Medicine as religion
Aug. 11th, 2021 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenofcups3811The premise that we are born defective and require the injection of diseases and toxins to acquire or maintain good health defies all common sense and logic.
Years back (2004), I read an excellent book by french author Olivier Clerc (Medicine, Religion et Peur; l'influence cachee des croyances) which laid out the idea that medicine has become the new world religion.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/1932181148?condition=used&tag=bookfinder-ca-b-20
(Modern Medicine: The New World Religion: How Beliefs Secretly Influence Medical Dogmas and Practices)
physicians have taken the place of priests;
vaccination plays the same initiatory role as baptism, and is accompanied by the same threats and fears;
the search for health has replaced the quest for salvation;
the fight against disease has replaced the fight against sin;
eradication of viruses has taken the place of exorcising demons;
the hope of physical immortality (cloning, genetic engineering) has been substituted for the hope of eternal life;
pills have replaced the sacrament of bread and wine;
donations to cancer research take precedence over donations to the church;
a hypothetical universal vaccine could save humanity from all its illnesses, as the Saviour has saved the world from all its sins;
the medical power has become the government’s ally, as was the Catholic Church in the past;
"charlatans” are persecuted today as "heretics” were yesterday;
dogmatism rules out promising alternative medical theories;
the same absence of individual responsibility is now found in medicine, as previously in the Christian religion;
patients are alienated from their bodies, as sinners used to be from their souls.
Years back (2004), I read an excellent book by french author Olivier Clerc (Medicine, Religion et Peur; l'influence cachee des croyances) which laid out the idea that medicine has become the new world religion.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/1932181148?condition=used&tag=bookfinder-ca-b-20
(Modern Medicine: The New World Religion: How Beliefs Secretly Influence Medical Dogmas and Practices)
physicians have taken the place of priests;
vaccination plays the same initiatory role as baptism, and is accompanied by the same threats and fears;
the search for health has replaced the quest for salvation;
the fight against disease has replaced the fight against sin;
eradication of viruses has taken the place of exorcising demons;
the hope of physical immortality (cloning, genetic engineering) has been substituted for the hope of eternal life;
pills have replaced the sacrament of bread and wine;
donations to cancer research take precedence over donations to the church;
a hypothetical universal vaccine could save humanity from all its illnesses, as the Saviour has saved the world from all its sins;
the medical power has become the government’s ally, as was the Catholic Church in the past;
"charlatans” are persecuted today as "heretics” were yesterday;
dogmatism rules out promising alternative medical theories;
the same absence of individual responsibility is now found in medicine, as previously in the Christian religion;
patients are alienated from their bodies, as sinners used to be from their souls.
