In my latest column, “Is Medicine Overrated?,” I assess Medical Nihilism, a blistering critique of clinical research and practice. Author Jacob Stegenga, a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, argues that we must “have little self-assurance in medical interventions” due to the fact most do now not work thoroughly. Moreover, medical trials generally tend to overstate the advantages and understate the risks of medicines. I discovered Stegenga’s thesis all too persuasive. However, his e-book left me with lingering questions, which I emailed to Stegenga. He solutions them underneath. I also wanted to submit a graph showing that deaths from tuberculosis started falling well before the advent of vaccines and antibiotics. It corroborates Stegenga’s claim (which he credits to physician/pupil Thomas McKeown) that the current increase in toughness stems extra from upgrades in nutrients and sanitation than from medical advances. My way to Keith Riggle for sending me the graph. –- John Horgan
Horgan:
Why do vaccines not depend on magic bullets? Haven’t they helped improve health and longevity over the last couple of centuries? And additionally, what about massive decreases in infant and maternal mortality? Shouldn’t medicinal drugs get credit for the ones?
Stegenga:
Regarding your question approximately vaccines, yes, they are a positive form of magic bullet, and they may be glaringly hugely crucial in medicinal drugs. Since I outline ‘magic bullets’ narrowly, as interventions targeting the pathophysiological basis of ailment, vaccines can’t be construed as magic bullets on that narrow construal. However, that’s simply definitional — we should introduce a brand new idea for preventive medicinal drugs in popular, like “magic shields.” I’d argue that vaccines are magic shields, at the same time as many different widely prescribed preventive interventions, like statins, are not. But besides, the short answer is that vaccines are obviously beneficial interventions; arguably, most of the essential vaccines, which include the polio vaccine, were developed during the golden age of scientific discoveries, from roughly 1920-1960 (in conjunction with penicillin and insulin, two of the walking examples inside the book).
As for the decrease in infant and maternal mortality, here too of the route, I agree that medicinal drugs have to get credit; what I’d advocate, although, is that those forms of gains in medication had been the result greater of antiseptic techniques and progressed vitamins instead of exogenous scientific interventions per se. This is consistent with the “McKeown thesis,” which holds that the decrease in mortality and boom in durability and populace length since the business revolution is largely the purpose of factors like better vitamins (and sanitation, easy ingesting water, etc.) in place of prescription drugs (I point out this argument in a couple of locations within the e-book).
Horgan:
Another query, and if you prefer not to answer, I apprehend: Have you counseled any buddies/cherished ones to prevent taking statins, say, or antidepressants? Do you get normal checkups? If you were diagnosed with, let’s assume, melanoma, would you forego remedy? I’ve struggled with this myself, mainly when it comes to the recommendation to others. I’m just curious approximately how a whole lot of your intellectual perspectives have permeated your personal life.s
Stegenga:
I keep away from giving clinical recommendations to anybody, including pals and cherished ones, though sometimes buddies will question me approximately a current observation they’d read about on, say, antidepressants. I’ll speak the take a look at with them. So I keep away from giving personal advice, but I certainly desire my e-book can help people make better alternatives about medicine.
For myself, I don’t get ordinary check-ups, although that is a modest stance because I’m typically very wholesome. But really, my intellectual perspectives on medicinal drugs impact my personal choices. Several years in the past, I tore my ACL gambling tennis, and my treating physician called himself a “non-interventionist,” which I didn’t at the time apprehend. But he directed me to numerous current randomized trials that compared a physiotherapy regime and exercising to surgical reconstruction. The less interventionist regime of physiotherapy was given patients to similar endpoints as surgery — so I opted for no surgical operation.
But if I had a disorder for which I concept there has been a simply powerful intervention (“magic bullet,” to apply the term from the book), I might use this intervention. The most current time I made a trip to a health practitioner, I changed into recognized with shingles, and there has been little to be carried out to help except prescribe remedies to ease the ache and itching. This moves me as a quite desirable example of a number of the themes from the ebook. Certainly, one component medication can regularly do nicely is decrease ache (that is off path crucial) — though, given the present-day opioid crisis, many human beings are actually saying that medicine has long passed way overboard in trying to manage ache.
