Modern medicine and it’s present practices are holding our society at a standstill where we sometimes even lose ground to superviruses and disease resistent bacteria.
As of the present, modern medicine is about preserving and extending life through a variety of techniques, be it excersize to promote a healthier lifestyle or using drugs and antibiotics to destroy disease. The drugs and antibiotics is where we are headed into serious trouble as our defenses have dwindled significantly as our blatent overusage or misuse has lead to a dangerous evolutionary trend in disease causing bacteria. Our previous wonder drug, penicillin, has been rendered useless against most present day bacteria. The only problem with that is as of today, there is no drug in sight that has shown the potential to destroy most bacteria and is safe for use in humans. Also hospitals, although they provide excellent health care, are becoming hot zones for super viruses that are super resistent to most, if not all, drugs. With this alarming trend, we could be facing epidemics that don’t have a cure, because all of the known antibiotics for the disease have been rendered useless by evolution. We are already starting to see rising rates of super resistent forms of tuberculosis, pneumonia, and staph due to the wonderful breeding ground our supposed medical havens have created for the deadly bacteria strains. Could we face a massive epidemic of an uncurable disease within the next fifty years? The chances are better then ever; especially with overseas air travel on the rise. It only takes one, to spread it to the entire continent.
With this general overuse of pharmaceuticals comes a hard question that tests the ethical beliefs of everyone. If someone is dying from an incurable disease, and is also suffering from tuburculosis or another disease that has the potential to turn into a super virus, should we treat the curable disease and give them maybe a few weeks or months of pain to endure? Or would the time sacrificed by one eventually safe thousands? Although this question is hard for all of us, if not impossible to give an answer due to the immense emotional attachment we gain with others we are close with.
Although that is a very tough question that would have to at least left up to individual decisions, at the rate we are losing effective antibiotics, we have the real possibility of running out of effective pharmaceuticals in our lifetime. Once we start having untreatable diseases, the effect in that future period will be immense. Will we find another superdrug to combat serious diseases, or will we be forced to reject modern pharmaceuticals in hope that evolution will lead to a disease free world sometime in the future? All I know is that modern medicine is failing in it’s inherent design, and causing a dimmer instead of brighter future.
