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From: genji@ucbopal.CC.Berkeley.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: just a reminder... - (nf)
Message-ID: <109@ucbopal.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 6-Dec-83 02:14:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbopal.109
Posted: Tue Dec  6 02:14:07 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Dec-83 06:41:35 EST
References: <3910@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Berkeley CA USA
Lines: 21

The suggestion for AI machines in medicine seems to point opposite to
improving that profession.  Medicine today has too many machines and
machine-oriented workers, too few healers.  The whole field is
distorted by the excessive rewards given one major group-- MD holders.
Workers in the middle levels of pay, prestige and authority, e.g.,
nurses and physical therapists, typically enter their work for a more
balanced mix of self and other concern than do MDs, who can expect to
be millionaires before middle-age.  A friend told me of his relative
whose life-long goal was to be a rancher; he became a plastic surgeon
since that was the most direct way to accumulate capital for the
ranch.  How many MDs go into it mainly from pull of money or push of
prestige-obsessed parents?

The average MD has become a dispenser of technology, prescribing machine
treatments and chemical doses.  The exceptional medical workers in my
experience (MDs and others) relate primarily to the whole human being
before them (not simply to an active cadaver or complex of symptoms).
Among close friends they might also admit love or spiritual interest as
a key factor in their success at healing.  There are already too many
Artificial Inteligences with Medicinae Doctor initials-- we need more
Humans.		--Genji