After writing yesterday's entry, I picked up a book that has been lying on my shelf for a few months now and found it so exactly in line with my thoughts that I couldn't help but notice the synchronicity. The book is called "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science" and was written by Atul Gawande during the final year of his surgical residency.
Although I am only part of the way through it, I found it to be one of the most breath takingly honest books I have ever read. He displays immense courage and compassion as he explores the humanity of medicine. The dance between the human challenges faced by physician and patient alike is written beautifully and I can't help but wonder at the potential impact that this book could have on how we view medicine.
Physician's and surgeons are not born, they are made after years of practice. It just so happens that their practice is on people. How comfortable and accommodating can the general public be in the face of what we know is true and often don't speak of? How willing are any of us to step into the shoes of a "expert" who must use imperfect science and fill in the gaps with intuition and experience to make the leap into diagnosis and treatment.
How much of that gap has been created by modern medicine's stubborn clutching at old scientific principles? Consider Bruce Lipton, a former medical school professor and researcher, who shares in his seminars and in his book, "The Biology of Belief", that one of the things that drove him out of teaching at one of America's leading medical schools was the insurmountable gap between what he was expected to teach in the classroom and the incredible discoveries that he and his colleagues were seeing in the lab. He knew that the information he was teaching medical students was hopelessly out of date and often not accurate in the face of mounting scientific evidence. His conscience won and he left teaching.
New fields in science, one of which is quantum biology, are conspicuously absent in current medicine. We demand infallible experts and then blindfold them by embracing a worldview that ignores one of the fastest growing areas of science - quantum sciences. While embracing this arm of science in some areas of our lives, application of quantum science in understanding our humanity continues to be off limits for many.
I wonder, how would we change our view in medicine if we were to change our view about what it is to be human? How much would we discover about our potential if we were to simply begin to notice what the quantum sciences have to offer in our understanding of who we are? What other doors might fly open for us if we were willing to entertain the thought that our notions about what it is to be human might be incomplete? I wonder - don't you?
Although I am only part of the way through it, I found it to be one of the most breath takingly honest books I have ever read. He displays immense courage and compassion as he explores the humanity of medicine. The dance between the human challenges faced by physician and patient alike is written beautifully and I can't help but wonder at the potential impact that this book could have on how we view medicine.
Physician's and surgeons are not born, they are made after years of practice. It just so happens that their practice is on people. How comfortable and accommodating can the general public be in the face of what we know is true and often don't speak of? How willing are any of us to step into the shoes of a "expert" who must use imperfect science and fill in the gaps with intuition and experience to make the leap into diagnosis and treatment.
How much of that gap has been created by modern medicine's stubborn clutching at old scientific principles? Consider Bruce Lipton, a former medical school professor and researcher, who shares in his seminars and in his book, "The Biology of Belief", that one of the things that drove him out of teaching at one of America's leading medical schools was the insurmountable gap between what he was expected to teach in the classroom and the incredible discoveries that he and his colleagues were seeing in the lab. He knew that the information he was teaching medical students was hopelessly out of date and often not accurate in the face of mounting scientific evidence. His conscience won and he left teaching.
New fields in science, one of which is quantum biology, are conspicuously absent in current medicine. We demand infallible experts and then blindfold them by embracing a worldview that ignores one of the fastest growing areas of science - quantum sciences. While embracing this arm of science in some areas of our lives, application of quantum science in understanding our humanity continues to be off limits for many.
I wonder, how would we change our view in medicine if we were to change our view about what it is to be human? How much would we discover about our potential if we were to simply begin to notice what the quantum sciences have to offer in our understanding of who we are? What other doors might fly open for us if we were willing to entertain the thought that our notions about what it is to be human might be incomplete? I wonder - don't you?
1 comment:
I believe that one door that might fly open is the door to each person's inner knowing- the intuitive power that we all have but few use.
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