On Biological Medicine
Medicine and Meaning
“Modern medical science largely considers the human body to be a kind of mechanical model, a sort of vehicle like a car that needs to be checked by a garage every so often.”
from The Way Toward Health by Jane Roberts
A driver who for some reason is in a hurry to get somewhere decides to ‘run the red light’ at a junction, and has an accident. Yet would we even think of seeking to explain their consequent injuries purely as a result of automobile mechanics, for example suspecting the possibility of ‘faulty pedals’ or some other mechanical defect – seeing this as what ‘caused’ the car to go through the red light (and then subjecting the car to a whole series of diagnostic tests).* This would seem absurd to common sense – and yet it is no less absurd than seeing the body as a mechanical vehicle – like a car – and treating illness as something caused by a technical fault in some part of that vehicle.
For cars also have drivers. To be sure, the driver in our example made a choice, whereas we do not normally think of ourselves as ‘choosing’ to get ill. Yet the driver’s choice itself was no doubt a response to a current or overall life situation. The driver might have been in a hurry for some reason, for example late for work or for a job interview. The decision to run the red light may not even have been a fully conscious or premeditated decision – simply a more or less aware bodily reaction to the specific life situation itself. Nevertheless shooting the red light was a choice.
What if the same applies to illness? Namely that there is a way in which we do not so much consciously ‘choose’ as subconsciously ‘accede’ to getting ill, albeit in a particular life context and for particular life reasons that are quite conscious to us: for example a pressing need to get a job – or even a subconscious desire to use the illness as a way of taking ‘time out’ from the pressures of life and/or receiving care and attention. Whatever the possible meaning of the accident/illness might be for a specific individual there is one thing we can be sure of however – there issuch a meaning – and that just seeking, however thoroughly, for a mechanical fault in the individual’s bodily ‘vehicle’ will never reveal it.
Indeed even were such a mechanical fault to be discovered or diagnosed, it might itself be the result of a subconscious decision on the part of our ‘driver’ in response to a situation arising in their life journey i.e. something that in some way drove them to neglect that vehicle or ignore its warning signs. Simply taking the vehicle to a garage and repairing the fault will therefore not address its true meaning or that of its possible consequences. For these have to do with the life circumstances of the human being and not the mechanics or ‘biology’ of his bodily vehicle alone. Simply to say, for example, that the driver got a dodgy vehicle with an inherited ‘fault’, that they neglected it or abused it through mishandling – or that they failed to put it through a regular medical ‘MOT’ – is not enough. For the question ‘why?’ still remains – a question of life motive and meaning and not a mere matter of some inherited biological or mechanical ‘defect’, ‘accident’, or sequence of ‘cause and effect’.
Even for our hypothetical driver who ends up in hospital due to a serious ‘accident’ the result might be a highly meaningful and life-changing one in a positive sense, allowing him or her to re-think their life and not just receive treatment for their body. Yet this simple but basic distinction – between the life of the human being and its expression in the life of the human body – is consistently ignored by medical science and biological medicine – which by seeking explanations for illness purely in terms of defects of our bodily ‘vehicle’ blocks all forms of research into the meaningof illness. For even if a defect is found in the form of some medically recognised ‘disease’ or ‘disorder’, biological medicine cannot yet explain the cause of the disease or disorder itself – except in terms of some genetic defect. Yet not even any form of genetic explanation can actually explain why one individual and not another should contract a particular disease. For just as not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, and not everyone falls ill from an epidemic, neither does everyone with an errant gene end up with the disease associated with it.
*acknowledgement to Andrew Gara for this significant analogy
What Biological Medicine Can’t Explain
The more biological medicine seeks to ‘scientifically’ explain illness – the more it leaves unexplained.
Examples:
Why medical treatment itself is a leading cause of death – ahead of cancer and heart disease.
Why most pharmaceutical drugs do not work on most of the patients they are designed for.
Why there is hardly a single class of pharmaceutical medication that doesn’t have as a possible or even common ‘side effect’ a short- or long-term worsening of the symptoms it was prescribed for.
