On the counter medicines

From:"Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja"
To: ProCOR
Dear Catherine
This is the culmination of a long-term process of reducing the medical power through what was sold as a strategy to enhance it: trading more "science" for the art of care. The evidence-based strategy did to medicine the same that industrialization, in a process later perfectionate through the application of the so called scientific management (Taylorism), did to artisans: turned them into de-skilled workers. The objectives - mass production - and the methods - standardizing the ways of performing a task, training the workers on it, disregarding individual differences - are the same, all focused on increasing the productivity at the cost of de-humanizating the work.
We are trapped. We were used to give credibility to the evidence-based strategy. Now that the strategy is validated, the pharmaceutical and equipment industries may sell their products direcly to consumers, bypassing the doctors...
The good thing is that this would also be a good moment to re-think medicine.
Maria Inês Azambuja, MD - Brazil.