You might be surprised to learn, I certainly was, that modern medicine has no science of ‘cure‘. Freud developed the talking cure, but it was only a treatment, with no test for the patient being ‘cured’. Homeopathy often uses the word cure but has no tests for cured. It has only treatments. Modern medicine has a very poor understandings of cure and no definition of cured for most diseases. Medical dictionaries often fail to defined cure and modern medical reference texts seldom use the word cure, when they do, without a definition, use is inconsistent.
Most diseases are treated, never cured. Cured is not defined for any non-infectious disease, not defined for any chronic disease, not defined for any mental disorder, and not defined for any disease cured by health. “There is no cure for the common cold (influenza, measles, etc.).”
The cure problem has little to do with the disease or the patient, and everything to do with a failure of science in medicine. Most reatments are designed, tested, approved and manufactured to treat symptoms, not to cure illness.
The only cures scientifically recognized by modern medicine are killing medicines. Antibiotics, anti-fungal, and anti-parasite medicines cure by killing. Antiviral medicines do not cure – viruses are not alive, and therefore cannot be killed, so cured is not defined for diseases caused by a virus. Surgery is often considered a cure – but there is no scientific test of cured for any surgery at present.
I am not a doctor. I cannot cure anyone, but I have freedoms not available to most doctors. I can research and work on theory because I am not constrained by the practice of medicine. I am working steadily on the Healthicine Creed, which states Every Illness Can be Cured. I am an optimist, and optimism is necessary for medical progress, essential if we are to find cures. I have developed a map, or flowchart of the theory of curing, how to cure any illness, and revised it several times over the years. I would be happy to read any comments suggestions, criticism that can be used to improve it.
This diagram presents a process to cure any illness, and know the illness has been cured.
A few notes to aid in understanding the diagram:
Illness Noticed: An illness is noticed, by the patient, the doctor, or perhaps by another person. “An illness can be cured” – it does not need to be diagnosed as a disease in order to be cured. Technically, an illness is what the patient has, a disease is what the doctor diagnoses and a sickness is what the society perceives. Different doctors – and different communities in society can assign different names to illness and non-illnesses.
An illness is a negative health condition with a cause. Many diseases are defined without reference to cause, and as a result, these cannot be cured and proven to be cured.
Injury illness: If the cause is gone, the illness is an injury, like a broken arm. However, if we wish to cure, we must consider injuries as “those which can be cured by healing”. Damage created by an injury that cannot be healed and may need other actions to cure.
Causal or Attribute illness? Illnesses that are active have present causes. Sometimes, the cause is an active process – or the absence of a necessary process. Sometimes, the cause is a negative attribute, or the absence of a positive attribute, that disrupts the active processes of living.
Causal illnesses are cured by addressing the causal process. Every active causal illness process consists of a chain of causes such that addressing any link breaks the chain and has the potential to cure. An illness caused by the absence of a causal process is cured by adding a process to address the absence.
Attribute illnesses are cured by transforming the negative attribute to a neutral or positive attribute.
Any illness and many cures can cause damage, or injuries, that require healing cures.
Is the cause of the illness known? An illness is an intersection of cause and negative signs and symptoms, where we believe the signs and symptoms are a result of the cause. The cause is not the illness. There are causes of healthiness. The symptoms are not the illness. An illness only exists when the cause leads to symptoms.
An active illness can only be cured, can only be proven to be cured, when the cause is addressed. The first step is to identify the cause. It is cured when the link between the causes and the signs and symptoms is broken such that the symptoms fade and heal.
Is the illness an injury or a disability? When the illness is an injury healing is necessary to cure. Actions to treat symptoms does not cure. When the illness is considered a disability, the only possible cure is a transformation of the negative attribute, the disability, which converts it to “was a curable illness“.
Diabetes Type 1 is a disability – missing islet cells. The damage, the illness caused by this disability progresses slowly and can cause other illnesses.
Once the cause is known, address the cause, the only cure is to address the cause. Once we address the cause, we can test to see if it was cured. Proof of cause a judgment found in the cure. For causal illnesses, the cause consists of a chain of causes – where addressing any cause in the chain has the potential to cure. Injury and attribute illnesses have a chain of causes that can be used to design preventatives – but not to cure.