Why the majority of patients seen by doctors are made up by what they call ‘the worried well’ – in reality ordinary people who really wish to share psychological problems – life problems – with a professional, but wouldn’t think of going to see a psychologist.
Why ‘successful’ drug treatment or surgery illness often precipitates mental psychosis or precedes the emergence of new symptoms just as serious as the original ones.
Why the greatest danger period for the mental and physical health patients occurs after finishing a’ successful’ course of medical treatment and being told that they are well.
Why social isolation is a greater risk factor for health and lowers life expectancy more than smoking, diet or obesity.
Why support groups for women with breast cancer patients have been found to double their life expectancy.
Why support from a spouse dramatically improves survival rates from heart transplants.
Why so many illnesses occur after or often on the exact anniversary of significant life events – such as bereavements, the end of a relationship, the start or loss of a job, taking an exam, retirement or even just going on holiday.
Why there is an 80% correlation between stressful life events and the onset of an illness in the two years following those events.
Why the chances of simply getting a cold are increased by life difficulties or disappointments, in particular those to do with employment or relationship problems.
Why the incidence of previously widespread, common and dangerous diseases was decline long before the use of antibiotics to treat them or the use of mass vaccinations to prevent them.
Why a study has shown that only 3.5% of the decline in mortality from infectious diseases can be attributed to drug treatments.
Why chemotherapy for all types of cancer is still used even though it has been shown by countless reports and admitted by many cancer specialists to be ineffective even in increasing life expectancy, and why death rates from cancer have actually increased with the increased use of chemotherapy.
Why, despite the Nobel Prize winning ‘discovery’ that the ‘cause’ of stomach ulcers was not ‘stress’ but a specific bacterium it was then found that between one and two-third of the world population carry this bacterium in their stomachs without developing ulcers.
Why 20-40% of children and 10% of adults carry the tuberculosis bacillus without contracting tuberculosis, and why only a minority of those exposed to the bacillus will develop TB.
Why children allergic to household dust at home showed no allergic responses when this dust was distributed in the hospital rooms.
Why Whitehall civil servants who are given orders by their superiors have twice the chance of contracting diabetes than those who give them their orders.
Why counselling for cardiac patients can prevent recurrence of heart attacks or even reverse arterial blockages, and why half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels.
Why patients whose surgeons talk to them whilst under anaesthesia are at less risk of dying, and why patients whose surgeons openly discuss post-operative pain before surgery experience it less.
Why someone with sensitive skin can work for years with materials they are sensitive too, and yet only develop allergic reactions when emotional problems in their relational life flare up.
Why soldiers whose armies suffered defeat in battle were more likely to develop dysentery or typhus.
Why autopsies of thousands of young and otherwise healthy soldiers revealed atherosclerotic plaques of the sort generally associated only with older people, long-term smokers and others thought to be at risk of heart attacks and strokes from developing these plaques over time.
Why ‘placebos’ or fake surgery can be just as effective as ‘active’ drugs and real surgery.
Why people smoke, take illegal drugs, over- or under-eat, eat foods ‘bad’ for their health.
Why off-the-counter medications and legally prescribed drugs are a cause of greater and more widespread addiction – and often more difficult to come off – than illegal drugs.
Why people become obsessed with changing to or pursuing supposedly healthy ‘lifestyles’ through diets or fitness regimes – yet without ever really examining their lives as such and the health of their relationships.
Why both medical journals and the press are full of reports of new medical research and newly discovered dangers or aids to health – without ever asking what it means to be ‘healthy’.
Why doctors will always ask patients ‘how long’ they have had a particular symptom but almost never ask WHEN it started, let alone what was going in the patient’s life at the time – or in the days, weeks, months or years before the symptoms or symptoms appeared.
Why patients given home treatment after a heart attack have a lower mortality rate than those given impersonal, hi-tech hospital care.
Why patients with severe dementia, inability to speak and move – or despite almost complete destruction of their brains through cancer – have often been observed to sit up, move their limbs and speak with total clarity and rationally in the hours preceding their death.
Acknowledgements:
Why People Get Ill?by Darian Leader and Michael Cornfield, Hamish Hamilton 2007, for several of the examples included.
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