Mankind suffers from some of the modern medical interventions that are, in essence, not for the good of the hapless people. These interventions are, however, good for the health of the new avatar of commercial medicine. One such glaring example is the periodic screening of the apparently healthy population. Monetary economy has increased the stress levels and, consequently the anxiety levels in society lately. The rat race for making money and acquiring status etcetera, demands a great degree of unusual stress, comparable to the stress of the predators for our hunter-gatherer forefathers in the forests.



There is, however, a big difference. Our ancestors did respond to their anxiety with the same chemicals, the catecholamines, as we do today. They could, however, burn those chemicals in their skeletal muscles while running away from their predators. In the present society the stressed have no opportunity to run away from danger as the danger lurks everywhere. So we suffer the dangerous fallouts of the accumulations of those chemicals which when not naturally destroyed could result in serious damage in the long run.



Philosophically doctors and the medical fraternity is there only to allay anxiety in the society as the latter is at the root of all human ills. In the medical sphere there are two major anxieties-patient anxiety of disability and death and the doctor anxiety of having done the right thing adequately or to do more. If someone could find a solution to those two anxieties mankind would be very happy. On the contrary the routine screening of the apparently healthy could and is shown to definitely raise the anxiety levels in the population with all the attendant dangerous fall outs. Let us take a look at this scenario in greater detail.