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:>ntrol, be they universities, churches, the government, science, or le professions. In common, they equate wisdom with sincerity. Let me close with a modest thesis. The technological benefits of ealth care are spectacular and valued. We will have yet more iiracles. But these miracles are the exception, not the essence of our ealth. If we can come to understand the durability of the genetic uman organism and the importance of our inalienable role in ;lf-care, we will be in a position to benefit from the miracles of ^chnology and avoid the negative connotations of a modern and ressful technological society. By so doing, we can live with our norance of the details of many of the homeostatic self-correcting lechanisms which sustain us, but nonetheless honor generally their ristance and power. Such a thesis is not easy to sell, for we are at risk - appearing to exercise benign neglect of our patients if we tell tern how much of their own health rests within their own body and leir own life style and perhaps, thereby, leave an emotional void to ; filled dangerously by charlatans. No one is more aware of the Dtential for benign neglect than the family of a doctor. But in spite the merits of caution and restraint, on occasion we are still obliged > act courageously in the twilight which characterizes the edge of lr knowledge and do so with a watchful eye on those hypotheses hich probe that darkness so as to avoid unnecessary harm. These orking hypotheses free us from paralysis. If success in science breeds overreliance on science, perhaps its ^ent, professionalism, is at fault in some way, too, and needs a more odest definition. Is it not likely that law and architecture, as well as edicine, are all too of ten guilty of providing answers with a degree authority inappropriate to the situation, or guilty of having re-ionded to the insecurity of clients by proposing external solutions thout sufficient recourse to self-decision making. If professionals 3uld frame the options and be sensitive to client needs, would not ents or patients be in a better position to play their own important le and make choices among options available? Such professional odesty avoids the trap of playing God, and in medicine it encour-;es a respect for the powerful homeostatic mechanisms for health thin us and encourages the critical responsibility for self-care. ;rhaps no professional and no one can ultimately be responsible for lyone else. Can any of us live by another man's faith? Can we live by tother man's taste, or another man's law, or even another man's edicine? In other words, we are required to live with our own mensions, however tentative they may be. Courage is the grace lich characterizes those who can act under pressure and act in the |
