FEATURE

Sickness sells

Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com

“When I see some of the people who are glorified in magazines these days - who are so thin it's bordering on sickness - I just feel exhausted.” 

Katherine Heigl 

And, sells very well. Every hour in the US the TV adverts for drugs runs around 80 drugs! Many of them who see these do discuss the drug with their doctors as most drugs are advertised as if they are tailor made for you hypochondriasis. Nearly half of all those that see their doctors get to take the drug, some for the rest of their lives. Sickness sales are the highest in the world today from the commercial point of view. The Pharmaceutical companies laugh all their way to their banks!

What is the result? Every symptom, however trivial it might be, gets blown out of proportion. Many of life’s normal physiological processes like menarche, menopause, pregnancy, child birth, sexuality, sorrow, old age maladies and death have all become medicalised today, thanks to the bogey of long life, and at times, immortality that these advertisements propagate. Today anyone who has enough money and/or insurance does not die in dignity. S/he has to, per force; pass through a hospital intensive care unit en route to heaven! Do not get alarmed if I told you that 90% of the hospital profits in the USA come from keeping dying patients in the ICU for the last ten days of their journey through this world! The relatives are told that they have done their best. Relatives are happy that they do not have any guilt feeling of not looking after their near and dear ones.

The screening industry is the richest of them all. The catchment area for the screening industry is the whole population of this world. They have sold the wrong idea that getting screened is the best way to remain healthy. I am told that the Govt. of India has even given income tax rebate for screening insurance. I am sure there is some screening gate (scam) waiting to be unearthed. One has only to read the educative article on the screening Industry by the former celebrated editor of British Medical Journal, Richard Smith, to remain here in good health as long as one is destined to be here. While one is healthy (health is enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate) one should NEVER go for screening.

Do not go to the hospital or doctor to get health? Do not go to the police to get honour. Do not approach the court for getting justice. You will be in for a shock and some trouble. But when you are not well, when you have lost your honour and when injustice is done to you, you have no choice but to go to them. Similarly going for screening when one is healthy could be very, very dangerous. The reason is not far to seek. Medicine is not a hard science. It is a statistical science where averages are equated with normality. We have no definition of NORMAL in medical science. When average is normal where false positives and false negatives are 50%. Now imagine your position when you go for a heart check-up. You will certainly end up on the angiogram table if not on the bypass table! 

What is the fall out of all these cacophony? Medical establishment today has become the leading cause of death in the west, especially in the USA followed by cancer and heart attack in that order. Inside the medical establishment adverse drug reactions (ADR) take the cake with 400,000 deaths a year, which keeps mounting by the day as more and more drug advertisements are allowed directly on the popular TVs. Hospital infections come next due to super bugs in the vicinity. Medical errors, over investigations and over interventions are to follow.  

 We need fresh thinking in this area with a new science of man of non-linearity and CHAOS. That will end the menace of the present screening industry. Let us call that new integrated system as Post Modern Medicine.

“Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness” 

Marcel Proust