04.19.06
Medical Science
At about 11:30 last night, I got a headache. This was not an ordinary everyday headache mind you; but a truly head-splitting, feels like a brain tumor, dot-com investor headache. I eventually cured this headache with my usual headache remedy (3 Tylenols, 3 Advils, 3 Aspirins). I couldn’t help observing, however, that had I gone to the best hospital in the country (Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins or something…NOT RCH), they probably would not have been able to tell me why I got a headache. In fact, they could not have determined with any kind of certainty whether or not my headache had been caused by:
- the melatonin tablet I had taken so I would wake up early
- the fact that, besides my usual coffee and Altoids regiment, I had eaten practically nothing that day but popcorn and leftover Easter candy
- latent stress over the pile of homework I have due by the end of the semester
- the five consecutive episodes of Desperate Housewives I had just watched on a 2.5 inch screen
Sure, they could have looked at the statistics stating that melatonin causes headaches in 10% of the population, stress causes headaches in 75% of the population, and Desperate Housewives causes headaches in 99% of the male population, but they would never have known for sure. They could only have made a somewhat educated guess.
If I had submitted to a series of expensive, invasive, degrading tests, they may have been able to rule out anything seriously wrong with me (such as Schwannomatosis, Neurofibromatosis, or being a sports fan); but they could never have determined, with absolute certainty, what had caused something as simple as a headache. In the end, I would probably have been told to go home and take an aspirin.
Contrast this with the typical experience with a car mechanic. You bring your car in, the mechanic plugs some neat little diagnostic tool into your engine, and in three minutes he tells you EXACTLY what the problem is, and how many thousand it will cost to fix.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with paying money to fix either my body or my car (or my car’s body), but I would prefer to pay for accurate diagnoses and fixes, not guesses based on my subjective description of the symptoms. Therefore, I submit that until medical treatment is as exact and precise as car repair, we should treat doctors less like gods, and more like unreliable body mechanics, useful mainly to fix clearly defined problems (like multiple stab wounds).
