On medicine, time, God, and immortality

A very nice person called from my doctor's office yesterday afternoon. She informed me that my most recent blood tests came back OK and that I could start the medication for the treatment of this latest defliction. The doctor's staff would be sending the prescription to my local pharmacy. The staff will also be scheduling follow-up blood tests and office visits. Things are in motion. We know where we are and what we need to do next.
As I've often noted, I like my doctors. They're good doctors - smart, compassionate, affable. I also know that my experience is not typical.

Many people, even if they're fortunate enough to have a decent insurance plan and access to good medical teams, feel that their doctors don't care, that the doctors are hurried or distracted or just interested in pushing pills.
In a variant on the placebo effect, it appears that what the doctor does or doesn't prescribe matters less than the belief that the doctor is acting in our best interest.
A Dutch study compared patients' anxiety levels after doctors ordered a series of blood tests or prescribed a period of watchful waiting (i.e., paying attention, but taking no specific action). The results were intriguing, showing that patients were affected by the doctors' attitudes than by the medical process. 

Apparently, primary care physicians overestimate the effects of additional testing in patients seeking care for unexplained complaints and underestimate how much they themselves can contribute to the well-being of their patients by discussing their worries.

This is becoming increasingly important because we, as a nation of patients, waste a lot of money on treatments and tests and the demand for same. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article,

An estimated one-third to one-half of the $2.2 trillion Americans spend annually on health care in the U.S. is spent on unnecessary tests, treatments and doctor visits. Much of that merely buys time for the body to heal itself.

Doctors, sensing our anxieties or tired of our demands, give us, by some estimates, $1B of unnecessary, counter-productive, and even dangerous antibiotics to treat viral infections that will generally go away in time.
The mystery of when to do something and when to do nothing requires considerable skill, knowledge, and empathy to unravel, just the traits that we expect in our doctors.
As an aside, we'd often have heated planning meetings at work as we tried to decide the optimal organizational model for a company or group. You can organize your business by projects, by functional areas, by markets, or combinations thereof.What matters most is the attitude of the person at the top. If the boss has a clue, then the organizational model doesn't matter much. If the boss doesn't have a clue, the model doesn't matter much, either.

So, too, with medicine. If your doctor has a clue, you'll do better as a patient.
And, then, in a curious twist, a study published last March showed that patients with strong religious beliefs were more likely to seek aggressive (and expensive) end-of-life treatments than patients whose religious beliefs were less pronounced.

“To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Dr. [Holly G.] Prigerson [the study's author] said, “and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”

In another development, Ray Kurzweil tells us that immortality may be just 20 years away. In other words, if we can live long enough, we can live forever.
I knew a doctor who successfully treated a patient with a difficult condition. "Thank God," said patient, learning that recovery was at hand.
"Thank God?" said the doctor. "Thank me."

* Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism