Medicine at the beginning of the XXI century
Western medicine has achieved tremendous breakthroughs by the beginning of the XXI century: major infectious diseases have been defeated, surgeons perform heart and kidney transplantations on a daily basis, modern computer technologies allow monitoring human organs in vivo. Glimmering displays, subtle biochemical and genetic analyses, a vast inventory of medicines and drugs. One would think that all diseases must retreat before this multibillion dollar onslaught. However, this is far from the truth.
At the beginning of the XXth century various infectious diseases, as well as other acute illnesses, prevailed; however, by the beginning of the 21st century the leadership went to chronic and systemic disturbances of health. And the fact that people in developed countries have a longer average lifespan now is not accountable for this – many diseases that previously were common onlyfor elderly people have suddenly grown much ‘younger.’ In particular,childhood diabetes is becoming more and more common, whereas only 2 or 3 decades ago it used to be an extremely rare disease. Recent studies showed that almost 20% of American children and teenagers have their coronary arteries affected by atherosclerosis plaques. In Scotland, the incidence of autoimmune diseases among children and teenagers has grown twofold during the past 10 years. In Russia, not more than only 12% of primary school students and not more than only 5% of secondary school students are absolutely healthy. The majority of children suffer from chronic diseases. The number of children suffering from cardiovascular diseases, for example, has grown increased by more than a half during the period from 1989 to 1998. Many of such these children have been disabled since their childhood.
The number of people suffering from various allergic diseases is growing fast. The disease incidence has grown by 30-40% as compared to the previous decade, and in some countries as much as a half of the whole population manifests classic symptoms of allergy. More and more people are suffering from chronic skin diseases with uncertain causes, such as eczemas and psoriasis, and from various smouldering inflammatory diseases of internal organs, joints and musculoskeletal system, to the and irritated bowel syndrome and other chronic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. 26% of the USA population and 41% of the population of Great Britain manifest symptoms of the digestive disorder (dyspepsia). In a significant number of patients, non-ulcerous dyspepsia later transforms into serious organic lesions, sometimes even cancer. For many patients, the chronic course of somatic diseases is complicated with a tendency towards neurosis and depressions. In many countries more and more patients are diagnosed as having such major systemic disturbances as the chronic fatigue syndrome, seasonal depression, and the syndrome of childhood hyper excitability hyperactivity with distracted attention deficit disorder.
Until recently, not all physicians regarded the overweight or obesity problems as clinically significant diseases. Now the correlation between being overweight and having serious chronic disorders is becoming obvious evident. 30% of the adult population and 50% of the elderly population of developed countries have body weight substantially above healthy standards, and the problem keeps getting worse. Medical statistics of the USA say that 45% of all patients suffering from hypertension, 85% of diabetics and 35% of all ischemic heart disease patients are obese. The mortality rate of obese cancer patients is 30- 50% higher than the average mortality rate of patients with normal weight, and for such cancer types as the rectal or prostate cancer in men and endometrial cancer in women the difference associated with obesity is fivefold.
Thus, a typical present-day patient is chronically ill, usually with diseases that afflict several physiological systems at the same time. Quite often, placing a disease within a certain class, for example the class of cardiovascular pathology or diabetes, reflects only a set of the most pronounced symptoms, whereas what happens in reality is the reciprocal influence of various pathologic manifestations, which significantly complicates the diagnostics. The systemic nature of chronic diseases and their polyetiology (or, most likely, uncertain etiologies) seriously encumber both prevention and treatment of such diseases.
This situation is no coincidence. It results from the main concept of the Occidental Allopathic medicine – treating the disease, and not the person. Each field of medicine concerns itself only with particular organs or systems; each physician offers his or her own special set of medicines – extremely strong chemicals that influence certain regulatory processes of the organism. Simultaneous prescription of several drugs without clear understanding of the nature of their interaction is quite common. Official statistics tell us that in the USA 97,000 patients die every year due to errors in prescription of drugs.
Medicine at the beginning of the XXI century
“Living organisms are just incredibly complex machines”
R.Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. 1993
This point of view, expressed by one of the leading most widely read genetic theorists of modern time, became prevalent in medicine and biology as early as in the end of the XVIII century, and originated from the vigorous progress of technical sciences based on mechanist, reductionist and chemical approaches. Breakthroughs in chemistry in the XIX-XX centuries gave rise to an illusory idea that processes within the organism can be controlled just like reactions in a test tube.
The whole entire XX century passed by the motto with a goal of refining our knowledge of molecular processes in biological systems. New subtleties of chemical processes kept surfacing, new classes of substances roused enthusiasm of in the scientific community and the Nobel prize committee, and industry responded by creating more and more new classes of synthetic drugs. Each year promised the general public that all diseases would be cured,as soon as the clinical tests of yet another ‘Kremlin pill’ are completed. The epic project for mapping of human genes played a very important part in this industrial and financial race. Genetic drugs have already begun their assault on the purses of consumers, not to mention genetically modified foods.
The extent of the threat that these achievements pose for the health of humanity can be assessed merely by looking at the population of the most prosperous country in the world – the United States. The number of chronic childhood diseases is growing there every year, and in the USA a situation when a person can no longer fits into a standard chair, or requiring an extension of the automobile or aircraft seat belts by means of extra straps, is now considered quite normal. The USA population has already become genetically modified in many ways.
The number of synthetic medicines is ever increasing, the prices keep on growing, the production volume of pharmaceutical business has outdone the heavy engineering industry, and this business has no time for the individual person, with his/her particular problems and stresses. A human being is replaced by a diagnosis based on the set of symptoms. And then the diagnosis is treated, not the individual. This Any particular John Smith can only get in the way of the process with his emotions. The only exception to this rule is possibly the infantile paediatrics, since because paediatricians monitor the development of a child.
Thus, until you have strongly pronounced symptoms of some disease, turning to the classic Occidental Allopathic medicine is pointless. No one will even listen to you.