X-Message-Number: 26523
From: 
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 11:45:20 EDT
Subject: treating the "healthy"

Defending the statement of an author that there are no proven effective  
biomedical interventions, David Stodolsky writes in part:
 
>The treatments referred to are for healthy individuals. Medicine is  
>typically directed toward healing the sick.

Everybody is sick.  That's why we deteriorate and die. You don't deteriorate 
or die of good health.  And a great deal of medicine (beginning with periodic 
checkups) is directed  toward maintaining health, rather than just curing 
obvious illness. In  fact, a whole class of medical service is called HMO.
 
Also, is a "healthy" person anyone who doesn't seek medical advice or help?  
Someone living in China in a region deficient in selenium would not be  

considered sick--he would just show "normal" signs of decline. But selenium  
could 
extend his expectancy. An 18th Century seaman suffering from subclinical  
scurvy would not be considered sick, but vitamin C would improve his life  
expectancy.
 
Anyway, David did not address the fact that there are huge numbers of  

literature references tending to show that many interventions can increase both
the 
expectancy and the span of laboratory animals.
 
Robert Ettinger


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