From: f1221-AT-cc.nagasaki-u.ac.jp
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:28:46 +0900
Subject: re: Pardon my curiosity, Mr Haines


[...]
> I feel you've maybe missed my point here.  of course I've never told
> this to "a patient" - I don't have any patients.  but that is neither
> here nor there.  I assume that your questioning tone here is meant to
> imply a certain naivete on my part, but i'm not trying to claim that I
> am in any way equipped to try and act as a doctor or whatever, nor am I
> trying to claim so authority in such matters. i'm just questioning the
> institutionalised position of medicine, based mostly on my own
> experience and that of others who I know personally.  I am not
> anti-medicine or anti-doctors - but i thnk the role that medicine has
> come to play within western societies is as potentially damaging to
> health as it is potentially beneficial -- for the reasons I have already
> outlined regarding the idea of our health as "fixable" in a way
> analogous to, say, a motor car.  so for you to ask "have you ever told
> this to a patient ?" is to appeal to a relationship - doctor/patient -
> as it exists now, and which is exactly what I was attempting to make
> problematic in my comments.

Originally, you were claiming that >mainstream< medicine is just unaware
of these problems. I tried to explain that it is not. The question, whether or
not medicine plays a potentially damaging role in western [btw why western ?]
society, was not at stake. The passage to which I answered was :
> > [...]- choose things that are "unhealthy"
> > and contribute to serious illnesses.  I don't want to sound like some
> > preacher of purity here, but I don't see what is so unspeakable about
> > the medical profession telling people that IF they want to be healthy,
> > THEN they have to work at it and PAY ATTENTION! to their lifestyle.

And I simply tried to explain, that nothing is >unspeakable< about it.

> of course i don't believe this.  but they might just say nothing.

Well, that is a little vague, no ?

> and,
> again, it is more to do with peoples relationship to their own health as
> mediated by doctors than what doctors themselves might  think or say.

I do not understand what you mean here.

> i accept this distinction.  although i think the you are throwing in the
> word fanciful to discredit it in advance... it has been established that
> there are links between your "character" and how/whether certain
> illnesses manifest.  why shouldn't we therefore look at whther this is
> the case with cancer(s)? what's so fanciful about that?

As you will have noticed, English is not my first [not even my second]
laguage. I take fancifull to mean : colourfull, interesting, yet unresolved,
somehow still floating. If this word has a derogatory connotiation,
I was unaware of it.

I am afraid, however, that you have exact ideas about what >mainstream<
medicine does, thinks or says, and as I admit to being >mainstream< you
>know< that I will discredit anything like >links between character and
disease< before even touching it with a ten foot pole.


sY
-Yamazaki