What Happened in 105 Years?

One of my favorite quotes about the future of Health Care has been attributed to Thomas Edison. As I researched the authenticity of this quote, the site snopes.com, a wonderful source of truth versus urban legend actually provided the entire quote. As it seems, my favorite quote was actually just one small part of a much broader and profound prediction about the state of Health Care in the year, 1903.

I think modern medicine should aspire to goals set forth by Mr. Edison. Unfortunately he had much more faith in physicians and overall holistic care than a century could bear.

What has not come to fruition as of 2008?

1. The knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease. We often characterize diseases as being idiopathic to justify the treatment of symptoms and not the cause.

2. Medicine is played out. Well, Edison had no idea what role the pharmaceutical companies might play in the upcoming century. Money is the predominant driver for dispensing thousands of questionable and often needless medications.

3. Every new discovery of bacteria shows us all the more convincingly that we have been wrong and that the million tons of stuff we have taken was all useless. We have not advanced significantly in dealing with bacteria or viruses. We now have drug resistant infections that have been the result of “overuse of antibiotics”, our sole defense over the last 50 years.

4. You can’t improve on nature. Well, if you shop at a grocery store and buy the predominantly engineered food supply, you will discover that we continue to attempt to outperform nature to no avail. The ingredients listed in most foods we buy contain mostly derivatives of many chemical compounds, mostly synthetic.

So here is Thomas Edison’s actual quote. You decide for yourself. I know in 2008, I will continue to question traditional clinical protocols and look towards nature and the body’s incredible ability to heal itself if only given enough time.

“Nineteen hundred and three will bring great advances in surgery, in the study of bacteria, in the knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease. Medicine is played out. Every new discovery of bacteria shows us all the more convincingly that we have been wrong and that the million tons of stuff we have taken was all useless.

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.

“They may even discover the germ of old age. I don’t predict it, but it might be by the sacrifice of animal life human life could be prolonged.

“Surgery, diet, antiseptics - these three are the vital things of the future in preserving the health of humanity. There were never so many able, active minds at work on the problems of diseases as now, and all their discoveries are tending to the simple truth - that you can’t improve on nature.”