Medical science has evolved, and treatments, procedures, and protocols have changed. Over time
we have put so much faith in the medical field because we think that is the only way to live
healthily. When we put so much into medical science, we forget that sometimes it can let us
down. For example, the Covid vaccine is a controversial topic because some people are ecstatic to
get it, and others say it is no point if you can still get the virus. I feel we do not realize that science
can let us down because treatments depend on the person. Unnecessary tests and surgeries imply
having too much faith in medical science because most of the time, the doctors already know how
to treat the patient. Still, they continue to order these tests to get as much money they can from
insurance companies. According to college affairs, Doctors propose unnecessary tests (e.g., MRI),
the latest surgical procedures (like key-hole surgery), and prescribing expensive drugs to charge
higher fees; cosmetic procedures like liposuction and cosmetic surgery may be dangerous and only
pander to vanity rather than health (College affairs, 2019). Another implication would be the
researcher being fraudulent with their research just to become famous.” Fraud and unethical
practices in medical science: In their quest for fame and research grants, medical researchers may
be tempted to fake research results or use unethical means to gather research data. Such
practices, if undetected, may cause harm to patients who are treated with drugs and medical
procedures that resulted from such flawed research” (college affairs, 2019). Although science has
been helpful in the past, it is vital that consumers also do their research to advocate for
themselves.
Medical science has made significant beneficial changes to humans lives and lifespans over the last
200 years including increasing the average life expectancy from 35 to 78 and making infant
mortality rates almost negligent (College Affairs 2019). Things like antibiotics, improvements in
drinking water, and sanitation changes have been the biggest factors that have been able to see
these changes made possible. These medical advances have created a sense of trust and faith in
modern medicine that is justified. With the continued changes in medicine occurring at such a
rapid rate with experimental drugs and procedures people are putting too much faith in these new
advances that are not yet properly researched and vetted. One of the issues with modern
medicine is the overuse of unnecessary testing, more radical procedures, new and expensive
drugs, and cosmetic or unnecessary procedures, that are all expensive and unjustified. Doctors in
the field of research may also have their priorities more on fame and money rather than helping
humanity and their research and procedures are still experimental (College Affairs 2019). There is
also the issue of fraud and ethics with falsified data and results sometimes used for fame or
grants. These are problems that potentially can cause serious side effects if left unchecked. There
are other areas where faith is justified however, including the control of many infectious diseases
such as the plague, malaria, and small pox. Vaccines and antibiotics have been used successfully to
treat and prevent many of these illnesses that used to threaten children and these successes
boost people’s faith. For general practice medicine faith is warranted and earned over the last 200
years, but modern medicine has yet to prove itself and earn our faith in these new areas of
medical science.
There are also the changing way people live based on popular opinion and the need for reviews to
ensure they are working with medical professional that others have said they trusted (Chen 2008).
This then instills faith and trust in the medical professionals and forces change from quantity to
quality based on patients’ satisfaction. When it comes to healthcare professionals’ skills it is
presumed by patients current and potential that all doctors on a skill level are created equal. An
OB/GYN is an OB/GYN and what separates them is their personability. This demonstrates an innate
sense of trust regarding each doctor’s skill set and a lack of understanding on how important it
may be to know the doctor’s physician's training, board certification, experience, memberships to
professional societies, safety records, or hospital affiliations. It has been said that a person who
graduates last in their class of medical school is still called Doctor but would we really trust their
skills if it was obvious, they graduated last. It is possible that people are uneducated on what to
look for when researching for a doctor and do put too much blind faith in a doctor that simply
meets their needs such as specialty and location. When undergoing surgery on average people
research their procedure or doctor performing it for less than an hour but may spend up to eight
hours researching for a new car (Chen 2008). This demonstrates a level of trust that can be
described as blind. Although it is important to have a connection and a healthy patient-doctor
relationship putting one's faith into someone's hands that willingly without first learning more may
be considered reckless and could potentially be harmful.
