Interesting perspective Alex...thanks for this post..
While medical help is often necessary in this day and age, the profession is arguably rotting from within. There are many reasons for this but perhaps the most prominent is the vested commercial interests that have health care providers at all levels in a stranglehold. It is enlightening when one contrasts this scenario with that of a bygone era in the east where the most revered and respected physician was one in whose village people seldom fell sick. He or she was therefore the doctor with the LEAST patients. So the barefoot doctors of China and the far east and the vaidyas and siddha physicians of India were essentially teachers who empowered their students [patients] with the skills and wisdom to enhance their own health and taught them to rely on their doctor as little as possible. It might seem idealistic but if even a little of this ethos crept into modern medicine it would be a revolution. But there's the catch...if people don't fall sick how do doctors make their money? What of the huge cost of medical education and the consequent motivation to make good on that investment? So a return to the days when medicine was more of a vocation and a service rather than a profession and a business is probably wishful thinking...perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle.