Rona Ambrose, then federal Minister of Health Canada, spoke to several hundred doctors at CMA annual meeting in August 2014.
“Facts must guide public policy. We know medicine is an art and a science, but we need science to guide public policy.” (not exact quote)
What did she mean? Why say it?
- Only facts matter?
- Docs are all logical positivists?
- Science matters more than any other source of knowledge?
Indeed, physicians tend to elevate scientific validity far above information from any other “-ology”; psychology, sociology, history, law, economics… Putting science above and before all else is scientism. Scientism sees medicine as a technologic endeavour. Medicine becomes nothing but a technological product.
Bureaucrats know how to control technological products.
“Where ends are agreed, the only questions left are those of means, and these are not political but technical, that is to say, capable of being settled by experts or machines, like arguments between engineers or doctors. That is why those who put their faith in some immense, world-transforming phenomenon, like the final triumph of reason or the proletarian revolution, must believe that all political and moral problems can thereby be turned into technological ones. That is the meaning of Engels’ famous phrase…about replacing the government of persons by the administration of things”
– I Berlin 1958 in “Two Concepts of Liberty“
The doctor-patient relationship defines medicine; a relationship struck to help patients in need. Medicine needs to articulate what medicine is. Saying medicine is nothing but a science applied with artistic care will not do. Medicine is much more.
Informed Public Policy
If physicians define medicine as nothing but a technological product then bureaucrats will give us an administration of things. We need to give federal ministers reasons to look for something more to guide public policy.