To follow up on my blog from a few days ago about cancer and MD hubris, I suggested that the American medical establishment needs to supplement its great scientific and technological prowess with some greater understanding of “the way of things”. I say this in a broad sense; on the technological level, the medical establishment needs to learn more about how the body works, especially its immune system and the many other mechanisms that carry out self-repair and maintenance. <\/p>\n
On the metaphysical level, doctors need to work on improving their personal interactions with patients, which can have just as powerful an effect on health as any knife, laser or potent drug. Overall, doctors need to adapt a “martial arts” philosophy in fighting disease, the same philosophy having its roots in ancient Eastern thought. I.e., that you understand your enemy’s intentions and movements, and use them to your own advantage. You don’t always fight your enemies head-on; try to lever their momentum as to protect yourself (in this instance, your patient).<\/p>\n
OK, this is much easier said than done. But when you look underneath the hood on how modern medicine selects drugs and techniques to fight disease, you may be appalled at how little these are based on a deep understanding of the body’s many complicated processes, and how much they focus on “the fact that it seems to work for most people”. Medical researches and practitioners need to learn more about chaos theory and complexity \/ emergence doctrine, as to get a better, more organic feel for what the body does. Sure, they know plenty now about proteins and enzymes and cycles and gland structures; much to their credit. But how these things all operate and interact . . . <\/p>\n
Admittedly, this level of understanding may be beyond all but the most brilliant minds, given just how complex the body is. Here is where computers may help us; At some point, it may take a very complex computer program, one that integrates neural networking and massive parallelism to apply “fuzzy logic”, i.e. probabilistic views of most likely outcomes (with variance \/ sensitivity studies to ferret out the side effects resulting from tiny changes from person to person; recall that with chaos theory, tiny changes cause huge differences, such as the butterfly over Beijing causing the hurricane over Barbados). At some point, doctors may need to defer to what a computer thinks about a patient, given his or her actual DNA patterns and other “body state” inputs \/ symptoms.<\/p>\n
But doctors must also learn to do what no computer can do: convey a sense of humanity and common ground with those whom they serve (i.e., “the patients”). Here is where the Tao really comes in. Let’s take a look at Tao verse 13, as translated by Jane English and Gia-Fu Feng:<\/p>\n
Misfortune comes from having a body. Without a body, how could there be misfortune? Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things. Love the world as your own life; then you can truly care for all things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So there it is. My Taoist prescription to MD’s everywhere. Take twice a day, morning and evening, preferably after a comforting, reflective meal. LEARN TO BE HUMAN BEINGS AGAIN!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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