Modern Medicine

A friend of a friend of mine started taking medication for a thyroid condition yesterday. Now, coming from a family with dysfunctional thyroids right and left, I was completely understanding that someone would need medicine for an under-producing thyroid, even a young someone. But no, they are giving her medicine to DESTROY her thyroid. She has an over-working thyroid, for which her doctor prescribed radioactive iodine. After the effects of the radioactive medicine wear off, she will be on prescription medication for the rest of her life to make up for a "damaged thyroid condition." Now, I've read the effects an overactive thyroid can have, and they aren't pretty. But neither are the symptoms of a damaged thyroid that underachieves.

My first reaction (when I finally worked out what they were giving the medication for) was that some crazy doctor in her third world country needed to go back to school. Then I did a bit of research. It turns out that my first reaction was one of prejudice: destructive prescriptions for this condition are standard medical practice even in the US. This shocks me even more.

What has modern medicine come to, that we BREAK a working part of our bodies, causing a different life long problem, to stop certain symptoms? Is this where the height of technology has lead us to? Damaging our bodies? I find it hard to believe that these medical research companies can come up with nothing to treat the symptoms of an overactive thyroid other than to injure it past repair. You may laugh and call me a holistic Californian, but I see a problem here! To me, permanently damaging our bodies in the name of medicine is like the practice of bloodletting: for YEARS doctors thought it was a good idea, only to find out they were doing their patients more harm than good.

I feel that this issue is a symptom of a larger problem I have personally noticed humans doing for a few years now, though it has probably been happening for decades without my awareness. It's the practice of trying to fix a problem we caused in nature by changing nature further. Some examples of this include: "oh dear, we damaged the natural watershed system beyond repair and now the river floods, let's build a dam!" and then the new reservoir destroys whole villages and wipes out 4 varieties of fish. Or: "Hey, when we built this road, we created a ditch that breeds mosquitoes with West Nile virus, so let's spray everything with pesticides" and then we get 3 legged frogs and children with asthma and food you can't eat off the tree. Or: "Hey, we tried to plant the prairie with farms and now all the dirt is spinning up in our faces and the buffalo have died, lets go do the same thing 400 miles north!" How about: "Uh oh, gasoline prices are going up, let's set a whole lot of it aside, expensively, so we have some to sell in the future!"

This is not sustainable living, folks. Nor is permanently destroying a working part of our bodies to fix a problem. Doctors, Scientists, Army Corps of Engineers, Environmentalists: If you cannot find a natural way to fix the problem, which DOES NOT CAUSE MORE HARM, then don't try!