COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002		The ideology of present day medicine is based on a concept of
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
	The ideology of present day medicine is based on a concept of
normality.  The object of medicine is considered to be the diagnosis
of dangerous or unpleasant deviations from normality followed by
treatment to restore normality.  However, normality is an arbitrary
standard, it is possible to be better than normal.  Medicine will
be limited in what it can do for people as long as it is restricted
to the concept of normality.

	Here's an example.  The last time I visited an
opthalmologist, he worked with his lenses a while and
finally said, ``OK, your vision is 20/20 now'', to which I
replied, ``But it used to be 20/15''.  He then said, ``OK,
we'll try for 20/15'', and he eventually came up with a
glasses prescription that gave me 20/15 vision.  Some people
have vision as good as 20/10, i.e. they can see at 20 feet
what a ``normal'' person can see at 10 feet.  Of course, the
definition of 20/20 vision was made on the basis of measurements
of how well most people could see.  Presumably, opthalmologists
found occasional people with much better acuity than this in their
original surveys.

	Hermann Helmholtz, a nineteenth century German physicist
and physiologist, noted that all human eyes have substantial
chromatic abberation.  In particular we can't focus accurately
in the blue.  Helmholtz attempted to design glasses that would
correct human chromatic abberation.  Unfortunately, he didn't
succeed for reasons I don't understand.  Had he succeeded, we
might all be wearing chromatically corrected glasses and seeing
better than anyone sees today.

	A further misfortune is that the 1960s efforts to
improve human psychology with drugs was so spectacularly
a disaster.  It put a long term cloud on all mood-altering
drugs.  I suspect that the ban on amphetamines stopped many
helpful uses because of the abuse.  My reason for believing
this is that they were available without difficulty for
more than 20 years before their abuse was caught up in
the general drug abuse of the 1960s.  The ban was based
on evidence that some people abused them, but this isn't
rational.  If even a few people benefit, then they should
be able to use them.

	Anyway if research could turn up beneficial uses
of certain drugs for normal people, today's atmosphere would
prevent the research required to establish this and determine
criteria for use and dosages.