By Father Frank : NHS FIX - A MODEST PROPOSAL

FATHER FRANK'S RANTS
Rant Number 2019        5 July 23
 
NHS FIX: A MODEST PROPOSAL
 
The British National Health Service celebrates its 75th birthday at Westminster Abbey. Many prominent establishment creeps in attendance – from Welby, the comical Archbishop of Canterbury, to the absurd Labour leader, Starmer. What they can't celebrate is its dysfunctional, well-nigh terminal state: patients waiting years for ops, nurses overworked and underpaid, crumbling infrastructures, soaring costs etcetera. What is to be done? I have the fix. Truly magical: back to Hippocrates.
 
Hippocrates was a famous Greek physician. He promoted the art of scientific healing. His teaching and practice are expressed in his aphorisms and prescriptions to medics. First astounding injunction: 'Do not cut the flesh – do not use the knife'. Just puzzle that out: Hippocratic medicine prohibits all surgery. Nuts? Well, if no operation is allowed, NHS patients need not wait for treatment and queues vanish. Brill!
 
Would human lives be lost as a result? Yes, but consider another famous prohibition: the doc will not cause abortion. 'Sisters' will scream to high heaven but millions of lives will be saved, those of unborn children in the womb. 214,256 in 2021. 54 years of legal abortion have resulted in 9,900,961 innocent lives being exterminated. Would as many patients have died if surgery had been banned? Can't say but the moral calculation is on the side of Hippocratic medicine, I figure.
 
But wouldn't patients get depressed if the knife was taken away? Here philosophy crucially comes into play. 'A philosophic physician resembles a God', Hippocrates said. That ties in with another dictum: 'Heal the patient with comfort'. And what can be more comforting with philosophy? Stoic ideas could be of great help here. Learn to put up with pain. Act in accordance with universal reason. See your life and the world from the point of view of eternity (Ok, that's Spinoza but it fits in.) You can't live forever. And so on.
 
Nothing to do with fatalism. Hippocrates is practical: 'Let your food be your best medicine.' A wise counsel. The emphasis is on a healthy lifestyle. Make sure you don't get ill in the first place. Shun medications as much as possible: drug companies have a financial interest in making you ill. Use natural herbal remedies, from leeks to poppy seeds (hahah!).
 
Insane? But the hallowed British Medical Association in 1997 produced a dull, long-winded, modern version of the Hippocratic oath. It blabbed about 'human rights' but it allowed the evil of destroying innocent human life in the womb. Yet it grudgingly admitted that 'the prolongation of human life is not the only aim of healthcare'. The ancient Greek was more honest: doctors cannot grant you immortality. Get on with it!
 
Snag: what would become of NHS doctors, nurses, assistants, administrative staff and overpaid bosses if the institution succumbed to Hippocratic medicine? They could retrain for something else, surely. Given the pressures they are under, they'd value a change… Maybe generative AI could come up with useful ideas, why not? And the money saved from the insatiable maws of this medical Moloch could be better be spent…elsewhere.
 
Okay, my proposal is out-and-out utopian but…does it matter? You can't see a doctor face to face in this post-Covid world. Hippocrates' advice you can easily access online. Let the NHS go the way of all flesh. Live and be happy!
 
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
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