Health Research and the Public

Health Research and the Public

 

I was reading Kelsey’s blog today, (www.spaces.msn.com/members/mischiefafoot) which is always thought provoking and a good read, when the thought came to me: “Why is the public so eager to know each piece of health research as it gets published?” It’s not just the folks suffering with incurable and painful diseases that await the next pronouncement from the scientific community. The market for this information is much wider. The press is quick to seize upon each new article in the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA purporting to show a link between coffee consumption and cancer, sugar intake and a host of disease, fat intake and heart disease, meat consumption and Alzheimer’s – the list is endless. And for those trying to make sense of all this “knowledge” confusion and a certain sense of disillusion is sure to follow as the findings of the latest study will not infrequently contradict a previously published “truth.” As careful as scientific papers attempt to be about not extrapolating conclusions based on limited evidence, the hyperbole of the press (and too often those speaking from the PR departments of academic institutions) generate false expectations and hope on the part of readers. Perhaps it is the disappointment coming from pronouncements failing to live up to their original promise that is responsible for the growing anti-scientific bias in our country. But I digress. The original question was, “why are we so desperate for this information?”

 

I think the answer lies in the word control. So much of what we see and experience in our lives is beyond our control. And the thing which is most feared by many, and we most like to control, is death and dying. As the epitaph on the tombstone reads, “I always thought that in my case they would make an exception.” So if we could only eat the right foods, avoid all those toxins, take the right combination of vitamins, cleanse our bodies of accumulated poisons, we could have some control over that which we so much want to avoid – our death. (Satisfying these fears is responsible for a multi-billion dollar industry.) Even in our language we reveal our fear. We use so many euphemisms: passing on, departing, going to our reward, buying the farm, checking out…the list goes on.

 

True story. A patient is sitting in the doctor’s office, being informed that the results of his recent tests show that he has a cancer. To which the patient responds, “Yeah, doc, but what was my cholesterol?” If only we could manage to keep these numbers in line, why we’d be OK. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a man walking down Fifth Avenue with a big smile on his face. The bubble over his head says “My cholesterol is less than a 100. My lean body fat is less then 2%. I exercise an hour a day and eat no red meat.” At the same time you see a piano being hoisted over his head, the rope had just broken, and he’s about to get splattered. Control is so illusionary. Yet, we are human. We need our illusions. Can we afford them?

Advertisement