EYE OF THE BEHOLDER.

I once glanced through an editorial in The Lancet entitled Could Epidemiologists Cause Epidemics?1 Stimulating title indeed! As I read on I could feel my thoughts so beautifully verbalised in the editorial. Story goes that two young epidemiologists predicted an epidemic of influenza in their country in one of their “scientific” studies. Lo and behold, the incidence of influenza did reach epidemic proportions very soon and their predictions were claimed to be a true warning and were hailed as a mile stone study in the media. It is only after serious efforts to reevaluate the epidemic data that the truth came out.



While the fear of the epidemic ran through the medical profession and also the populace, there was more labelling. Every fever in the intensive therapy unit became an influenza attack and people rushed to the hospitals with even questionable rise in body temperature. Concurrently, the incidence of pneumonia in the intensive therapy units went down proportionately. The final conclusion of the second study was that the apparent increase of influenza was not an absolute increase, but a spurious labelling error.



Similar serious studies have debunked the epidemiologists’ predictions of epidemics of coronary artery disease in this century. The story repeats here as well. Stehaben’s studies, published in The Lancet, have unequivocally shown that the apparent rise in coronary disease was due to increased labelling.2 Every sudden death was labelled as myocardial infarction. Large number of cardiomyopathies due to alcohol did result in sudden electric death, but the label of myocardial infarction was applied there as well. The story goes on and on. The Shopping Plaza blood pressure check ups threw up an epidemic of hypertension in America and sent sick-absenteeism skyrocketing. Recent studies of diabetes are trying to do the same. They are predicting a big epidemic of diabetes in the next century.3



While all this makes good business sense for the fix-it trade, it is a sad commentary on the truth in science. It is very logical that any disease-statistics applied to the normal healthy population should result in large false positives. While the debate about screening healthy population to predict the future may only be an academic discussion, the resulting treatment strategies could harm people in many ways. A revolutionary study of quality of life done in insulin treated diabetics clearly showed that the real relief came only to those patients who were symptomatic before treatment. For those asymptomatic diabetics there was, if anything, worsening of the quality of life with treatment. The million-dollar question, however, was if this reduced long-term consequences? The latter could not be answered by this short-term study. But the trend in the study showed that it did not do that either.4



The time-honoured logic that when a patient comes to the doctor with symptoms, it is the duty of the doctor to do his best for his suffering, even if the knowledge in that field, at that point in time, might not be unequivocally in favour of the line of management. We are on a very wet wicket when it comes to trying to fix things for the apparently healthy population, in the fond hope of preventing future suffering.



Let me remind the reader of the famous saying of a great medical brain, Sir William Osler, who said: “patient doing well do not interfere!” There is an editorial in the British Medical Journal warning doctors that screening could seriously damage your health! 5 The unhealthy life style of this century, not seen in the centuries gone by, could, of course, be changed for the better.6 This specially applies to our food habits at the present time, and the fatal smoking and alcohol habits. Sedentary living is another of our enemies. Monetary economy with its attendant greed and hatred could cut the very roots of good health!



Predictions of the future rarely come true even in field of other sciences, including the king of sciences, physics. Edward Lorenz, after bagging the Nobel for his innovative ideas of weather predictions, realized that weather predictions rarely came true! He, then, propounded the butterfly effect. Said he: “after feeding all the data in the traffic rules of air currents into the super computer, if a butterfly were to move its wings in Beijing, there could be storms in NewYork after a month!” This happens in all the dynamic systems. “Doctors have been predicting the unpredictable,” wrote Professor Firth in his mile stone paper in the British Medical Journal.7 In any dynamic system, like the human body, the future depends on the total initial knowledge of the organism. To predict the future of man one should know his phenotype (that is what our screening procedures do), his genotype, and his consciousness. We do not have any inkling into the latter two major aspects of human existence now. Even if we know any deviation in the phenotype, there is no truth in predicting that correcting the initial deviation in the body would hold good as time evolves to the benefit of the person. It could even go against him! We have been seeing this time and again in blood pressure screening, diabetes screening, and even cancer surveys. Truth can not be hidden for all times, although falsehood and mystery would drag millions by the nose at a given time.



“Man seeth what he wiseth” is an old adage. Man sees what he knows, right! Even the eye of the beholder could not tell him the real truth unless he examines the object carefully. This is the real meaning of science with its Sanskrit etymological root, skei, meaning just the same (cut into what you see). This reminds me of the famous Schrodinger’s cat. In the early part of this century when quantum physics upset the apple cart of Einstein’s theory of relativity, first by his own student, Werner Heisenberg, with his uncertainty principle, and later by Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian physicist, Einstein must have been very much hurt. His elephantine ego did not make him understand both these great brains. The very fact that he ruled that “nothing could move faster than light” showed his closed mind and arrogance. All quantum particles could move much faster than light! He claimed that “if Schrodinger’s quantum physics is to be believed, this world would look crazy, but one would have to assess how crazy!”



