You know what really grinds my gears? Most things, actually, but I won't bore you with every single gory detail, I'll just rant and rave about this one. I'm not a huge fan of medicine, look up,it says so in the blurb under the title quite clearly. I know it sounds a little on the self defeating side, but I'm not convinced that medicine is healing people. In fact, I think it's become a religion.
Huh? Nah, religion and science/medicine are opposites, everyone knows that......except for when they're exactly the same. I was raised in a church going family, we'd go to church on Sunday, girls rally, youth group and play group for the littlies. Our church community formed the moral bedrock of our lives, and gave us a guide as to how to live best.
Medicne now tells me how to live best. It tells me how to often feed my kids, and what I should feed them. Medicine tells me, based on it's incontrovertible research, how to discipline my children, how much sunshine they should be exposed to, how much they should sleep and what natural illnesses they should be prevented from ever having, regardless of whether or not there's any likelihood of them having adverse effects from said illnesses, and regardless of whether or not they're ever going to be exposed to these illnesses.
Bubonic plague, for example. Why aren't my kids immunized against bubonic plague? Its deadly! And every single year there's a few cases where Yersinia Pestis raises its ugly head, thanks to more marmots than the traditional villain of the piece, the Norwegian Black Rat. Surely we should all be immunized to prevent the return of a killer? Not worried? That's right, you have FAITH in medicine and science to do whats right for you, and that is nothing at al like faith in God or another spiritual belief
Anyone who trusts in religious beliefs to save them from inevitable illness is obviously psychologically unstable, ignorant of the real facts and is guilty of not being as sophisticated a thinker as us educated, rational types, and they're probably wearing a rather fetching hat made out of tinfoil.
God didn't save me from acne. Neither did medicine.
God didn't stop me from nearly bleeding to death with some weird, undiagnosed bleeding disorder. Medicine doesn't have a clue about my bleeding disorder and nearly killed me when they used the standard protocols. My daughter would not be alive if I'd continued to take medical advice during her pregnancy. (Thankfully, the hematologist agreed, he said he didn't know what caused it, and therefore couldn't safely treat it)
God has never relieved my migraine pain. Neither has medicine
God hasn't cured my son's autism. Neither has medicine.
You feel unwell, depressed, alway irritable? See your doctor. But why? Emotions are normal, they don't need to be eradicated. Some people would talk to a priest, rabbi, mufti, minister or what have you when presented with the same symptoms. And we'd think they were crazy. Maybe we should all just talk to a friend, I know there's no profit for church or medicine in that, but it might help. Certainly sounds like its worth a try.
Yet for all medicine's apparent omnipotence, how many illnesses can we really cure? Not many times, or a few times, how many can we CURE each and every time? If i break my leg, disembowel myself, have a heart attack or get meningococcal seoticameia, I'm going to the hospital, so they can set my leg (and give me painkillers), stitch me back up with my insides on the inside, check my heart is still going, or pump me full of antibiotics because those things do work.
For funerals and weddings, I'm probably going to get a minister. In that situation, they also work very well. And from what I've gathered from many conversations with those who suffer what medicine terms a mental illness, sometimes spiritually of some sort is effective. Maybe not immediately, but Zoloft doesn't work straight away, in fact it takes months. The minister, priest, mufti, rabbi or whatever may very well afford you some relief and support in a much faster time frame.
Our priests, our wise men have been replaced with doctors. We're baptized into the religion of modern medicine at birth with vitamin k shots and hepatitis B vaccines. We tell our children "eat right, its healthy, you'll live longer", where we used to tell them, "do good, be good, believe and you'll go to heaven". We're not that into heaven these days, we replaced it with living far longer. Good health is the only path to salvation and righteousness. Smokers are sinners, alternative health practioners and those who use them are heretics, doomed to an eternity of self induced ill health, and all due to their lack of faith in the one true God- the unholy, but scientifically proven trinity of Science, the father, Medicne, the son, and Profits, the holy ghost.
And any good believer in medicine will ensure their child receives regular blessed sacraments of paracetamol, vaccines, and antibiotics (even when its a virus or something else that antibiotics cant help. See that figure running away in the distance? That's your immune system, running away from a broken home). If you don't follow the rules of the new church, you don't deserve to be a parent. This church requires total obedience, and lets face it, having the TV and media acting as a twenty four hour a day sermon about how great our new god is was probably the sort of public relations coup that God should have thought of, but didn't. To the victor go the spoils...........
I could go on and on for days about this, but I'll try to contain myself. Medicine lies, or at least isn't as awesome as it wants you to think. Smoking does not necessarily cause cancer, its one of many risk factors, its not been proven to be 100% causative. Do 100% of smokers die from cancer? No.Is HPV implicated in lung cancer? Yes! Does smoking have some health benefits? Yes, it even protects against ome really nasty things, like thyroid cancer. Yeah, protects from cancer. Thyroid cancer, and endometrial cancer. Good for ulcerative colitis, reduces the chances of alzheimers, but isn't fantastic for your respiratory system, I type as I cough.
Try telling someone smoking isn't all bad and you'll get a reaction like you're in a catholic church at Easter and yelling, "BOLLOCKS!", because you would be uttering a blasphemy.
Both religion and medicine have and are turning huge profits off our "faith", and not doing a whole lot for us as thanks. If you believe in God, then you believe you were given free choice and intelligence by a creator. He might just want you to use those facilities. If you believe in science/medicine, you believe you evolved intelligence and the ability to make rational decisions. You might want to try using that facility.
Maybe instead, we should put our faith in the one thing we can trust. Our own ability to rise above the bullshit and demand better. Just maybe we can learn to rely on each other and demand truth from our doctors and leaders, be they spiritual or polical. There's a lot of false gods. I'm going to believe in me, my ability to choose right from wrong, based on all available knowledge and retaining the right to change my mind. I'm also going to believe in you. If I have a religion, its that we can all do better. And next time I'll do better at editing (ipads have quirks)
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