rationalskepticism.org

DST70 wrote:

Arcanyn wrote:What does it actually mean "to treat the entire patient"? If we give someone antibiotics to kill the bacteria which have infected their toe, how is this deficient? Their problem is that there are a whole bunch of bacteria in their toe getting up to no good, and the antibiotics get rid of them. Once this is done, what more is there to do? Why do we need to 'treat the entire patient', when there's nothing wrong with the rest of the patient? It's like criticising the fire brigade for simply dealing with the one house that happens to be on fire, rather than 'treating the entire neighbourhood' that has no fire problems whatsoever.

Well I think it means that if the neighbourhood is surrounded by dry bush, has suffered a drought for 30 straight years and finds itself in the middle of a scorching summer, causation is multi-factorial. And at some point the fire brigade is going to look pretty clueless getting called out every week to the same 'isolated' fire, if they don't consider there may be causative factors of which they're unaware.

David

In such a case, which is analogous to a person getting recurrent infections, then of course it would be remiss to simply respond reactively with antibiotics every time the person gets an infection. It would be necessary to do some tests to determine precisely why it is that the person is getting repeated infections, so that this might be halted. In evidence-based medicine, this might be done by investigating their lifestyle - are they doing anything which might cause them to be at increased risk of being exposed to harmful bacteria? For instance, if they're continually getting bacterial infections as a result of accidentally cutting themselves while picking up broken glass, then they might be advised to invest in a dustpan and broom and to cease engaging in such risky behaviour. However, if they are not doing anything which might increase their risk, then the question will be asked - why is their immune system failing to combat bacterial infections. The doctor will then typically examine their blood to see what is wrong with their immune system (I wonder if there are any examples of homeopaths performing such investigations to determine what is causing a patient's symptoms?). Having deduced the underlying cause of the recurrent infections, the doctor will then proscribe a treatment to deal with it in order to get the patient's immune system working again.

Once again, the question stands, how is it deficient of the doctor to only treat the patient's malfunctioning immune system, and not 'the whole patient'? The reason the patient is getting recurrent infections is because their immune system isn't working; how is it not enough to fix that? If a malfunctioning immune system is the only thing that's wrong with them, it would be utter stupidity to 'treat' things that aren't causing them problems - or should we give someone a heart, lung, liver and kidney transplant, grow them new skin, perform brain surgery, give them artery bypasses and a facelift, replace their bone marrow and give them new fillings every time they get a sore throat, just so we can say we're "treating the whole patient"?