Monday, February 28, 2011

Miracles?

There are many colloquial medical and scientific terms with which I take exception.
One of the worst offenders is the term "miracle drug".
In a sense, all drugs and NO drugs are miracles.
On the one hand, the ability to influence the action of a cell so as to improve the health of the organism seems miraculous.
On the other, we are simply using the natural structure of the cell and its components in ways that are already determined by the structure and function in place.
The "miracle", if there is one, is not the drug itself but the thinking that went into it,
i.e. the human mind.
Pharmacology is just another branch of human endeavor, albeit
one that requires use of many sources of information.
And in the end no machine or computer can look at a real patient and
sense if the drug is "working" or not--
that is still a "miracle" of human function.

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