Medicine in the Global Crisis period

Konstantin Kondratyev

1. Definition of medicine and its place in human culture.
2. Antihumanist orientation of the modern medicine.
   • Suggestion of real and imaginary illness and the reduction of the health protection give birth to the industry of dubious means of self- and inter-treatment.
   • The need in medical treatment as an addiction formed by mass media is the main line of attack of the Global Crisis’ antimedicine.
   • The mass media interests, the interests of medical pharmaceutical and food industry grow together and give birth to the antimedicine monster that generates and uses the illness of people.
3. Some words on elitist medicine.
4. Cloning.
5. Our actions.

Medicine in the Global Crisis period

“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.” Hippocrates, Aphorisms

As is well known, a man is not born a man.

To become a man, a little human being should assimilate culture as a system of survival experience and all-round (biopsychological and spiritual) development and reproduction of people.

It is not possible for a separate human being alone to assimilate this experience and use it later on. A human being on its own is not viable. For that very reason the phenomena of man, culture and human communities (tribe, nation) are inseparably linked together, non-existent one without another.

From this position the place of medicine in culture is clear as well. It is a subsystem ensuring accumulation, handing over and use of the experience aimed at saving and strengthening human health, making the life of a man longer, preventing and treating diseases, i.e. aimed at healthy biopsychological reproduction and life of people. Such is, anyway, the corresponding definition (slightly modernized by me) from the soviet Dictionary of borrowings, and I quite agree with it.

In ancient times medicine, in accord with authentic translation from Latin as “the art of treatment”, was a domain of practice of certain individuals – doctors. But even at that time the colleagues were aware, that the possibilities of a doctor working alone for the benefit of human health are considerably restricted.

Do you remember the popular saying: “Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.” Hippocrates, Aphorisms.

Unfortunately, they remember as a rule only the first part of the saying of the famous doctor-humanist, but my idea is just to remind you of the fact that the ancients already drew attention of those attendants and externals – society, family, state etc. to their essential role in the subsystem of reproduction of healthy citizens. Only the society as a whole can make medicine, this most important subsystem of culture and social production, function properly.

Did the Global Crisis affect the basics of the human culture: the common problems of birth, survival and prevention of untimely death of people? Yes, it did! And quite sufficiently! Here are the main fields where the destruction of medicine takes place.

• Sometimes gradual, sometimes rapid and undisguised curtailing of the national system of public health. At the same time they attempt to cynically replace what is destroyed with means seemingly progressive but in practice far less effective (but cheap!). The introduction of the practice of family doctors in Russia, which has already been rejected in other countries. Virtualization of real problems: databases of all kinds with the information about health of population are created, as if for monitoring, which in fact turn into a large-scale computer game with a notorious name “the modernization of public health service”. In actual fact everything real is being destroyed: they cut down the related budget, personnel basis and its training (the number of working places for doctors, tutors and admission to medical universities), they cut down scientific base due to “hungry” financing regime, clinical base for the same reason.
• The mass media actively suggest to the population the idea of self-treatment and treatment of people around: we see abundant advertising (and in fact it is not a medical, competent prescription of preparations and devices for those who suffer, which from a qualified doctor’s viewpoint is a crime), we see creation of always new pseudo- and wonder-drugs presented as good for overall health, suggestion of their healing properties to people, creation of corresponding marketing nets while corruption takes place in the field of monitoring the production and application of both new and old drugs, food supplements and the very foods.
• A massive, connected with the former, suggestion of inevitability of diseases and disorders in the present conditions, their ‘democratic’ character (they affect the rich too). In this way they suggest pathogenic, unhealthy behavior, morals and organization of life. (“At work bust your guts? but hold out till next week-end, and then don’t think about anything – have a blast! Diarrhea, headache, severe colic in the morning? So what?! You have Imodium, Upsarin and Galstena, the gentleman’s kit. And if the day before you played dirty tricks, don’t feel upset –you’ll regain your inner comfort by a Dontbesadin”).
• All listed above accompanies the creation of the powerful pseudo- and in fact anti-medicine system of production of both illness and the means of its “elimination” which uses the human ability to be ill. It happens thanks to the union of the commercial interests and the potential of the mass media, medical-pharmaceutical and food industry.

We witness the birth of a new monster in the Global crisis system, in the anti-culture system, the monster of anti-medicine. On the one hand, it is aimed at the reduction of the whole population, on the other hand, - at using the biopsychological illness of both dying and surviving parts of the population, and in the third place at production of diseases themselves.

I talked much to my colleagues, perfect specialists in different fields: yes, they find personal moral and material satisfaction in their progress, but like Hippocrates they remember the role of those “externals” and understand that their profession has no future prospect if there is no system of health protection. I’d suggest them not to participate, at least, in activities listed above.

Some words on the prospects of the elitist medicine for select few (evidently, for those few of the “golden milliard” that some ideologists of the bourgeois humanism care so much for).

It has no prospects, as well as anything stolen, thieved from mankind has no prospects. This is a numinous question, a question of moral, sacral causal relationship between events. Only Humanity as a whole with its system of world culture has prospects.

Some words on cloning, an object of numerous pseudo-moral and pseudo-religious speculations.

I am not a specialist in study of religion, but I respect the Divine’s: “Propagate and breed”, the analogues to it one can find in all faiths. Cloning is just one of the ways opening new abilities for man’s and Humanity’s evolution.

I believe that it became available not without divine intervention, and it is also up to us what kind it will be. I just tell you, that like many of my colleagues I am against growing the clones for their following partition and using in transplantology, because we consider it to be a sort of a murder.

Do I have anything to suggest on how to prevent the development of the listed tendencies, or at least how to soften their consequences, understanding realistically that a crisis wouldn’t be a crisis if it doesn’t happen in full swing?

Yes, I have something to suggest.

In the field of public work I am a maximalist and sociophil, my friends, and so, knowing about such a wonderful project as Humanist Party, I am fully for it, for its progress and development. As I see it, in this promising undertaking we can do the maximum and the best. As to the minimum… well, it is always possible for every individual – personal propagation of humanist ideas and of our view of the situation, doing what one can do in the struggle against the Global Crisis manifestations at the local level…

I think it necessary to include the following into the resolution of the conference:

“We draw attention of the mass media personnel to the antihuman essence of the campaign of suggesting illness to the population, to the immorality of the cooperation with the activists who create new superindustry uniting commercial interests and the potential of the mass media, medical-pharmaceutical and food industry, the industry sowing illness among people with the aim of its further use.

We appeal to those who carry out the interests of the nation, to the deputies of all levels: Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues! Stop the destruction of the remains of the system of public health! The health of people is endangered and calls for its protection against the monsters of mass media, medical-pharmaceutical and food industry. Come back to the idea of health protection system!”

A member of the International Coalition “For Humanism!”

Doctor-psychiatrist, expert in narcology, Kondratyev Konstantin Nikolaevich.