Medical Science Still Prehistoric, Doctors Say

Most people are used to think that present Medicine is one of the most advanced fields of knowledge. They believe that Medicine has incorporated the finest technology humans could afford as well that medical wisdom is made of high technological discoveries. Some medical doctors strongly disagree with such common thoughts.

Medicine nowadays is not more than in its paleolithic stage, they say. To demonstrate this fact, one can discuss three themes that show how the health science and also the life sciences are just at the beginning of their development.

The first and basic sign of the present stone age of Medicine is the science and technology of the DNA. Though Watson and Crick, the fathers of DNA, did a great job, they discovered the wheel, but haven't invented the motorized car. And anybody hasn't yet. We know that DNA exists, we know it controls protein synthesis. We know that different proteins are responsible for the diversity of structures and processes that compose our lives. But we barely can control or modify DNA and proteins to make our lives better, for example, free of diseases. It is comparable to the fact that we know how big the universe is, with billions and billions of stars, but we never even went to neighbour planets of the solar system, the neighbourhood of our own star. Can we really say we have an advanced space technology?

The other issue that shows how prehistorical our Medicine is relates to cell functioning. We know that the cell is the unit of life. We know the general picture of how some cell processes occur, like cell respiration, cell digestion, protein synthesis again, cell division, etc. But we seem to be so far from the possibility of total control of those and other cellular processes as we are far from manned space exploration star trek-style. Almost every disease is a disease that affects the cells and present Medicine struggles to control it. For example, diabetes produces complications that still kill millions and we did not accomplish any efficient solution to eliminate it. Cancer is indeed a total lack of cell control and neither our body nor our technology can get rid of all those tiny cells.

But let's broaden our viewpoint and bring to the table something most people think is the example of technological progress, the medical drugs. Do you really believe our pharmaceutical arsenal represents the best technology ever? So why can't we cure AIDS, all cancers, heart failure, hypertension and many other chronic diseases? Not mentioning a simple common cold. People die from viral diseases like AIDS or hepatitis because our technology isn't still able to create effective drugs against those infections.

Besides these three themes, we can imagine everything Medicine still has to develop, like better diagnostic tools, better and fast laboratory tests, enhanced levels of image diagnostic, better preventive Medicine and so on.

However, just citing that some biological and medical important subjects need development isn't enough. It is necessary to say that those and even better progresses will take place. Some day we will be able to control and modify everything our DNA does and that will make us free from most diseases. In the future we will know how to fix misleading cell processes in order to avoid all dysfunctions and even aging. And we can imagine a time when pharmaceutical technology will produce drugs that will eliminate the few remaining diseases. And then for humans one thousand years may be the natural life duration.

Assuming the poor and underdeveloped stage of present Medicine is a good way to prevent its stagnation. Doctors should realize that what they do now won't be taken too differently from what shamans and druids did in the past regarding health. Medicine can go much and much further and certainly it will make the human life of the future to have few things in common to ours.