Narrative: Medicine has always been hierarchical; but never has it been so conformist, with uncritical, thoughtless physicians marching in lockstep to hit metrics dictated by vested interests that show little concern for sick patients.
Confidence in medicine is falling and I argue that real patients cannot be adequately managed by a diagnostic based algorithm or treated by an iPad. Medicine is constituted by a particular kind of relationship, a relationship based upon trust between a patient made vulnerable by illness and a doctor who professes to use his knowledge and skills always and only for the purposes of health and healing. No technological advance, no societal development, will ever alter this.
Author keywords: Medicine; EBM; Managerialism; Technocratic Scientism; Utopian Progressivism; Liberationism.
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