Health Economics
My View of Medical Practice
Health Policy and Law including other health related legislations are created to address the issues of social health needs and one of them is the view of medical practitioners towards health economics. There are suggested theories regarding the issue. However, the theory stating, “medicine is a science and experts will ultimately discover the best means for treating every illness” (Musgrave, 1995) appears to suit the given issue more appropriately.
It is apparent that history tells us how medicine was revolutionized by several discoveries. One example of that is the discovery of penicillin. In the early days before its time, medical practitioners rely on non-viable means of treating infection and the absence of the penicillin makes viral infections a critical health condition. However, such medical breakthrough changed the way people fight infections in every level and the medication has been concocted in the succeeding medical discoveries creating virus-specific and even powerful versions of the medication. The process of discovering penicillin underwent scientific tests and procedures before being used for treatment. Therefore, the scientific process involved in the discovery articulate the theory that medicine and its practice is a science.
Furthermore, Thagard (2009) listed the most important biological discoveries that shaped the current medical practice such as Crick Watson’s discovery of DNA structure in the 1950’s and Vesalius’s discovery of anatomy including bone, body structure, and muscles in the 1540’s. There are discoveries of new diseases emerging amidst the changing environment. However, experts continued to work on finding the best possible solutions to. For instance the swine flu outbreak caused a worldwide scare all over the world, but medical breakthroughs found a way to fight the flu virus and synthesized vaccines to fight the onset of flu and vaccination protect individuals from being infected by the said virus (Osterholm et al., 2012). Therefore, medicine is a science wherein; experts continue to discover the best possible means in treating illnesses.
References
Lecca, P. J. (1998). Cultural competency in health, social, and human services: Directions for the twenty-first century. New York: Garland Publ.
Nelson, M. I., & Holmes, E. C. (2007). The evolution of epidemic influenza. Nature Reviews Genetics, 8(3), 196-205.
Osterholm, M. T., Kelley, N. S., Manske, J. M., Ballering, K. S., Leighton, T. R., & Moore, K. A. (2912). The Compelling Need for Game-Changing Influenza Vaccines An Analysis of the Influenza Vaccine Enterprise and Recommendations for the Future. Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Thagard, P. (2009). Patterns of medical discovery. Handbook of philosophy of medicine, 0(1).
Thompson, N. (2000). Theory and practice in human services. Philadelphia, USA: Open University Press.