Implications of having too much faith in medical science is that when a physician's knowledge of
science expires, what does a patient have to hold on to when they are fighting for their lives? I
personally believe in God and science because I believe He created science. Sulmasy et al., (2010)
states that " optimism as performative, that is, the notion that positive thoughts and expressions
improve chances of benefit; (2) fighting cancer as a battle; and (3) faith in God, science, or both
are three themes that emerged from patients enrolled in phase I or II oncology trials about their
expectations of therapeutic benefit and their reasons for those expectations." b Medical science is
an advantage but I believe there must be another source that we can believe in for hopes of
getting better. Being optimistic regarding a situation that has been scientifically proven to be the
end of a medical situation is faith in something outside of science and hoping that everything will
be okay. My brother was shot in the neck and the bullet severed his C2 and C3 which caused him
to be quadriplegic. There were two main arteries hit with the bullet and he had to have 4
emergency surgeries to stop his bleeding. According to medical science, he should have never
lived past the night he was shot. My family and I fasted and prayed to God and believed things
would get better. My brother lived two years after the shooting and he talked and was able to
take multiple breaths on his own. This was the manifestation of what I prayed for and me not
believing in just medical science.
Doctors may order unnecessary tests such as MRI, recommend and perform cosmetic surgeries
that are not needed. All these have negative effects on the patient and their families. It can cause
a financial burden to the patient, can cause complications or even death from unnecessary
procedures. Fraud and unethical practices in medical science can result in harm to patients who
are treated with drugs and medical procedures that resulted from fake research findings. b So
having too much faith in medical science without validating the findings/studies/recommendations
from medical providers can result in harm.
On the other hand, medical science has successfully eradicated some diseases such as smallpox
with vaccinations thus increasing the faith in medicine as well. Due to advances in medical science,
people are living longer, infant mortality rates have decreased as well (people are placing…. faith,
2019).
Currently, we are facing a pandemic, and based on available research, vaccines against Covid-19
were authorized on an emergency basis and now it is being mandated by different organizations.
Many people who got vaccinated got sick with Covid -19 and many got side effects from the
vaccine people now are becoming more skeptical about the effectiveness of these vaccines and
the governmental push for these vaccines.
In my opinion, evidence-based medicine might be more appealing and trustworthy, and too much
faith in medical science may not have positive outcomes always.
Negative implications:
Unnecessary treatment and procedures. Doctors proposing unnecessary tests (e.g., MRI), the latest
surgical procedures (e.g., key-hole surgery), and prescribing expensive drugs in order to charge
higher fees; cosmetic procedures such as liposuction and cosmetic surgery may be dangerous and
serve only to pander to vanity rather than health. All of this has a negative (often financial) impact
on the patient and their families.
Positive implications:
People are living longer and healthier lives, and infant mortality has decreased significantly:
Humans had a 35-year average lifespan in the nineteenth century. In affluent nations today, the
average lifespan is 78 years, and neonatal mortality is negligible. These are commonly
acknowledged criteria for the success of medical science. Medical science advocated a healthy
lifestyle of a balanced diet, exercise, and excellent public health and cleanliness, aided by clean
drinking water and contemporary sanitation.
Medical science is a field that attempts to “explain how the human body works” (The School of
Health n.d.). There have been many advancements to aid in this progress including stem cell
research, genetic coding, prosthetics, drug therapy, and more. While technological advancements
in healthcare are great, could they be stunting the health of the public?
A surprising note is that while there have been many medical advancements in recent years,
healthcare and disease trends have not changed much. For example, since the year 2000, life
expectancy has only increased by two years (National Center for Health Statistics, 2021). Some
health statistics have increased including cases of Alzheimer’s disease and suicide. Why is the
health of the population not changing in the face of great technological advancements?
Reliance on medicine and technology to fix everything has become a downfall of the American
people. Rather than proactively trying to solve a problem before it starts, they may be more
inclined to just find a solution instead. This is made easier when there are many solutions being
offered by healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. There are numerous benefits to exercise,
but why do it when there could be a pill that helps you burn fat without putting in the effort to do
so (Fox, 2008)? This mentality may lead to higher cases of disease as Americans search for
solutions rather than preventions. Putting a bandaid on a serious wound does not actually fix the
problem, it just contains the situation. Blindly putting faith into companies wrought with greed can
also lead to the public being taken advantage of as the price of these solutions may put them into
debt.
Medical science has been trusted for many years, and medicine itself has come a very long way. b It
started in the 1800's where Dr Lister came out with sterile instruments and surgeries, to Dr
Pasetur, who developed the first vaccines. It then went to the 1900s where the first antibiotic,
amoxicillin, was developed by Alexander Fleming. In 2001, m the first bio-artificial liver was
created, and now, today, we are dealing with HIV treatments, stem cell research, and robotics.
(Medical News Today, 2018)
Today, however, are we putting too much faith in medical science? According to the NY Times,
more than 1/3 of patients who have had operations, barely reviewed the credentials of their
surgeon. Patients are not being educated on their choices and the mistakes that can happen. This
is called blind trust. (Chen, 2008)
Too much trust in medical science can lead to unnecessary tests that can cause harm in patients.
