Treating the Symptom and not The Disease
Holistic schools of medicine, such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese medicine take a look at the whole patient in order to identify and cure the root cause of an illness or disease. Modern medicine, on the other hand, functions in the west by evaluating patients symptomatically and isolating their conditions based on the particular organ or system failure and treating the perceived issue independent of the entire whole.
Our healthcare system is broken, there's no controversy about this but what there is a debate about is why and how it's broken. Some would argue it's that Insurance companies have an undue effect on patients receiving adequate treatment in a timely manner, others would argue that there is an inherent conflict of interest in a for-profit pharmaceutical industry who's quarterly financial reports are measured by the number of sick people taking their drugs, not by the number of people cured.
Hospitals are understaffed, doctors are working too many hours, fear of malpractice lawsuits are interfering with a given doctor's decision making process and people are so sick in this country that by the time they do end up in a hospital with catastrophic multiple organ failures. they consume what little resources are available. The vast majority of people in the U.S. are relatively unhealthy and we can look at how our food supply has been compromised and contaminated, how people are not getting the right education about nutrition, how we're consuming too much sugar and not getting enough exercise and in general not taking very good care of ourselves.
However, these common reasons for what has caused the system failure of our healthcare industry are just symptoms and they are not getting to the root cause. We've got the best technology in the world for diagnosing patients and if you've got a broken bone or need a transplant, our medical system is second to none but at the end of the day you've got to ask yourself, what diseases has our modern medicine paradigm actually cured?
In truth, the root cause that our $3T Healthcare System is broken is actually incredibly basic. The reason the system is broken is that its core, the model that science and medicine use to study and understand any biological organism is fundamentally wrong.
The incorrectness of the current model in Modern Medicine can be broken up into two separate components. The more obvious fault in the modern medicine paradigm is the idea that lifeforms, everything from single celled amoebas to complex mammals, are mechanistic in nature and we are merely machines to be diagnosed and doctors are more or less glorified biological mechanics.
The other issue where the current model is incorrect is a less obvious and this mistake is an error in philosophy. The word Philosophy comes from the two latin words Philo (which means 'knowledge') and Sophia (meaning 'love of') and philosophy originally was a diverse and open minded discipline that focused on coming to the Truth of nature. However, over the centuries, the school of philosophy, especially here in the west became more and more dogmatized. In fact, a recent New York Times article on Philosophy argues that the Eurocentric and insular nature of philosophy taught in the west borders on something resembling a religion.
This philosophical error in modern medicine and orthodox science is the indoctrinated belief that we can't know anything for certain unless it is based on a theory that is falsifiable. In other words, if we cannot take a theory and create testable predictions with it, the theory is useless. This belief has become so entrenched within the scientific community that is has become part of Scientism, or the dogma that most scientists operate from. Philosophy, which literally translates to a love of knowledge, became an authoritative branch of science who's empirical method became tdefinitive way of knowing anything.
As with most other dogmatic systems, believers of a given paradigm experience cognitive dissonance when presented with evidence that is not internally self-consistent with their own world views and so adopting a new model is virtually impossible. However, as argued in the new documentary film The Physics of The Soul, not only has the mechanistic paradigm been proven incorrect, but the philosophical framework of falsifiability also been debunked.
The implications coming from the latest research in consciousness studies suggest that consciousness itself is the driving vital force behind biological life. The ramification being that healing itself cannot be possibly understood outside of the context of these vital forces.
The overwhelming consensus coming from researchers looking into these phenomena is that there seems to be some sort of universal consciousness, beyond space and time, that gives life and connects & binds all organisms.
Taking the holistic model of health to an even greater scale to include our entire species as a single organism and even looking at the health of our whole planet, you don't need a doctor to tell you that the patient is not doing very well. The errors inherent in orthodox science, western philosophy and modern medicine are all beginning to manifest now as global catastrophes that will ultimately make the $3T we're currently spending on healthcare costs look like pocket change.
We can engage indefinitely in philosophical debates on the authoritative power of empirical studies and the nature of reality but for the health of ourselves, our species and the planet Earth, we simply can't afford to argue much longer. The current trajectory orthodox science is taking us on is unsustainable and a major course correction is critical for our survival. Science must evolve to incorporate consciousness as the fundamental basis for our reality or we're all doomed.
Frank Huguenard holds a degree in science from Purdue University and spent decades in product development in Silicon Valley prior to embarking on a career in documentary film production, specializing in films bridging the gap between Science & Spirituality. He draws on his research in the fields of combination of psychology, physics, wisdom traditions, sociology and history. You can see his films at www.beyondmefilms.com.