Because there is a common failing
in the Big Three.
And it’s not because the
practitioners are evil bastards out to corrupt humanity, which also
may be true.
I was reminded of the nonsense
going on in the Big Three when I read Gail Collins’ op/ed column (“Medicine on
the Move”) in the New York Times this morning. Collins was commenting on the
fact that the medical community has gone from falling down in awe of estrogen
therapy for women, to loathing estrogen therapy, and now is back to a guarded
love for estrogen therapy for some women, sometimes.
Likewise, the AMA has gone from
loving calcium supplements to despising calcium supplements, from castigating
eggs to absolving eggs of cholesterol crime, from loving mammograms to
suspicion regarding mammograms, from hating coffee to prescribing it for elders.
And why are doctors so vacillating
and so drug-therapy happy? Yes, of course, the whole AMA is in bed with the
pharmaceutical industry, but that’s not the real reason its aim is to have every
man, woman and child in the USA under a doctor’s care and on drugs.
The reason is: The people in the medical
community want to make their patients and clients happy. They want to
keep their jobs.
Which is exactly the reason you
cannot trust anyone in politics--they want to keep voters voting for them.
And religious leaders want you in their religious edifices on the sabbath in order to keep
their jobs.
Not that it’s necessarily a bad
thing for these providers to want to keep on being providers. Who doesn’t want
to keep his job so that the dough keeps coming in, so that the rent gets paid,
so that food gets bought so that kiddies and constituents get fed?
But still…most of us have
harbored the hope that people in politics, religion and medicine have a higher
calling.
Forget about it. It’s not true. Get over it.
Keep fighting the good fight in
politics. Keep on believing in God. Go to the doctor when you must.
But don’t for one minute think
that the guys who profess to be the loyal messengers of religion, politics and
medicine are in any way a cut above the rest of us as far as being vulnerable
to lying, cheating, flattery and corruption.
These guys simply want to keep
their jobs. Just like you and me.