At the quantum level (sub-atomic level) whether we exist or not depends on someone observing us, the eye of the beholder. Schrodinger’s imagination threw up his cat in a sealed box. The cat lived there in the company of a triggering device and a decaying atom. The atom would decay in an hour’s time and trigger the alarm. One would know if the cat were alive or dead only after opening the box and seeing. Although Schrodinger’s cat provoked much discussion and debate in the world, a recent attempt by physicists to prove the theory wrong did not bear fruit. They tried to pass a mouse in front of the cat inside the box, but that did not make the cat mew, thereby proving that the question of life and death of the cat depended solely on seeing the cat after opening the box by the observer.



Medical scientists will have to learn a lot from quantum physics, including its elucidation of human consciousness as a sub-atomic concept. Mind could not be confined either to the brain or the heart as was done by our modern medical forefathers. The brain has only about a billion cells, but even a grain of salt has more than ten billion atoms. Consequently, brain cells could not be the seat of the mind. In the latter event even a grain of salt could not have been understood by the human mind! Mind and matter are two things that have been ignored by us for a long time with disastrous consequences for our patients.



Both in the Indian system of Ayurveda and, even, in modern medicine there have been attempts to stress the role of the mind in disease. William Harvey so graphically described the role of the mind in disease when he wrote in 1648 AD: "when in anger the pupils contract, in infamy and shame the cheeks blush, in lust does the member get distended and erected in no time!” Indian science of Ayurveda had clearly stated that health depends on a happy mind to a very great extent:



“Prasanna aathma indriya manah swastha ithyabhideeyathe”

(Happiness of the soul, senses, and the mind keep you healthy)



We should spend more time and energy in trying to do most good to most people most of the time, by trying to alleviate suffering. Hippocrates did warn us about our responsibilities when he said: “Cure rarely, comfort mostly, but console always.” This is true even today! In addition, we have made modern medicine so expensive what with all our the screenings and gadgetry, that more than 62% of upper middle class Americans find it difficult to have health insurance. “In a fee-for-service system, cardiac procedures generated billions of dollars each year. A high volume of procedures brought prestige and financial rewards to hospitals, physicians, and the vendors of medical equipment.” This was the opinion expressed by an American professor of cardiology in a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.8 A recent UNIDO report showed that about 80% of the world’s population is still not aware of modern medicine. Recent scientific studies published by the Royal College of Physicians of London have revealed that many of the complementary systems of medicine could be scientific and, do have a role to play in health care deliver9



Let us be pragmatic in our approach to health care, taking a holistic view of health and disease, to bring succour to the suffering. We should not waste our energy and money in claiming to lessen the burden of illness by catching diseases young, a myth at this point in time. Let epidemiologists be more careful in predicting the unpredictable future. We still have millions of people in the world that need help for their suffering. If we look out for anything in particular with zeal, we, probably, get to see it more often. Consequently we feel like intervening, where angels fear to tread! This reminds me of what Mark Twain once wrote:



“For a man with a hammer in the hand and wanting to use it badly,

Everything here looks like a nail needing hammering!”





BIBLIOGRAPHY:



1) Editorial: Do epidemiologists cause epidemics? Lancet 1993;341:993-94. …………………………………………………………………………….

2) Stehbens WE. An appraisal of epidemic rise of coronary heart disease and its decline Lancet 1987;I: 606-611. ……………………………………………………………………………….

3) Ramachandran A. The Scenario is not sweet. The Hindu, 30th Dec, 1998. …………………………………………………………………………………

4) Goddijn PPM, Bilo HJG, Feskens EJM et.al Longitudinal study on glycaemic control and quality of life in patients with Type II diabetes. Diabetic Med. 1993;16:23-30. …………………………………………………………………………………..

5) Stewart-Brown S, Farmer A. Screening could seriously damage your health. BMJ 1997;314: 533. ……………………………………………………………………………………

6) Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH. et.al: Intensive life-style changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA 1998; 280; 2001-2008.

7) Firth WJ: Chaos-Predicting the Unpredictable. BMJ 1991; 303: 1565-1568.

8) Krumholz HM: Cardiac procedures, outcomes, and accountability. N.Engl.J.Med 1997; 336: 1522-23.

9) Meade T: Science-based complementary medicine. Ed. Royal College of Physicians London, 1999.





