Self Experimentation

Some people like to cultivate the myth that scientists are great thinkers with large brains and furrowed brows who spend their time deep in complicated thoughts beyond the understanding of most mortals. This, of course, is nonsense, but it does serve to pry a little more tax money away from many taxpayers who are fooled by the myth.

A life in basic science or applied science (engineering) is very rewarding. There are always new things to learn. The ocean of undiscovered truths, large and small, is so extensive that there is no possibility of running out of interesting things to do. Those who have an opportunity to spend their lives in science are fortunate indeed.

Although most people are not professional experimentalists, many of them do some experimentation in the course of their life's work. Moreover, an increasing number of people are conducting their final series of experiments upon their own bodies.

It is widely believed that a person who is diagnosed with cancer or some other degenerative disease such as atherosclerosis or neuro-muscular degeneration has little control over his fate - that the best course is to put himself in the hands of the medical system, rely on his health insurance to pay the bills, and hope for the best. This is true in some cases. It should be true in virtually all cases. The twin demons of governmental and medical establishment control of medical research and delivery and a legal establishment that threatens to confiscate the assets of any innovator who can be held colorably liable for a patient's misfortune have, however, greatly diminished progress in therapeutic medicine.

Medicine has managed to make better progress in some (but certainly not all) areas of diagnostic technology, but progress in therapy has been very limited. As a result, when a seriously ill person embarks on a course of treatment, he is often setting out on a course of experimentation rather than a well understood and optimized therapy.

Degenerative diseases frequently disable or kill slowly, so the patient often has plenty of time to deduce that the therapy is not working in his case. Moreover, there are numerous books and sometimes friends and relatives available to tell him stories of others for whom the therapy failed. This leads him to search for alternative approaches.

The search for alternative therapies for serious diseases gives rise to the movement that is called "alternative medicine.'' (The desire for preventive medicine is also a component of this.) Alternative medicine is comprised of those techniques that are not an accepted part of ordinary medical practice. Some of these techniques are sensible and very valuable, and some are useless dead ends. (These can be worse than useless. They can be dangerous to a seriously ill patient who uses up his dwindling time pursuing them when there are other therapies that would help him.) Whether the patient chooses a therapeutic regime from ordinary medicine or alternative medicine, he is more likely to prolong life and diminish suffering if he uses diagnostic medicine in an unusual way.

The techniques of modern medicine for quantitative diagnosis of disease are often very good (this depends upon the particular disease), but they are rarely used often enough. A physician testing the blood of, for example, a leukemia victim, once every two months (unless there is a sudden change in symptoms) would be testing about as often as ordinary practice permits. More testing might cause trouble for the physician. The test is excellent and quite quantitative, but it is applied far too infrequently.