For example, a doctor may diagnose, and prove his diagnosis with an MRI, for example. In this
case, the MRI was just given to show patient that he/she can trust him/her, not used to diagnose.
This is a way to gain trust from the patients, while at the same time causing harm to the patient, if
it was unnecessary. The patient may have not been educated enough to question the decision of
doing the MRI (Fritz, Holton, 2018)
In my opinion, we should never trust medical science at 100%. Even though a lot has been
discovered, and many things have been helpful to the population, there are also medical things
that can be harmful. We must always question the doctors as much as we can. We should educate
ourselves before making any decisions for medical treatments. An example I have is the current
Covid Vaccination. Many reports tell us that they have been successful in preventing severe
disease, and then there are other reports that claim that many people hospitalized have also been
hospitalized. How can we trust science if we do not know the truth? How can we trust science if
we do not have clear reviews of their medical treatment?
There are also implications for not trusting medical science enough. For example, when there are
medical emergencies, such as the covid pandemic, we must trust the science to be able to get
through it and get back to normal. People just must question and get educated enough to make
the right decisions with their healthcare providers.
Trust is a component of healthcare that is necessary for the industry to succeed. The entire
industry functions only if patients trust in their providers’ ability to assist them. While yes, there
are hundreds of hoops and hurdles that hospitals and providers must go through prior to
becoming an accredited facility, the success of the organization comes down to their patients
trusting them.
This environment creates an interesting market where the consumer is not able to fully
understand the product before “purchasing;” it is solely based on faith in the physician. Maynard
and Bloor comment on this topic with their quote; “An additional complication to the agency
relationship between doctor and patient is that the patient may be unable to judge the
performance of the doctor, before or even after an intervention. This limits the potential of
performance-related pay in addressing the problem of incomplete agency, since it is difficult to
pay doctors based on improvements in patient health.” (Maynard & Bloor, para. 7, 2003). This
environment raises the question; do patients have too much trust in the medical system?
This is a difficult question to answer as there are many different components that go into building
trust. Advancements in technology and science have made once complicated procedures into
simple tasks covered by advancements in medical instruments. The patient must be able to place
their trust in the physician, the science, or the technology. The organization’s job becomes one of
selling trust to the patient.
Placing too much trust into medical science alleviates the pressure that medical facilities must
perform well. If medical professions become accustomed to not needing to work for a patient’s
trust, quality and standards may begin to fall. It is important that patients continue to do their
research to keep providers accountable, and the delicate nature of the healthcare market intact.
Medical science has done many wonderful things. It has prolonged and extended life, provided
cures for a wide range of diseases, identified the cause of infectious diseases, and produced
vaccines and drugs to treat these maladies. Despite the many wonderful things medical science
has done, there can be ‘too much of a good thing.’
One of the first implications of ‘too much faith’ in medical science is that people have been
conditioned to place “an inordinate amount of trust in it, to an unrealistic and unsustainable
extent” See (2019). Consuming medications, undergoing treatments, embracing unproven medical
advances have taken the place of a healthy lifestyle. Instead of making lifestyle changes, it is
‘easier’ to keep the illness in check thru medical treatment. “The lackadaisical attitude towards the
maintenance of one’s physical health could be attributed to the overconfidence that people have
on the drug-saturated medical paradigm that has manifested” See (2019).
Another implication of “too much faith” in medical science is that boundaries have been extended,
technologies have been expanded, and the call to ‘do no harm’ has been ignored to the extent
that medical science has moved beyond curing the human body of disease and maladies but to
the point of modifying it for our pleasure/ desire. Case in point; cosmetic surgery. Humans are
dissatisfied with the current. They want new and innovative ways to enhance the body. This
comes with a financial cost as well.
Unfortunately, patients and clinicians underestimate the harm and overestimate the benefits of
medical intervention (Mandrola, 2017). The medical science that we rely on cannot always be
trusted. As noted by Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, “much of the scientific literature,
perhaps half, may simply be untrue” “in their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too
often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world.”
To save us from ourselves, we need to be more skeptical, ask more questions. Be slow and
conservative, share the data more than the interpretation of the data, and focus on the benefits
and harms in absolute terms (Mandrola, 2017). Medical science is good but it is not perfect and
there is too much of a good thing.
References:
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See, Irwin (2019, October 9). People are placing too much faith in medical science- do you agree?
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