Is Our Healthcare System Smarter and Safer Than Before?

Are you the type of person that trusts and respects what your healthcare team tells you to do no matter what? Don’t get me wrong—I am aware and grateful for the fact that there are intelligent and caring people that work in our healthcare system. However, I think that it is fair to admit that sometimes, our healthcare system can do more harm than good.

Thalidomide

In the 1950s and 1960s, a drug called thalidomide was given to pregnant women for the treatment of nausea. It was later found that thalidomide caused severe birth defects such as anomalies of the limb, heart, ears, and eyes in thousands of babies.

I think that people in the medical community would say that this tragic incident helped to create safer drug policies. But let’s fast forward to today and consider drugs that are given to the population at large (and not just pregnant mothers). Do these drugs undergo rigorous safety testing for short and long-term adverse events and drug interactions? How sure are we that the ingredients that are used in the drugs that we ingest are safe for us? If a drug is “safe” for one person, does that mean that is safe for all people?

Twilight Sleep

Early in the 20th century, many pregnant women chose Twilight Sleep as their preferred birthing method. A combination of morphine and scopolamine put these women to sleep so that they would not remember their labor pains when they woke up. The delivery of the babies was completed with forceps because the mother would sometimes continue sleeping for a couple of hours after the baby was born.

Unfortunately, this birthing method would sometimes cause narcotizing of the baby resulting in difficulties with resuscitation. The babies would come out of the womb crying while the mom was still asleep. When the mothers woke up, they did not remember the labor pains, but they experienced delirium and vertigo. That must’ve been a great start for mother-baby bonding.

Smoking

Remember the days when physicians endorsed cigarette companies? I don’t because I’m too young, but before 1964, tobacco companies used physicians to promote their cigarette brands. This was an effective approach because the cigarette companies knew that the public put a lot of trust in science and physicians. Before 1964, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that cigarettes could cause cancer and other diseases. Cigarette companies rolled with the “lack of evidence” defense for as long as they could.

It’s easy for us to shake our heads and wonder how certain practices were once widely accepted. But don’t you think that it would be a little short-sighted to automatically assume that our current healthcare system is smarter and better at protecting people than it used to be?

References

Bateson UE. Twilight Sleep in Obstetrical Practice with Reports of Cases. Can Med Assoc J. 1925;15(6):639-640.

Huffman JW. Birth. Britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/science/birth. Accessed January 5, 2021.

Kim JH, Scialli AR. Thalidomide: The Tragedy of Birth Defects and the Effective Treatment of Disease. Toxicological Sciences. 2011;122(1):1-6.

Little B. When Cigarette Companies Used Doctors to Push Smoking. History.com. https://www.history.com/news/cigarette-ads-doctors-smoking-endorsement. Published September 13, 2018. Updated September 11, 2019. Accessed January 5, 2021.