Who is Greater: the Medical Researcher or the Medical Doctor?

The medical researcher develops medicines and technology to cure patients. The medical doctor administers to patients. Who is greater?

I believe that the U.S. and the World should have medical research schools, in addition to medical schools that essentially only train doctors. The title of M.R. might be beneficial for many.

I believe that the U.S. and the World should have medical research schools,

They have schools like this. They're called graduate and doctoral (Ph.D.) schools...maybe you should look into this. Nearly all medical researchers have at LEAST a Ph.D., some have a Ph.D. in addition to an MD.

Perhaps you should learn about something before you criticise it?

Mariella

[edit on 7/15/2006 by bsl4doc]

The medical doctor.

The researcher tries to produce a drug for one set purpose usually. The doctor puts a patient on that drug and then collects feedback about it, including good side effects that were unintended when the drug was developed.

Examples:

Topomax is an anti-epileptic. Off-label use? Easing migraine headaches.

Requip is a Parkinson's drug. Off-label use? Eases Restless Leg Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.

JDub

The best medical researcher can think like a medical doctor, and the best medical doctor can think like a medical researcher. May they complement each other in helping people, animals, and plants live longer lives.

Originally posted by GreatTech
The best medical researcher can think like a medical doctor, and the best medical doctor can think like a medical researcher. May they complement each other in helping people, animals, and plants live longer lives.

I don't think that statement could be any FURTHER from the truth.

A medical doctor is concerned with finding the problem, treating it, and sending the patient on his or her way.

A medical researcher is concerned with WHY the problem is occuring, WHAT is making it occur, and how you can prevent it from happening again so that no treatment is necessary.

Mariella

bsl4doc, do you feel that medical researchers are trying to eliminate medical doctors as a profession?

Originally posted by GreatTech
bsl4doc, do you feel that medical researchers are trying to eliminate medical doctors as a profession?

Why would they? The two professions are almost completely unrelated, require different degrees, and are very rarely intertwined.

Medical researchers do not have any training in medical procedures, medical diagnosis, or patient care, just like physicians have little to no training in laboratory technique, research procedures, or analytical chemical/biological work.

Again, these are two DIFFERENT professions that rarely meet. RESEARCHERS=RESEARCH. DOCTORS=PATIENT CARE.

I seriously do not see what is so hard for you to understand here...

Mariella

The medical profession was long ago taken over by the Rockefellers, and the pharmaceutical complex. Since any remission of cancer or other serious diseases, without coal tar derivative "medicines," is suppressed with any corporate complaint, the deck is stacked.

When researchers approve chemistry such as aspartame, MSG, and other noxious chemicals, and get the FDA to go along with it politically rather than scientifically, then you see the serious of the problem. Corporate behavior and political behavior earmarks everything approaching the psychopath, and the sociopath regarding research and the practice of most all medicine save for setting bones and such. People are senselessly dying of cancer, and have corporate police knocking down their doors even when utilizing clinically proven approaches to alleviating serious illnesses. Take the research on AIDS done at Einstein college years ago that looked too promising. It made the mistake of using small electrical currents ex vitro on the blood and recalculating it. The mistake of course was the treatment was not with pharmaceutical poisons that usually only mask symptoms or slow the rate of growth of cancers while decimating the immune system. In vitro approaches have found some even more promising results, why take the blood out, just let it circulate. But even any discussion of this is generally forbidden publicly, especially the more promising the clinical patient research.

Sorry but both researchers and doctors have long ago been forced down the memory hole as utilizing actual empirical science. Any creative approach that alleviates suffering is off limits unless produced by giant mega pharmaceutical companies. They have a proven track record of lying the public as well as politically manipulating the government. Would it be fair to say that the state of medicine currently is about the same as the study of the planets for a scientist around the 16th century? The same concurrent study of the history of science suggests the same kinds of manipulation, this time for profit.

Sorry but probably the only useful research and doctoring takes place in the utmost secrecy, and that is personal secrecy not the miasma of government elites. Governments quite possibly keep the cures for disease to themselves, noting the low rate of serious illnesses among the very wealthy.

The response to your question is neither.

[edit on 15-7-2006 by SkipShipman]

bsl4doc, let me draw an analogy. Medical Doctors are like automotive repairmen/repairwomen. Medical Researchers are engineers that created the entire Medical Industry. May I encourage you to blend medical research with your medical practice.

