Good Health for All—A Reachable Goal?

DO YOU wish that you and your family could enjoy better health? Of course you do. But while most of us may suffer only occasional minor illnesses, for millions of people, infirmity is a painful, lifelong companion.

Nevertheless, large-scale efforts are being made to stem the tide of sickness and disease. Consider the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations. At a conference sponsored by WHO in 1978, delegates from 134 lands and 67 UN organizations agreed that health is not simply freedom from sickness or disease. Health, they declared, is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” The delegates then took the bold step of declaring health to be a “fundamental human right”! WHO thus set the goal of achieving “an acceptable level of health for all the people of the world.”

Such a goal is appealing, even noble. But how likely is it that it will ever be achieved? Of all the fields of human endeavor, medicine has certainly become one of the most trusted and admired. According to the British newspaper The European, people in Western lands have grown accustomed to “the traditional medical concept of the ‘silver bullet’ cure: one pill to solve one problem.” In other words, for every ailment, we expect the medical field to deliver a simple and straightforward cure. Can the medical profession really fulfill such a high expectation?

Modern Medicine—How High Can It Reach?

MANY children learn early: To pick an apple beyond their reach, they climb onto the shoulders of a playmate. Within the field of medicine, something similar has taken place. Medical researchers have reached higher and higher up the scale of achievement by standing on the shoulders of eminent practitioners of the past.

Among those earlier healers were well-known men such as Hippocrates and Pasteur, along with men such as Vesalius and William Morton—names unfamiliar to many. What does modern medicine owe to them?

In ancient times the healing arts were often not a scientific venture but an exercise in superstition and religious ritual. The book The Epic of Medicine, edited by Dr. Felix Marti-Ibañez, says: “To fight disease . . . , the Mesopotamians resorted to a medico-religious medicine, since they believed that disease was their punishment by the gods.” Egyptian medicine, which soon followed, was likewise rooted in religion. Thus, from the very beginning, the healer was viewed with a sense of religious admiration.

In his book The Clay Pedestal, Dr. Thomas A. Preston observes: “Many beliefs of the ancients left imprints on the practice of medicine that survive to this day. One such belief was that disease was beyond the control of the patient, and only through the magical power of the physician was there hope for recovery.”

Laying the Foundations

In time, though, medical practice became increasingly scientific in its approach. The foremost ancient scientific healer was Hippocrates. He was born about 460 B.C.E. on the Greek island of Kos and is regarded by many as the father of Western medicine. Hippocrates laid the basis for a rational approach to medicine. He rejected the notion that disease was a punishment from a deity, arguing that it had a natural cause. Epilepsy, for example, had long been called a sacred disease because of the belief that it was curable only by the gods. But Hippocrates wrote: “With regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause.” Hippocrates was also the first known healer to observe the symptoms of various diseases and record them for future reference.

Centuries later, Galen, a Greek physician born in 129 C.E., likewise did innovative scientific research. Based on dissections of humans and animals, Galen produced a textbook on anatomy that was used by doctors for centuries! Andreas Vesalius, born in Brussels in 1514, wrote the book On the Structure of the Human Body. It met with opposition, since it contradicted many of Galen’s conclusions, but it laid the foundation for modern anatomy. According to the book Die Grossen (The Great Ones), Vesalius thus became “one of the most important medical researchers of all peoples and all times.”

Galen’s theories about the heart and the circulation of the blood were likewise overturned in time.a English physician William Harvey spent years dissecting animals and birds. He observed the function of the heart valves, measured the volume of blood in each of the heart’s chambers, and estimated the amount of blood in the body. Harvey published his findings in 1628 in a book called On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. He was criticized, opposed, attacked, and insulted. But his work was a turning point in medicine—the body’s circulatory system had been discovered!

From Barbering to Surgery

Huge strides were also being made in the surgical arts. During the Middle Ages, surgery was oftentimes the work of barbers. Not surprisingly, some say that the father of modern surgery was 16th-century Frenchman Ambroise Paré—a pioneer barber-surgeon who served four kings of France. Paré invented a number of surgical instruments as well.

One of the major problems still facing the surgeon in the 19th century was his inability to dull the pain of surgery. But in 1846 a dental surgeon named William Morton opened the way to the widespread use of anesthetics in surgery.b

In 1895, while experimenting with electricity, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen saw rays passing through flesh but not bone. He did not know the origin of the rays, so he called them X rays, a name that has stuck in the English-speaking world. (Germans know them as Röntgenstrahlen.) According to the book Die Großen Deutschen (Great Germans), Röntgen told his wife: “People will say: ‘Röntgen has gone mad.’” Some did. But his discovery revolutionized surgery. Surgeons could now look inside the body without cutting it open.

