Myth #1- Technology has improved healthcare
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| Dr. Stephen Kelly Bsc,D.C |
Ask any person if they believes that technology has improved health care and you will get a resounding "Yes!" Advances in medical technology now enable us to look inside the human body with relative ease and with great detail. Our surgical tools allow us to operate on all parts of the body with a minimum of trauma and blood loss. Technology has helped us improve the quality of life for millions of patients every year. It has enabled us to save countless lives as well. Therefore, it is certainly a foregone conclusion that technology has, in fact, improved our health. Or has it?
Statistically, since the age of technology, there has been an onslaught of increasing pathology. The amount of illness and morbidity in our society is dramatically rising. There are now more cases of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, auto-immune illnesses, endocrine disorders, developmental disorders, allergies, respiratory problems, infectious diseases, neurological problems, musculo-skeletal pathology, gastro-intestinal disorders, psychological illness, etc., than ever before.
While it is true that our technology has enabled us to better handle the enormity of disorders now facing mankind, it has done literally nothing for "health care." If it had, we would have seen a decrease in the amount of illness and pathology in society. We would have experienced a drop in the amount of people requiring intervention from the medical community. Pharmaceutical companies would not be as rich and powerful as they are if people would be less dependent on medication to "feel well". If anything, advances in technology have fostered a narrow field of vision, focused more on early detection and intervention than on prevention. If, by definition, health care means "the maintenance of good health," then technology has failed miserably to produce any measurable improvement in the overall state of health of mankind.
Dr. Stephen Kelly is located at Family First Chiropractic and Wellness located at 142 Erickson Dr, Red Deer, T4R 2X3, 403-347-3261
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