--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote: > At 10:16 AM 6/21/01 -0700,
Joanna B. wrote:
> >Some branches of western medicine I have no complaints about; for example,
> >dentistry.
>
>
> So the control of diseases like polio, plague, tb, malaria, vd etc. does
> not count form much vis a vis control of the life-style related ailments.
> How middle-class American, indeed!
at least two of the diseases mentioned above can only be considered to have been "controlled" by western medicine if one _is_ a middle class American, or equivalent. Tuberculosis and malaria have been controlled, where they have been controlled at all, by public health initiatives largely unrelated to the medical profession (starting with the engineer who stopped the Clerkenwell cholera epidemic in its tracks by removing the handle from a pump, in the face of the scorn of the medical profession). The main contribution of "western medicine" to the control of epidemic disease has been to create the evolutionary conditions for the development of better drug resistance among tuberculosis and malaria baccilli.
dd
>
> wojtek
>
>
===== ... in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. -- Bertrand Russell
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