to treat patients as entire entities and human beings, not just biomedical machines.

[Alchemist_Happiness]

Alchemist, your sweeping generalizations and lamentations about the entire population of this board and the profession which people here are so passionate about seems misguided in its tone of ignorance and arrogance.

...

 

You have to know that the tone and context of your message is very confrontational and implies that you possess a stance and perspective that is somehow more correct and fundamentally better than the majority of premeds and doctors. If you even get in to med, you will benefit from finding a way to question the system that conveys humility instead of judgement.

 

I apologize if I sounded arrogant. Arrogance is precisely what I don't like about premeds (or any other discipline, for that matter). I was just trying to flesh out the feelings of other people on this forum, and I'm glad that some discussion resulted.

 

I agree that it is a simplification to talk about a discourse of medicine. My perspective is that of someone from the outside looking in, and I hope my perspective will become more nuanced as I go through med school. I do want to understand how we can make our modern health care system a more compassionate and more understanding system. As medicine has become a more team-based approach, there has been a corresponding feeling for some patients that they have become cogs in a machine. I think that integrating the humanities into the medical curriculum and trying to think about the concept of medicine itself can help us to do that. Of course that's my opinion, and I'm interested in what people have to say.

 

and lastly, I mean no disrespect to premed101. It's a superb source of information, and I think most of the members are highly respectful to one another. My generalizations and opinions are based entirely on my own experiences and interactions with other people-and I am not making the facetious claim that I'm being "objective". These are the things I've experienced, and I'm glad I've been able to hear perspectives from other people.

[raketemensch]

If we only rejected acupuncture because it doesn't work, I would have no problem with that. And it seems from the various articles posted that the evidence does seem to be against acupuncture. I guess the question is then: why is acupuncture still so popular? and why has it lasted for so long? If you think that regular people are stupid, and that 100 years ago everyone was stupid, and now we are all smart, then you can say that the reason acupuncture still exists is because it is the last fading vestiges of an unenlightened past. I happen to think that just because we have greater technology that doesn't make us smarter, and I think it's worth at least trying to understand what motivates people to seek acupuncture treatment instead of maintaining a paternalistic attitude towards the people who perhaps will be our patients.

 

You're kind of putting words in my mouth when you suggest that I think regular people are stupid. I characterized acupuncture practitioners as unethical, and I stand by that because the onus is on a health care provider to provide evidence that their intervention is safe and effective. Patients cannot be blamed for receiving bogus treatments, especially when they have been misled by the epic amounts of bull**** available on the Internet.

 

I wholeheartedly agree that technological advances do not make anybody smarter; however, as science progresses, humanity in general is able to describe and explain more aspects of the universe. That is why the scientific endeavor is seen as a march towards progress- the knowledge available to humanity increases over time. That doesn't make humans in the past stupid, but it certainly makes them more ignorant. I also agree that people now are not necessarily 'smart.' Although there is a huge amount of scientific information available, most of it is buried in libraries and completely unknown to most people. The science has been done, but individuals now may not be any more enlightened because most people don't have time to learn every piece of scientific information. I would have thought that was obvious.

 

 

I'm not 100% sure that we everyone has progressed in terms of "life expectancy, quality of life, and opportunity" either. In fact, the majority of the world is starving and has no opportunity for advancement whatsoever. Even in the Western world (such as the United States), there are millions of people living in abject poverty. In the past, however, there have been periods in history where there has been absolutely no hunger-everyone had enough to eat. Again, I'm not saying that those times were better, only that it is a fallacy to see the march of history as an unbroken march towards a greater and more glorious future.

 

 

What are you basing these claims on? The majority of the world is starving?? The majority? When were these hunger-free historical periods? Did any of them last longer than a few years of plentiful harvest, or affect the majority of people on earth? Yeah, the 12th and 13th centuries were pretty good times for European Peasants... except for the cyclical famines, wars, oppression, feudalism, early 14th century subsistence/wage crisis, and Black Death. The past absolutely sucked for almost everyone. Remember those things called serfdom, slavery, and indentured servitude?

 

Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talks exactly about this "great scientist" hypothesis. Although no one would deny that Isaac Newton and Einstein were great thinkers, you also have to realize that the conditions had to be right in order for their ideas to be widely accepted. In other words, scientific discovery is not a linear progression, but rather progresses through periods of intense discovery and insight.

 

Who said it was perfectly linear? I only claimed that there has been progress in the last 500 years, and that this progress has benefited us immensely. I mean, sure, you're right! Conditions do have to be in place for great thinkers to emerge... that's certainly why most scientific advances have been due to white European males- everyone else was systematically oppressed by Western Society.

 

Oh, and one last thing: is it really true that hospital-borne infections are decreasing? I seem to remember something about MRSA...

 

I've gotta hit you with another SBM link on this one:

 

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=5273

 

What, exactly, do you remember about MRSA?

[leap87]

If we only rejected acupuncture because it doesn't work, I would have no problem with that. And it seems from the various articles posted that the evidence does seem to be against acupuncture. I guess the question is then: why is acupuncture still so popular? and why has it lasted for so long? If you think that regular people are stupid, and that 100 years ago everyone was stupid, and now we are all smart, then you can say that the reason acupuncture still exists is because it is the last fading vestiges of an unenlightened past. I happen to think that just because we have greater technology that doesn't make us smarter, and I think it's worth at least trying to understand what motivates people to seek acupuncture treatment instead of maintaining a paternalistic attitude towards the people who perhaps will be our patients.