Conquering Diseases

Throughout the ages infectious diseases such as smallpox recurrently brought epidemics, terror, and death. Ar-Rāzī, a ninth-century Persian considered by some to have been the greatest physician of the Islamic world of that time, wrote the first medically accurate description of smallpox. But it was centuries later that a British physician named Edward Jenner found a way to cure it. Jenner noted that once a person contracted cowpox—a harmless disease—he was immune to smallpox. Based on this observation, Jenner used cowpox lesions to develop a vaccine against smallpox. That was in 1796. Like other innovators before him, Jenner was criticized and opposed. But his discovery of the process of vaccination eventually led to the elimination of the disease and provided medicine with a powerful new tool.

Frenchman Louis Pasteur used vaccination to fight rabies and anthrax. He also proved that germs play a key role in causing disease. In 1882, Robert Koch identified the germ that causes tuberculosis, described by one historian as “the greatest killer disease of the nineteenth century.” About a year later, Koch identified the germ that causes cholera. Says Life magazine: “The work of Pasteur and Koch ushered in the science of microbiology and led to advances in immunology, sanitation and hygiene that have done more to increase the life span of humans than any other scientific advance of the past 1,000 years.”

Twentieth-Century Medicine

At the beginning of the 20th century, medicine found itself standing on the shoulders of these and other brilliant practitioners. Since then, medical advances have been made at a breathtaking rate—insulin for diabetes, chemotherapy for cancer, hormone treatment for glandular disorders, antibiotics for tuberculosis, chloroquine for certain types of malaria, and dialysis for kidney complaints, as well as open-heart surgery and organ transplants, to name a few.

But now that we stand at the dawn of the 21st century, how near is medicine to the goal of guaranteeing “an acceptable level of health for all the people of the world”?

A Goal out of Reach?

Children learn that climbing onto the shoulders of a playmate does not bring every apple within reach. Some of the juiciest apples are at the top of the tree, still way out of range. In the same way, medicine has gone from one achievement to the next, higher and higher. But the most treasured goal—good health for everyone—elusively remains at the top of the tree.

Thus, while in 1998 the European Commission reported that “Europeans have never enjoyed such long and healthy lives,” the report added: “One person in every five will die prematurely before the age of 65. Cancer will account for some 40% of these deaths, cardiovascular diseases for another 30% . . . Better protection must be provided against new health threats.”

The German health magazine Gesundheit reported in November 1998 that infectious diseases like cholera and tuberculosis are presenting an increasing threat. Why? Antibiotics “are losing their effectiveness. More and more bacteria are resistant to at least one common medicament; indeed, many are resistant to several.” Not only are old diseases on the way back but new diseases like AIDS have appeared. The German pharmaceutical publication Statistics ’97 reminds us: “For two thirds of all known sicknesses—about 20,000—there is so far no way of treating the cause.”

Does Gene Therapy Hold the Answer?

Granted, innovative treatments continue to be developed. For example, many feel that genetic engineering may hold the key to better health. Following research in the United States in the 1990’s by physicians such as Dr. W. French Anderson, gene therapy was described as “the hottest new area of medical research.” The book Heilen mit Genen (Healing With Genes) states that with gene therapy “medical science could be on the brink of a pioneer development. This is especially the case with the treatment of sicknesses that have until now been incurable.”

Scientists expect in time to be able to cure inborn genetic diseases by injecting patients with corrective genes. Even harmful cells, such as cancer cells, will perhaps be made to self-destruct. Genetic screening to identify a person’s predisposition to certain illnesses is already possible. Some say that pharmacogenomics—adjusting medicaments to suit the patient’s genetic makeup—will be the next development. One prominent researcher suggests that doctors will one day be able to “diagnose their patients’ illnesses and give them the proper snippets of molecular thread to cure them.”

However, not everyone is convinced that gene therapy offers the “silver bullet” cure of the future. Indeed, according to surveys, people may not even want to have their genetic makeup analyzed. Many also fear that gene therapy might be a dangerous interference with nature.

Time will tell whether or not genetic engineering or other high-tech approaches to medicine will live up to their extravagant promises. However, there is reason to avoid undue optimism. The book The Clay Pedestal describes an all-too-familiar cycle: “A new therapy comes out, heralded at medical meetings and in the professional journals. Its creators become celebrities within the profession, and the media hail the advance. After a period of euphoria and well-documented testimonials in support of the wonder treatment, a gradual disillusionment begins, lasting from a few months to a few decades. Then a new remedy is discovered, and almost overnight, it replaces the old one, which is then summarily abandoned as worthless.” Indeed, many of the remedies that have been abandoned by most doctors as ineffective were standard treatment not too long ago.