Comments

#1 | 241 on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
record! Adore the outside environment of this wedding ceremony reception, particularly at nighttime when all of the lights arrive up and also the chandeliers shining brightly really are a excellent accent including towards the festive mood of this memorable occasion red cocktail dressesred cocktail dresses . plus size mother of bride dressesplus size mother of bride dresses This really is 1 excellent wedding ceremony I'd adore to go! Congratulations!!! Paloma Blanca Bridal Business Profile Paloma Blanca has produced globally acclaim and respect inside the bridal business Started in 1937 by Manny Bernstein, Paloma Blanca was ?rst recognized as Blue Bird Gown. With its authentic place in downtown Toronto, Canada around the well-liked Spadina Voie, the business started having a bridal gown and night put on division winter dress shirtswinter dress shirts winter dresses plus sizewinter dresses plus size . Mannyas brother Harry Bernstein also labored for your business and ultimately took more than the company from his brother. Continuing within the family
#2 | 241 on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
shoes with red soles shoes with red soles douleur and im definite that she should be arranging to some momentous job and replica rolex united kingdom could maybe be couple of other people factor that will maintain him eliminated in the video game of golfing. I arrived at him to function out that which was he studying and was astonished to become aware of that he was trying to locate the best replica watches around the internet. two, three weeks back the street facet vendor had cheated him. This stunning vendor had hoodwinked him for that replica rolex watches wholesale. These watches are sourced from overseas and dont provide the good quality that the very best rolex replica do pretty small shoes pretty small shoes . discount louboutin shoes discount louboutin shoes The truth particularly lots of people who personal 1 in the greatest rolex replica use other people to acquire replica rolex on the internet from reputed retailers just. You will discover several rolex replica united kingdom internet sites on the net when they hunt red sole shoes red sole shoes christian louboutin outlet christian louboutin outlet
#3 | manchakosv on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
transmitted, In addition, nowadays you will find a lot more and far more styles of cellular cell phone, Such as Tv set Cell Phones, Cellular Phones Watches, Twin SIM Twin Standby Cellular Phones, replica rolex, PDA Clever Phones, fake concord fake concord . 3 low price replica watches low price replica watches . , As you know, the standby time of cell telephone is related to system of the network, so remember to electric power off your cellular telephone for your moment once you are in the place with poor reception, Because when cellular phones do not receive the signal www.thatwatches.com/images/thumbnails/bvlgari/25157_2478.jpg . , they will continuously transmit to search the base station, which often can consume the capacity of the battery so that the standby time is shortened, swiss rolex replica swiss rolex replica Afforapplyle Guys Men's Watches king LaMen's Watchesndes8217 822A Rphylogenesis in Time: Chairs as well as the Mconsanguineg on the MPindaricrne World8221is a need to apprehend for you personally tale flushs, replica watches for sale replica watches for sale . Β  You crapper
#4 | manchakosv on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
of high-waist skirt because of it could possibly highlight the imbalance amongst the breasts and pelvis. Pair with restricted small tops blancpain orchidee replica , www.factwatches.net/images/thumbnails/bvlgari/2543_2510.jpg . or blouses to spotlight the hip line. Pencil Skirt Vogue TendenciesHips and massive thighsPencil Skirt Manner Developments - Be certain the skirt narrows in the bottom, but don't overdo it. If your skirt is simply as well straight through the thigh towards the hip rolex fake watches . , the corporel will seem to be just like a sq. . panerai replica watches . Pencil Skirt Trend Developments - If that is the scenario inclined is likely to make the corporel much more rounded. Choose a darkish color skirt fabricated from cotton or substance that's very easily stretched. Pair the skirt using a skinny cardigan and belt stunning vivid hues. bvlgari bb replica . Corporel straightPencil Skirt Manner
#5 | 241 on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
unable to be there will feel closer to the moment. Remember to look at sample pages and see what ideas you like best. buy wedding dress online buy wedding dress online plus size wedding dresses plus size wedding dresses . ? Be sure to ask if extra charges will be added for custom colors or revisions including updates . cocktail wedding dresses cocktail wedding dresses , and additional information as the marriage ceremony date approaches. Your guests will have only a few hours on your wedding ceremony day to see the flowers, hear the music and eat the cake. . ? cheap evening dresses under 50 cheap evening dresses under 50 . Your wedding ceremony website, within the other hand, will be viewed several time before and after your most special day. Underscore the drama of one's marriage ceremony along with the ideal flowers. Discover a specialist who'll get some time to know about you and also the atmosphere you should make. 6 months prior to the wedding ceremony is just not as well

Post Comment

Please Login to Post a Comment.

Ratings

Rating is available to Members only.

Please login or register to vote.

No Ratings have been Posted.
Render time: 0.10 seconds
3,556,899 unique visits