The Arrogance of Preventative Medicine
Experts refuse to learn from history until they make it themselves, and the price for their arrogance is paid by the innocent - 2002 Aug 20, Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)
Preventive medicine displays all 3 elements of arrogance.
First, it is aggressively assertive, pursuing symptomless individuals and telling them what they must do to remain healthy. Occasionally invoking the force of law (immunizations, seat belts), it prescribes and proscribes for both individual patients and the general citizenry of every age and stage.
Second, preventive medicine is presumptuous, confident that the interventions it espouses will, on average, do more good than harm to those who accept and adhere to them.
Finally, preventive medicine is overbearing, attacking those who question the value of its recommendations.
What about the villains? Who is to blame for the widespread application of this and the other harmful “preventive” interventions that cause disability and untimely death?
I suggest that we not waste time blaming the manufacturers of “preventive” drugs and devices, for they are pursuing profit, not health, and anyone who looks to their print advertisements and television spots for health guidance arguably deserves whatever harm comes to them.
Nor, I suggest, should we blame “demanding” patients who insist on receiving some bogus preventive intervention of unknown efficacy, for they are simply doing their best to improve their lives in an “evidence-vacuum.”
I place the blame directly on the medical “experts” who, to gain private profit (from their industry affiliations), to satisfy a narcissistic need for public acclaim or in a misguided attempt to do good, advocate “preventive” manoeuvres that have never been validated in rigorous randomized trials. Not only do they abuse their positions by advocating unproven “preventives,” they also stifle dissent.