Traditions, in addition to being binding, offer values that are shared with the community. Unfortunately, due to the exploitation imposed by the economy and the frequently negative empire of the various technologies, some traditions, little by little, lose their validity. The result favors the money makers and threatens the precariousness of the precarious: the former multiply their possessions and the latter become more impoverished; material well-being disappears and the emotional imbalance deepens. Dantesque pairing. In medicine, the emergence of new diseases and the impossibility of accessing adequate professional services increases poverty and accentuates the power of those who have the means to enrich themselves, including their factories dedicated to health.
Traditional medicine was long ago “more” affordable and “more” universal. Distributing it properly redounded to the benefit of all. The links are obvious: promoting individual health protected social health; the person worked and society benefited. In “ancient” China, wisdom flowed: patients paid doctors while they were healthy. When they got sick they stopped paying. The doctors rushed to improve and cure their patients. When they did, they received the corresponding money back.
For several decades the faces of medicine have been transformed. The sick continue to be cared for; however, the motto, for countless health factories, lies in profit. Medicine has become an industry. Hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and lawyers make juicy profits. Some pathologies, due to the progress of medicine and the increase in life expectancy, have become chronic conditions, ie, Heart failure, diabetes mellitus, and certain malignant neoplasms are examples. Treating such patients for long periods yields enormous profits. Aware of this situation, the medical industry and its acolytes invest money to keep this population alive as long as possible.
Reality admits of no fissures. Health has become an object of consumption. Everything adds up: greater longevity, changes in the concept of health thanks to thieves clinics whose propaganda offers hope through therapies that offer to stop aging, as well as the medicalization of life, an exercise that has managed to turn the non-sick into sick people, ie, female orgasm pills, premature ejaculation tablets, bald spot remedies, and bereavement supplies, produce economic benefits. Everything adds up in favor of the medicine industry: their owners win. Everything remains once morest the users: they bet hopes and money in order to modify the unchangeable reality.
The challenge is complex. At present, medicine imposed by economic interests establishes its rules on the individual, sick or not, as an act of authority whose tentacles are constantly amplified. Traditional medicine, or that which is practiced in communities far from civilization, although it has countless limits, is more supportive of its members. Talking regarding the much talked regarding and tossed around right to health is a peasant dream.
Educating the population in the field of health should be the bet of the authorities. It is not. Politicians and their policies fail. They have achieved little; How many poor people have managed to overcome the dreaded combination of poverty and disease?
Diseases have become one of the great economic enterprises of the owners of money. They know it and they exploit it.
ARNOLD KRAUS
doctor and writer