 

I'm not 100% sure that we everyone has progressed in terms of "life expectancy, quality of life, and opportunity" either. In fact, the majority of the world is starving and has no opportunity for advancement whatsoever. Even in the Western world (such as the United States), there are millions of people living in abject poverty. In the past, however, there have been periods in history where there has been absolutely no hunger-everyone had enough to eat. Again, I'm not saying that those times were better, only that it is a fallacy to see the march of history as an unbroken march towards a greater and more glorious future.

 

Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talks exactly about this "great scientist" hypothesis. Although no one would deny that Isaac Newton and Einstein were great thinkers, you also have to realize that the conditions had to be right in order for their ideas to be widely accepted. In other words, scientific discovery is not a linear progression, but rather progresses through periods of intense discovery and insight.

 

Oh, and one last thing: is it really true that hospital-borne infections are decreasing? I seem to remember something about MRSA...

 

Huh? What planet did you live on?

[Alchemist_Happiness]

 

It's easy to sound intelligent among those who agree with you.

It's much more impressive to sustain an intelligent discourse with those who don't.

 

Agreed. 10char.

[DOC_Ma]

What is a properly trained acupuncturist? There's no evidence that the actual placement of needles makes any difference, notwithstanding nonsense about "meridians" and Qi.

 

One properly trained should be from an accredited medical school from the origin of the acupuncturist.

[raketemensch]

 

it has worked for the Chinese for thousands of years (isnt that enough to prove its effectiveness?)

 

Hell no!! Effectiveness can only be demonstrated by numerous large, well controlled studies. Even then, it's not always a sure thing. Arguably, acupuncture hasn't worked for the Chinese or anyone else, because no one has been able to find any real evidence of its effectiveness. Just because a certain practice persists for a long time does not mean that it works. Chicken soup won't cure a cold or any other infection, but that won't stop very many mothers from forcing it down the throats of their sick children. Please see the previous links posted in this thread.

[A-Stark]

Interesting. So do you feel that your poli sci background provides you anything different than your average med school applicant? Especially considering the kind of institutional problems that Canadian health care is facing, I would think that it would be useful to have an understanding of political systems and how change can be effected.

 

Well, I suppose it's different than the average applicant, so if diversity in the applicant pool is good for its own sake, I guess I add something. I'm not sure what I add (insofar as poli sci goes; my biostats training gives me a considerable advantage), but then I haven't given it a lot of thought either.

 

That looks like a really interesting program. At the U of A Hospital, they have a program called "Artists on The Ward" that also seeks to integrate medicine with humanities. I think the fact such programs exist points to the growing realization that we need to treat patients as entire entities and human beings, not just biomedical machines.

 

I think that's patient-centred care. Or something to that effect.

[estairella]

That looks like a really interesting program. At the U of A Hospital, they have a program called "Artists on The Ward" that also seeks to integrate medicine with humanities. I think the fact such programs exist points to the growing realization that we need to treat patients as entire entities and human beings, not just biomedical machines.

 

Growing realization? Really? Listen I know you've been accepted, but you haven't attended a single class of medical school yet. If you did, you'd realize patient-centered care has been the modus operandi for the last 15 years or so.

 

Heck, here at UofT one of our classes is CALLED "Arts and Sciences of Clinical Medicine" (see your topic title). This is why everyone is calling you an idiot. Because you are, you have no clue what you're talking about.... you're still just a dumb premed.

[WaveSense]

Agree with Estairella. why not wait till AFTER you've been educated before criticizing it?

 

On a side note... there are studies showing that acupuncture can be used to effectively treat certain diseases. There needs to be more studies obviously, but it doesn't seem all negative.

 

http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001218.html

[raketemensch]

Agree with Estairella. why not wait till AFTER you've been educated before criticizing it?

 

On a side note... there are studies showing that acupuncture can be used to effectively treat certain diseases. There needs to be more studies obviously, but it doesn't seem all negative.

 

http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001218.html

 

Except that the authors concluded: "There is no evidence for an effect of 'true' acupuncture over sham interventions." Studies on conditions such as migraine require careful interpretation, because self-reported pain is obviously subject to the placebo effect.

 

I think that the analysis just shows that prophylactic treatment is not very effective for migraine prevention- if there was anything at all to acupuncture besides a placebo effect, the various sham treatments shouldn't have worked.

[WaveSense]

Just do the search on acupuncture in cochrane and you'll get hundreds of hits. most of them are inconclusive due to the lack of large RCTs but a few have shown that for specific problems, acupuncture does seem to work (or at least shows trends)... here is another one about wrist acupuncture

 

http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003281.html

 

The point is that while while you shouldn't embrace every type of traditional medicine, you also should keep an open mind until their efficacy has been proven or unproven.

[Renoir]

Is some of this an adventure in missing the point? With the prevalence of "Alternative medicine" in this country, I've found that many people are starting to mistrust allopathic doctors, or feel that they are not open minded enough to be their primary caregivers. You can be so open-minded that your brain falls out, but I think that schools today have a responsibility to counsel med students that everything is not always about the "pure science", that well-being does come through more holistic means than just treating for the symptom - excercise, mental health, food, et cetera. I never once saw an MD give vagal nerve massage before in Canada when my mom had SVT emergencies. It was the primary care attempt when she had an episode in Berlin... So maybe aryurveda, yoga, acupuncture are not treating the underlying disease, but they may give indirect benefit (or just placebo). So for the patient, if it isn't harmful, and if it feels good, it is good, isn't it?

[seeking1]

Dear Acupuncture-likers: adenosine. That is all.