[serious discussion] Could medicine be making us even more sick?

The thought just occurred to me... Every time a new disease or ailement comes up, we invent a medicine for it. The human body is designed to overcome illness by itself and thus build an immunity to it, but if we keep making medicines that take out the illness for us, could we be keeping our bodies from being as strong as they should be?

In theory yes, but the human body can't overcome every disease that exists... But the by taking meds, you would weaken the body and would be more vulnerable. And then get sick and not be able to recover. And then take more meds. And then get even weaker, etc...

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

The thought just occurred to me... Every time a new disease or ailement comes up, we invent a medicine for it. The human body is designed to overcome illness by itself and thus build an immunity to it, but if we keep making medicines that take out the illness for us, could we be keeping our bodies from being as strong as they should be?

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In theory as long as e can keep creating new medicines to keep up with the new diseases then we shall never become too ill again. BUT, in order for us to be able to create new medicines we must first know how the disease affects people, and in rder to do that someone may well have to die.
If we suddenly stopped using medication then i'm sure many people may die, but another question is, how many ?
Medicines were designed to help our bodies fight things off, so, our bodies will still be getting stronger, but just how strong you may ask...
Well, at one point we wouldn't have been able to fight off flu by ourselves because it was new, now, even without any sort of medication we can fight it off effectively, so somewhere along the line we have built up a defence for it.
Therefore even with medication we still bring our bodies upto a decent strength and immunity level.

But do all of the meds make that process slower?

Probably. The body will likely start to rely too much on such medicines. For example, you are more likely to get a cold if you stay indoors more than everyone else, as your body will not be used to fighting off infections

Hence why all of these medication commercials drive me insane...

One of my friend's mom was in a pretty bad state, and on around 30 drugs... the docs started pulling her off of them and she started getting better...

Psudeo logic! All of you!

Immunisations work by providing a small dosage of the virus into the body so that the body can build its own defenses.

These opinions come out because we don't realise how good we have it since we don't remember medical pandemics.

Smallpox anyone? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by agmorgan

Psudeo logic! All of you!

Immunisations work by providing a small dosage of the virus into the body so that the body can build its own defenses.

These opinions come out because we don't realise how good we have it since we don't remember medical pandemics.

Smallpox anyone? :rolleyes:

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Immunisations are not the same as medicine.

You also have to look at how many lives are saved by medicine. To say medicine is making us sicker is partly blaming doctors. I gurantee you that someone who is having deathly heart trouble that is curable by simple medicines will choose those drugs over nothing, due to the fact they're scared of "getting sicker" because of the medicine.

The only medicines (assuming proper prescription) that make you sicker are radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
And they strictly speaking aren't medicines.
You are killing your cells and the cancer at the same time.

If a medicine made you sicker, how could it be classed as a medicine?

Many headache killing pills destroy your liver little by little as far as I know. They cure the headache though...

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Originally Posted by agmorgan

The only medicines (assuming proper prescription) that make you sicker are radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
And they strictly speaking aren't medicines.
You are killing your cells and the cancer at the same time.

If a medicine made you sicker, how could it be classed as a medicine?

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It depends on how you define "sicker". Many if not all medicines have side effects and while they may help to cure a specific disease or problem they may also make you sick in other ways.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

The thought just occurred to me... Every time a new disease or ailement comes up, we invent a medicine for it. The human body is designed to overcome illness by itself and thus build an immunity to it, but if we keep making medicines that take out the illness for us, could we be keeping our bodies from being as strong as they should be?

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Not really. For the most part, medical advancements have helped. Life expectancy is up. The problem these days seems to be that pharmacuticals looking for the quick buck and are either not doing enough research and testing, or are hiding test results about some dangerous drugs. Like the numerous recent recalls, especially on drugs like Vioxx. Even I had some complications after taking Vioxx for a while. I got off it way before the recall though. :eek2:

Oh and don't forget the kick backs doctors get for prescribing medications.

That doesnt make the medicines bad, just means you may be taking more medications than you really need or for longer than you need.

But if our bodies grow stronger by naturally fighting off a virus, a medication to kill that virus artificially would only keep us vulnerable to it.

Directly, no, I don't think medicine is making us sicker, more to the point it is probably making us weaker. In the past century there has been a significant increase in auto immune diseases such as diabetes, IBD, allergies and such. An auto immune disease is caused when the body over reacts and starts attacking its self.

As medicine has become more advanced our immune systems have had less to do and the western worlds zest for cleanliness has meant that our own immune systems are less able to recognise the good guys from the bad guys because there are not enough of the bad guys out there. As a result our immune systems are too over sensitive ...

In third world countries stricken by poverty and disease, auto immune diseases are almost un heard of and doctors carrying out new studies on them have found that replacing some of the bacteria and parasites lost by our over clean culture actually helps.

There is also the issue of resistance. Medicine, in a way is speeding up the evolution of bacteria and viruses as they evolve to become resistant to the treatments used to eliminate them. This leads to super bugs for which there is no cure and they often end up killing their victims.

Its hard to say that if we did not have medicine, whether or not humans would be healthier. I think the answer to that question, is in the long term, yes. We have evolution to ensure that viruses such as AIDS disappear and while medicine provides a short term solution (i.e: prolongs the life of individuals), in my opinion, it does no favours for the long term health of our species.

During the middle ages illness killed a large part of the population. Medicine has reduced the number and reduced the suffering. Not everyone takes medicine for illnesses and many medications simply remove the felling of the symtoms and dont destroy the illness. The body will continue to fight diseases because under most circumstances medication is not used or is only used to mask the symptoms while the illness is removed by the immune system.

Most diseases that are focused on by medication are ones that would kill most people or would cause disfigurement that would prevent an animal or human surviving in the wild :)

And what about the placebo effect that medicines give off.