Let’s refrain from doctor-baiting and doctor-bashing – such as Col. Dinshah P. Ghadiali’s depiction of mainstream monocultural medicine as “The Medical Octopus” with the “Bay of Bunk” on one side and the “Ocean of Ignorance” on the other side – and place the responsibility for high-level wellness precisely where it belongs …

… with YOU and ME.

Dr. Paul Brand & Philip Yancey (Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, 1993) wrote …

“Medicine has become so complex and elitist that patients feel helpless, and doubt whether they have much contribution to make in the struggle against pain and suffering. Too often the patient sees himself or herself as a victim, a sacrificial lamb for the experts to pick over, not a partner in recovery and health. In the United States advertising further feeds the victim mentality by conditioning us to believe that staying healthy is a complicated matter far beyond the grasp of the average person. We get the impression that, were it not for vitamin supplements, antiseptics, painkillers, and a trillion-dollar annual investment in medical expertise, our fragile existence would soon come to an end.”

Ivan Illich (Medical Nemesis: The Exploitation of Health, 1976) wrote …

“Misdirection of blame for iatrogenesis is the most serious political obstacle to public control over health care. To turn doctor-baiting into radical chic would be the surest way to defuse any political crisis fueled by the new health consciousness. If physicians were to become conscious scapegoats, the gullible patient would be relieved from blame for his therapeutic greed.”

Larry Scott & Howard Waitzkin (“Holism and Self-Care: Can the Individual Succeed Where Society Fails?,” Reforming Medicine: Lessons of the Last Quarter Century, edited by Victor W. Sidel & Ruth Sidel, 1984) wrote…

“[Ivan Illich] sees iatrogenesis occurring at three levels – the clinical, social, and structural. Clinical iatrogenesis refers to iatrogenic disease, the clinical problems that result from doctors’ unintended mistakes or from complications of treatment. According to Illich; it includes ‘all clinical entities for which remedies, physicians or hospitals are the pathogens, or “sickening” agents.’ Social iatrogenesis comprises the unintended consequences of the sick role or of illness behavior in society. Illich’s comments on the ‘medicalization of life’ resemble the analysis of several social scientists who find that the sick role is an important social-control mechanism, which contains deviance and protest. By creating a far-reaching dependency on the institution of medicine, according to Illich, the profession helps excuse people from the task of reconstructing society. Structural iatrogenesis refers to the loss of the autonomy of the individual, and particularly the loss of the capacity for self-care. Responsibility for health passes from the individual to the medical profession – a process that Illich views as the most evil effect of modern medicine. According to him, people are punished for their dependency on medicine and medicalization. The punishment is medical nemesis, with its three tiers of iatrogenesis.”

Charles E. Rosenberg (“Medical Holism in Twentieth-Century Medicine,” Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 , edited by Christopher Lawrence & George Weisz, 1998) wrote …

“Worldview holism provides a value-laden framework – a higher knowingness – in which and from which the achievements of reductionist medicine can be made to appear insignificant and illusory. The particular frameworks can differ a great deal, but what each has in common is a claim to transcendence. From the spiritual viewpoint of an Ivan Illich, for example, the value of pain, the acceptance of death, the ability to order the material and temporal in a timeless framework remains central. In the secular moral philosophy of the laboratory scientist Rene Dubos, to cite a seemingly disparate yet in this sense parallel example, the anticipated celebration of medicine’s ability to conquer disease is seen as a seductive ‘mirage’ – illusory when placed in a larger context of biological evolution and adaptation. What Illich and Dubos have in common is, in fact, what I have called worldview holism: they articulate intellectual and moral standpoints from which the material achievements of reductionist medicine can be understood as transitory and superficial. The self-confidence of reductionist medicine can be made to seem mere hubris, a short-sighted celebration of small equities acquired at great ultimate cost.”

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