Captive Adaptations

Last week, we had to rush our Dad to the hospital, where he ended up spending the next 5 days. Well, he is diabetic and has to monitor his blood-sugar regularly, unfortunately for the second time, we did not do a good job in keeping his blood sugar at moderate levels, and early Friday morning we found him unconscious on his bed due to low-sugar.

He also has developed other complications with his kidney, so has to undergo medication simultaneously for that as well. I have always been highly suspicious of how most of the medications that doctors prescribe is based on their “gut feeling” or “intutive analysis” of the complications that a patient is living with.

So, this time I decided I will have a conversation with the Physician treating my Dad and asked him some simple questions on how they arrive at concluding that the prescription might work well for the patient. And noticed that he pretty much conceded that that there was no mathematical formula for arriving at such conclusions.

This prompted me to find out if complications in Diabetic patients with heart problems, kidney problems, and other ailments have a standardized or mathematical treatment. And while exploring for an answer, I found this.

Its highly interesting to note the work of Dr. Eddy, I totally agree with his theory that most of it is Medical Guesswork, we definitely need to find a more formal model, whose outcome we should be as sure as some laws of Physics. Also, its just another coincidence that Dr. Eddy has also chosen Diabetic patients for one of his experiments called Archimedes.

Read on, I have saved a pdf verion of the same article for future reference.