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On Mon, 1 May 2006, Michael wrote:
*shrugs* The body is nothing more than a machine. Any machine can be
analyzed and fixed. You may have to develop the tools and techniques
needed to analyze the machine before you can fix it but it's all an
orderly step-by-step process. There is nothing magical involved in
curing cancer so therefore it can be cured if we want to put enough
effort and money into it.
Repeating Stephen's idea in your terms: The year is 384 AD and someone
says "there's nothing magical about creating a flying machine, therefore
we can create one if we want to put enough effort and money into it."
And so we did this and we succeeded. It took more than 1,600 years, but
we succeeded.
We can cure some cancers today. The problem is that they are all
different and we may not cure every cancer for many years. No one knows
how long it will take.
Mental illness is a bit trickier because the brain gets into the realm
of software which is less likely to work by an orderly system and harder
to fix because those things we can analyze are often symptoms rather
than causes. Still something that should be able to be fixed but it will
probably be a lot harder than cancer. For one thing, defining mental
illness can vary a lot between cultures and time periods and even
individuals. It'd be easier to find a fix for a specific mental illness.
Alzheimer's for example could be studied and a cure, or prevention at
least, found.
This is true. We also know that mental illness is very heterogeneous such
that a person who truly meets the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia
maybe very different in behavior and etiology (cause of disease) than
someone else who also truly meets the criteria. So we have a long way to
go but progress definitely is being made.
Mike
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