Compassionate Skepticism

            I think the biggest idea that I’m walking away from this course with is the importance of language in the production of knowledge. Latour used Pasteur as an example of how bacteria “existed” once they were named. As medical research advances and improves, it continues to name things and in turn expands its web of rhetoric and association. Though most of my group work ended up dealing with food (Golden Rice, veganism, urban food deserts…), I always had a personal investment in our discussions of medicine and science. As I mentioned in my first blog post for the class, medicine is in my blood – metaphorically speaking. My father is a dentist, my mother is a Masters-holding nurse practitioner in mental health, and my stepfather was a psychiatrist.

            I walked into the class with the skepticism of my father, the dentist. Every bit a doctor and a man of medicine, he basically just fixes holes in teeth – boy doesn’t floss, boy’s tooth hurts, Papa Graham drills out decaying portion of tooth and fills it with composite. Problem solved. From what I understand, there isn’t really any cutting edge research happening in the field of dentistry; just ways to plug tooth-holes faster and more efficiently (a tip of the cap to the economists in the room). My mother, on the other hand, has spent her entire life providing more immediate care for patients. She administers medication to correct a problem as soon as it arises. Though I tend to lean towards my father’s skepticism of the modern healthcare system (after breaking my collarbone when I was 14, he told me to drink some water and sit in the bath…), I completely understand my mother’s faith in modern medicine. She sees it work, and much in the same way that a root canal works.

We began this course with an examination of apotemnophilia – a wonderful example of a psychological disorder with causes that were arguably physiological (pin prick tests) and debated a treatment that was indisputably effective, albeit controversial. I couldn’t help but think of how my father and mother would both react to such a debate. The two methods of treatment are perfectly suited to both their fields. “If your leg is bothering you, yank it off!,” versus, “This irrational desire obviously stems from a much deeper seated issue and requires further psychological study to determine the best method of treatment.”

I found much comfort in my step father’s attitude towards science, medicine and society at large. Unfortunately, he passed away after a 10 year battle with cancer just two weeks before this semester began, but I can’t think of anyone I would have loved to share our in class discussions with more. An unwaveringly compassionate cynic, he held science in the highest regards while also harboring the deepest contempt for what we have done with it. In rifling through the contents of Tim’s laptop after he passed, I found a link to a blog that he’d created for his humorous writings. I read his blog the week before our class began, but it’s impish cynicism carries much more weight after our discussions. I will walk away from this class with a similar skepticism, now knowing that science is a language to explain what already is. A linguistic act is in inherently social act in that it makes an assumption of the listener in order that it may communicate its intended effect. I will forever be looking for that intent whenever I feel that the rhetoric of science is acting upon me in some way – though it may often go unnoticed. I will leave you all with Tim’s first entry, written under the alias of his alter ego (this is a Yale med school graduate, mind you…), Dr. Dusty Balzac.

             

"Good morning and welcome to the first day of a medical adventure! I'm a physician whose main academic interest concerns lying in all its various forms and glories. Whether it's innocent misrepresentation or frankly heinous and damnable perjury, mendacity carries with it both virtues and vices. My main argument is that a phenomenon so ubiquitous and effortless as deceit must be useful, and that even a kind of splendor can ensue when a great fraud or whopper is perpetrated not merely on the most gullible and untutored rube, but on someone very much like you or me. Accordingly, reader, nothing written in any of these postings is true. DO NOT BELIEVE A WORD I WRITE!!! PARTICULARLY ANYTHING ABOUT HEALTH AND MEDICINE!!!
 Why, you might wonder, would I waste my time or yours directing a thick stream of unmitigated bullshit on a world already wallowing up to its chin in this foul current? Why not instead illumine the dark corners of falsehood with blinding shafts of pure and shimmering light? Why not promote truth? Why not?
 Because it's so boring, and so often so wrong. How many times have you read that some miracle diet, supplement, surgery or nostrum has been revealed not merely to be useless but injurious? Remember the great chromium scandal of 2000? The fluoridation scare of 1983? The shameful failures of penile extension surgeries? The Scurvy Controversy of 1893? The proven futility of hand-washing, flossing, a balanced diet and abstinence from bestiality? The robust and completely false assertion that yams cure yaws? Or that scabies causes scrapies?
 You may curse me, dear reader, for being nothing more than an execrable liar of the meanest sort. But I have warned you, and I shall warn you each day, that nothing I post shall contain even the merest scintilla of truth, this sentence included. Enjoy and beware!"

-Dr. Timothy James Twito

http://fifthhumour.blogspot.com/2007/09/good-morning-and-welcome-to-first-day.html

For background on Dr. Balzac, click through to the “About Me” section. Seriously worth it.

Thanks for a great semester everyone!

-Chris