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What. For example, what do you think paediatricians do?
Same thing. They soothe parents who panic and hold the hand of leucemics.
It’s the hansonian argument about doctors being more about showing people care than producing a substantial increase in qaly. And the background modern increase in qaly caused by clean water, vaccines, antibiotics, which you don’t need all those doctors for.
Jesus Christ. It's one thing to observe that a lot of QALY and DALY improvements come from "clean water, vaccines and antibiotics" and then entirely another to imply that additional interventions are zero or negative expected value.
Do you think that our (now quite successful) treatments of childhood leukemia are as ineffectual as extending the unhealthy lifespans of the very elderly?
That's not the work of most doctors. Even the specialists administering the treatments are essentially just following protocols that were invented and tested by a very small number of people.
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Huh, okay, looks like childhood leukemia really took a beating these last decades. Yay science.
Still, most docs spend their time talking to old people and recommending negative EV surgeries.
I may have been a tad harsh. Unlike farmers, who went from useful to parasitic, doctors improved over time. They used to kill people, drink their blood and feed on their suffering, now some of them occasionally manage to help humans.
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