Although doctors today are no longer granted the religious status given to healers in ancient times, there is a tendency among some people to attribute almost godlike powers to medical practitioners and to imagine that a cure for all of mankind’s ills is a scientific inevitability. However, reality falls painfully short of this ideal. In his book How and Why We Age, Dr. Leonard Hayflick observes: “In 1900, 75 percent of the people in the United States died before they reached the age of sixty-five. Today, this statistic is almost reversed: about 70 percent of people die after the age of sixty-five.” What caused this remarkable increase in life span? Hayflick explains that it “was largely due to reductions in the mortality of newborns.” Now suppose that medical science could eliminate the major causes of death in the elderly—heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Would that amount to a grant of immortality? Hardly. Dr. Hayflick notes that even then, “most people would live to be about one hundred years old.” He adds: “These centenarians would still not be immortal. But what would they die from? They would simply become weaker and weaker until death occurred.”

Despite the best efforts of medical science, the elimination of death is thus still beyond medicine’s reach. Why is this the case? And is the goal of good health for all an impossible dream?

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 4]

“Many beliefs of the ancients left imprints on the practice of medicine that survive to this day.”—The Clay Pedestal

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Hippocrates, Galen, and Vesalius laid the foundations of modern medicine

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Kos Island, Greece

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Woodcut by Jan Steven von Kalkar of A. Vesalius, taken from Meyer’s Encyclopedic Lexicon

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Ambroise Paré was a pioneer barber-surgeon who served four kings of France

Persian physician Ar-Rāzī (left), and British physician Edward Jenner (right)

[Credit Lines]

Paré and Ar-Rāzī: Courtesy National Library of Medicine

From the book Great Men and Famous Women

[Picture on page 7]

Frenchman Louis Pasteur proved that germs cause disease

[Credit Line]

© Institut Pasteur

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Even if the major causes of death could be eliminated, old age would still result in death

Good Health for All—Soon!

“THE idea of never being sick again . . . is currently in vogue,” reports the German newsmagazine Focus. Yet this idea is not new. When human life began, the Creator never intended that mankind be sick at all. His purpose for mankind was not simply “an acceptable level of health for all the people of the world.” (Italics ours.) Our Creator purposed perfect health for everyone!

So why do we all suffer from sickness and disease? The Bible tells us that Jehovah God made the parents of all humankind, Adam and Eve, perfect. Once he completed his creation, “God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” Our loving Creator never intended that human life be plagued with disease and death. But when Adam and Eve chose to abandon the way of life laid down for them, they fell into sin. The result of Adamic sin was death, which was passed on to all humans.—Genesis 1:31; Romans 5:12.

Jehovah did not simply cast mankind off. Nor did he abandon his original purpose for them and the earth. Throughout the Bible, he makes known his purpose to restore obedient humans to their original state of good health. While Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was on earth, he demonstrated God’s power to heal disorders. For instance, Jesus cured blindness, leprosy, deafness, dropsy, epilepsy, and paralysis.—Matthew 4:23, 24; Luke 5:12, 13; 7:22; 14:1-4; John 9:1-7.

God will soon instruct his Messianic King, Jesus Christ, to take over the affairs of the world of mankind. Under his administration, the prophecy of Isaiah will come true: “No resident will say: ‘I am sick.’ The people that are dwelling in the land will be those pardoned for their error.” (Isaiah 33:24) How is this to take place?

We notice that the prophet writes of people being “pardoned for their error.” Hence, the original cause of sickness—mankind’s inherited sin—will be taken away. How? The value of the ransom sacrifice of Jesus will be applied to obedient mankind, thus removing the basis for sickness and death. Paradisaic conditions will be experienced in every corner of the earth. The Christian apostle John wrote: “[God] will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.” That is soon to be!—Revelation 21:3, 4; Matthew, chapter 24; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

Maintaining a Balance

In the meantime, sickness and disease are the lot of millions of people. It is only natural, then, for individuals to be concerned about their health and about the health of their loved ones.

Christians today greatly appreciate the efforts of the medical profession. They take reasonable steps to become or remain healthy. However, the Bible’s promise of a future free of sickness helps us to maintain our balance in this regard. Until the Messianic King takes over the affairs of humankind, perfect health simply is not possible. As we have seen, even the most breathtaking discoveries have not enabled medicine to grasp the juiciest apple at the top of the tree—good health for everyone.

The goal of “an acceptable level of health for all the people of the world” will soon be achieved. But not by the UN or the World Health Organization or environmental planners or social reformers or physicians. That accomplishment is reserved for Jesus Christ. What a joy it will be when mankind will finally be “set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God”!—Romans 8:21.

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There will be sound health for all in God’s new world