Practical Limitations of Medical Science

He was standing one day at his door on Ludgate Hill, when a real doctor of Physic passed, who had learning and abilities, but whose modesty was the true cause of his poverty. “How comes it,” says he to the Quack, “that you without education, without skill, without the least knowledge of science, are enabled to live in the style you do? You keep your town house, your carriage and your country house: whilst I, allowed to possess some knowledge, have neither, and can hardly pick up a subsistence?” “Why, look ye,” said Rock, smiling, “how many people do you think have passed since you asked me the question?” “Why,” answered the Doctor, “perhaps a hundred.” “And how many out of these hundred, think you possess common sense?” “Possibly one,” answered the Doctor. “Then,” said Rock, “that one comes to you: and I take the other ninety nine.”   (From “The Northern Impostor,” the life of a celebrated quack, 1786, reprinted in The Natural History of Quackery by Eric Jameson, 1961.)

Why do so many people turn to faith-healers for help when their performances, even to the casual investigator, are so obviously high-powered quackery? For one thing, there are cultural biases that predispose some people to believe in the possibility of faith-healing. For example, Taiwanese and Mexican patients—among others—recognize in their own cultures two general healing modalities. They can be labeled “temple” (magical) and “biomedical.” Traditional temple methods, they accept, result in much slower recovery than newer Western (biomedical) processes. But the temple methods are easier for them to understand and to relate to and do not involve frightening technologies. Besides, practitioners of magical methods promise much more than doctors do, and they have many rationalizations available to explain away failures.

What Does Medical Science Offer?

Important clues are found by examining the largely erroneous view that is generally held of legitimate medicine and its practitioners. Belief in this view is greatly encouraged by the healers, who assure their victims, as one California-based operator does regularly in his preaching, that physicians “want to cut on your body and put chemicals in your stomach. Dr. Jesus doesn’t use chemicals, and he doesn’t want to cut you with anything but the Sword of the Spirit!” As I discovered when I began researching this subject, anyone who assumes he has a basic understanding of physicians and their work may be poorly informed. The correct answers to two questions—“What do doctors actually do?” and “What do they actually offer their patients?”—are both probably unexpected. As a layman, I was surprised to learn that, except for certain types of surgical procedures (kidney stone removal, appendectomies, etc.) and some biochemical procedures and substances (such as dialysis and antibiotics), much of modern medical practice is devoted to diagnosis and evaluations that have nothing to do with relief of symptoms. One medical authority, examining this situation, stated:Roughly three-quarters of non-surgical physician’s care today (both general and specialist) is not curative but supportive.

“Supportive” means treatment designed to prolong the life of the patient before he eventually succumbs to the ailment. Of course, this does not imply that the “supportive” treatment is without positive value. Nor does it mean that such treatment does not require a high order of skill and the use of extensive technology. Treatment of diabetes is an excellent example. This disease results from failure of the pancreas to produce insulin, a substance needed to control the sugar content of the blood. Now that diabetes can be treated by injection of insulin or oral administration of other medications, the disease can be controlled quite effectively. But the patient is under dietary constraints, and after many years of surviving quite well with medication and discipline, he may begin to show long-term effects of the ailment. Many diabetics live out their lives quite “normally.” Some others have 20 to 30 years added to their lives by the prescribed treatment. However, diabetes is not cured. It is treated effectively, and well within the limits we should expect of medical science. Even such seemingly miraculous substances as antibiotics only slow down the reproduction of invading bacteria so that the host body’s natural immune system can obtain an advantage in the battle. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, commenting on the supposed secret magic techniques used by African native healers he had observed, wrote:The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us [doctors] succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. We [doctors] are at our best when we give the doctor within each patient a chance to go to work.

Schweitzer’s statement does not imply a supernatural source for healing. It simply points out the wonderful defense and repair mechanisms of the organism. But not all ailments respond to the immune system. The fact is that medical science does not have good validating evidence for the efficacy of measures currently employed to treat ailments like cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and AIDS. The first three problems, incidentally, are the ones for which people most commonly visit faith-healers. Naturally, some faith-healers are taking advantage of AIDS victims, knowing—as with all terminal cases—that their audiences never will see the eventual sad finale, only the momentary exultation of the victim reacting to the healer’s suggestions and to his own enthusiasm.