Drug Misuse in American Medicine Leads to Possible Catastrophe

I idolized the American medical establishment. When I was a mere Blue Cross number-collecting lackey working at the front desk of the Emergency Room of Massachusetts General Hospital, I sometimes saw, slipping into the doctors’ lounge, notable people — doctors whose surname in footnotes graced the basic core medical textbooks I was using as parallel reading in France, to prepare myself for my American examinations in medicine. I never wanted to penetrate more than the lowest echelons of the American medical establishment when I returned from France.  I mean I doubted the Harvard-types would open their world to me easily, no matter how clever I was. I proved to be right.  At a Harvard-associated residency program, I was actually asked at the interview if anyone in my family was a Harvard University trained physician. I still remember the program chairman’s barely muffled laughter when I told him my father held a graduate degree from the Harvard University School of music.

My first realization that the American medical establishment had made some serious systemic errors came from my clinician-instructors in France. I vividly remember having luncheon at the home of my preceptor in geriatics.  His wife had prepared and served an elaborate traditional dinner.  By the time we came to coffee and liqueur-laden sweets, she retired with the children, and left us to “talk medicine.” He told me gently, as he lit his cigar, that one of the reasons practicing medicine was difficult, was the way that Americans had pretty much ruined things since about World War II.  I reassured him that I would become neither angry nor defensive, but that I really wanted to hear what he had to say. He said that the two great useful medicine of the era, steroids and antibiotics, had become totally useless, as American physicians had overused them. Now, I not only believe his logic was correct, but I believe American use of medicines has indeed rendered those two groups of medicine less useful, if not soon to become useless. I believe American medicine has contributed to other disasters, the most egregious of which is the epidemic of opioid addiction. Antibiotics had been originally discovered by the Scottish biologist, Sir Alexander Fleming, n 1928, when he found a sthylococcus culture had been “contaminated” by the common mold Peniccium notatum which had killed the bacteria.  There had been ancient traditions of using molds to treat infection in the traditional medicine of many cultures, such as the orientals and the ancient Greeks. Yes — this was penicillin. Fleming, who went on to win a Nobel prize, said, “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.”