Originally posted by GreatTech
bsl4doc, let me draw an analogy. Medical Doctors are like automotive repairmen/repairwomen. Medical Researchers are engineers that created the entire Medical Industry. May I encourage you to blend medical research with your medical practice.

Your analogy is wrong. Medical doctors, yes, are like the repair workers. Medical researchers are like the guys sitting in Chrysler headquarters creating concept cars and designing the new, light alloys for car frames.

Blend medical research and practice? Do you understand that most doctors, until they are very senior, work around 60-70 hours a week? As a resident, I will be working almost 100 a week. Even then, we don't have time to see all of our patients. Can you show me where I have time for research, which is an entire full time career in and of itself?

You really need to stop thinking figuratively and start thinking literally.

Mariella

Define "great" for us first.

Panamint, I would define as great as the medical researcher or medical doctor being in the top 1 percentile in his or her profession. I truly believe cures are far more important than administration.

Originally posted by GreatTech
Panamint, I would define as great as the medical researcher or medical doctor being in the top 1 percentile in his or her profession.

Based on what criteria? Patient mortality? Comment cards? Shots on goal? Yellow cards?

truly believe cures are far more important than administration.

Doctors and researchers typically have little to do with hospital administration. Hospitals have a chief of medicine, and anadministrative committee...the doctors don't run it.

Mariella

I meant for the medical researcher as having created medications and procedures in the top 1 percentile of his or her profession, and for the medical doctor administering these medications and procedures to patients in the top 1 percentile of his or her profession.

Originally posted by GreatTech
I meant for the medical researcher as having created medications and procedures in the top 1 percentile of his or her profession,

How do you rankthe creationof medical treatments and procedures? Is a vaccine for HPV worth more "points" thana vaccine for syphillis? Again, you post without reasoning your idea through first...

and for the medical doctor administering these medications and procedures to patients in the top 1 percentile of his or her profession.

Well, first of all, nurses administer the treatments typically. Doctors diagnose and prescribe. And again, how would you rank how well a doctor administers a treatment? Is a doctor who successfully treats 50 out of 60 patients worth more than someone who treats 15 out of 20 just because they treated more patients?

Originally posted by bsl4doc
A medical researcher is concerned with WHY the problem is occuring, WHAT is making it occur, and how you can prevent it from happening again so that no treatment is necessary.

Mariella

God, I wish I could believe that, but I don't. I think the medical researcher stops at what is occuring that they can address with a drug for maintenance, never getting to the underlying problem. There's no money in that, in fact I don't even believe there is funding for that. At best all we get from the Drs. are maintenance drugs to treat symptoms. Especially in chronic conditions. We never find out why or address that.

Originally posted by Relentless

Originally posted by bsl4doc
A medical researcher is concerned with WHY the problem is occuring, WHAT is making it occur, and how you can prevent it from happening again so that no treatment is necessary.

Mariella

God, I wish I could believe that, but I don't. I think the medical researcher stops at what is occuring that they can address with a drug for maintenance, never getting to the underlying problem. There's no money in that, in fact I don't even believe there is funding for that. At best all we get from the Drs. are maintenance drugs to treat symptoms. Especially in chronic conditions. We never find out why or address that.

Are you kidding me? Look into surface receptor research in virology, cell wall studies in microbiology, and nanoparticle technology.

Mariella

Originally posted by SkipShipman
When researchers approve chemistry such as aspartame, MSG, and other noxious chemicals, and get the FDA to go along with it politically rather than scientifically, then you see the serious of the problem. ...The response to your question is neither.

[edit on 15-7-2006 by SkipShipman]

great responce...looks like people are skipping over it though.

No Doc, I'm not kidding you. If I had access to this information and presented it to my Dr. do you think for one minute they would even look at it? They don't. They don't have the time (so I can't entirely blame them) and they don't care.

These obscure things you reference are not trickling down to the people who it could help in any way shape or form, at least not in the US.

Each is a link in a process - much like a chain.

When a chain is being used, all the links are equal, however if one link breaks then the chain is useless.

Applies with many things and this is the general "take" I have.

From a *personal* point of view, it really depends. The student of the researcher would think the researcher were greater, however the patient would think the doctor was greatest.

Cheers

JS