HISTORICAL CONCEPTS
Cultural Development
Human Endeavor
ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS
PROGRESSIVE IDEAS
The improvement of people's health and experience of life is the goal of medicine. Its practitioners are among the most respected members of our society and are perhaps viewed as being the least corruptible of professionals. Nevertheless, we are quick to place total responsibility for our own health on others and in this way create an imbalance in the doctor-patient relationship.
Most invidious of assaults on individual worth are those which equate a person to an administrative unit, as we in the US do through Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). Under the current US system, while doctors might make decisions regarding an individual's course of treatment, it is inexpert administrators that determine standards of care. The administrator is knowledgeable and efficient in accounting, but is woefully inadequate in patient care. Doctors ought to elect representatives amongst themselves, under the advisement of administrators, to create minimum standards of patient care. To leave such important standards to the whims of others is a poor way indeed to maintain health.
Ancient medicine
Modern medicine