Jessica’s Reviews > Redefining the Boundaries of Medicine: The High-Tech, High-Touch Path Into the Future > Status Update

The problem is so prevalent in society, there is even a medical speciality devoted to it: psychoneuroimmunology, which rests upon one simple truth: Thoughts have physical consequences.

The evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of overwork on the brain and immune system are overwhelming: it would be irresponsible for us to ignore them. The American Institute of Stress calculates that 77% of Americans 'regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress.'

Medical experts initially rejected the role of viruses in cancer, Helicobacter pylori in gastric ulcers, prions in mad cow disease, the germ theory of disease, Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance and the occurrence of traumatic brain injuries among professional football players.

In 1975, 80% of Americans had confidence in the medical system, but by 2015, it had dropped precipitously to 37%, according to a Gallup poll....This loss of confidence in medical experts, no doubt, is partially responsible for the explosion in unproven and/or dangerous remedies for a long list of health problems.

One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you're right, but not enough to know you're wrong. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Determining the best for an individual (the task of the doctor) is fundamentally different from determining the average effect of treatment in a population (the purpose of a trial.)'...the findings of a large research study only tell us how a large group of patients responded to a treatment. That average may not apply to subgroups of patients within that large group, nor to the individual sitting in the office.

Among the 850,000 patients who die in US hospitals annually, about 71,400 of these deaths include a major diagnosis that has not been detected.