Can science win over greed?

Our medical system is more screwed up that I thought possible.

Last Sunday's shooting in a Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois by Terry Sedlecek was apparently triggered by the gunman's mental imbalance caused by improperly treated Lyme disease. This prompted Sara Robinson to recount her own horrible battle with the disease. She contracted it in 1984 and only last year -- 24 years later -- did she get an accurate diagnosis and a start on an effective treatment. And that was from a doctor in Canada with follow-up by a doctor who doesn't accept insurance.

Hold onto your seats now. It used to be a doctor would do research into a medical condition or an infectious illness and publish papers to further general knowledge and gain fame and (some) fortune. It seems back in 1980, under Reagan, the rules changed. Now a doctor has a financial incentive in hoarding his discoveries as trade secrets, leverage the patents into a position to write the disease definition and control the approved treatment. The goal is speed, not correctness. Once the patent is in place the controlling doctor can threaten other doctors with revoking their license if they try to propose an alternate method of diagnosis and treatment. Further scientific discovery into the disease is essentially banned. Alas, many times the original doctor gets it wrong. And the patient is refused treatment that might work, putting him in a living hell. This is true for all kinds of infectious diseases, like Lyme disease, that have come to light since 1980. It's especially worrisome since a lot of well known illnesses (like heart attacks) are being shown to have a basis in infection.

Obama is going to have to work to get science to win out over greed, a much harder task than to win out over ideology.

Remind me not to get sick.