If the cause is not known, we can only guess. As we practice guessing, our guesses get better. If you think we know the cause, we can test for that cause, and then treat the cause. If, for example, we believe a patient is ill because of an excess of carbon monoxide in their workplace, we can test the workplace and know the cause. Once the cause is known – it can be addressed and the illness cured.
Guessing is actually a common and powerful medical technique. A patient goes to the doctor with an ear infection. The doctor is not sure if it’s a bacterial infection or a fungal infection. The doctor makes a guess and prescribes an antibiotic. Maybe the antibiotic doesn’t work, and the second guess, an anti-fungal medicine provides the cure. In this case, the test for the cause leads to the cure, is an important part of the cure. Cure is a verb.
Is it Cured? Once the cause has been addressed, test if the illness has been cured. If we want to be certain it was cured, we need to test if it was cured. But there’s a problem. In today’s medical science few cures are recognized. Modern medical textbooks do not use the word ‘cure’ for most illnesses, because most illnesses are not cured by medicines. Cured is often not defined, thus cannot be tested, much less proven. For most diseases, the exceptions being those caused by bacteria, fungus or other parasites, modern medicine has no tests for ‘cured’. There is no test for ‘cured’ for simple illnesses like scurvy, and obesity, cured – in theory – by a healthy diet. Medical texts do not find any cures for these diseases, because cured is not defined. They are not cured by medicines, therefore there is no ‘cure’. Modern medicine has no test for cured for many common illnesses like the common cold, measles and the flu. Medicine defines these illnesses as self-limiting – and has no test for cured. They are cured by time and health, not by medicine. If you get a cold, your health cures it faster if you are healthier. If the patient does not return, the system assumes a cure, but does not test for cured. Mental illnesses cannot be cured, for the same reason. Cured is not defined. This leads us to the trap of treating illnesses, with no aim to cure. We tell the patient to ‘learn to live with‘ their illness. A more accurate recommendation would be to say “Learn to die with your disease.” We develop ways to help them live with their illness – avoiding the truth, avoiding the search for a cure.
Only a specific instance, a single element of an illness can be cured. Compound illnesses are cured one element at a time. Four answers are needed to prove a cure:
- Has the cause been addressed or removed?
- Have the injuries been healed?
- Have the signs and symptoms faded and gone?
- Are no more medicines required?
If all quesitons are answered affirmative, the illness has been cured.
Every cure is a single story, an anecdote. In most clinical studies, ‘cured’ is simply not defined. Most measure symptoms of illness. Some studies define success treating symptoms as ‘cured’, but most avoid the word cure. When cured is not defined, cured cannot be tested – and as a result, if an anecdotal cure occurs, it cannot be noticed, cannot be documented as part of the study. This is actually a recent change. If we go back 50, many studies documented ‘cures’. In the example documented in this post, an identical study done two years later ignored cures, whereas the original study counted cures.
If we are to cure every illness, we need a definition of cured, for every illness, and we need to refine those definitions, improve on them as our science of cures advances.
Is it partially cured? Sometimes a cure is partial. This can easily happen when there are two, or more illness elements present, with a single disease name. An illness element has a single cause.
Let’s suppose you get a cut on your leg, and it get’s infected by a bacteria. The doctor prescribes an antibiotic, and the infection is partially cured, but then continues to progress? What happened? You might have had two illnesses – two infections, from different bacteria. One of them was killed by the antibiotic. One of the illnesses was cured, but the other was resistant to that antibiotic, and can only be cured by a different antibiotic. We often think of the symptoms – the infection – as the illness. But when there are two causes, there are two illnesses, and we might need two cures. Of course it’s not easy to tell the difference between “we didn’t get it all” and “we need to cure two illnesses”. Partial cures often lead to ‘more of the same‘ errors. If an antibiotic provides a partial cure, we might think that more will provide a better cure – and be surprised when it fails due to a failure in understanding.
Depression is another example. Depression can have many causes – from environment, to body, mind, spirit, and community. When a patient has depression from two or more causes – they have two or more illnesses. Addressing one cause will only address one of the illnesses – resulting in a partial cure. To the doctor and the patient, it will be seen as a partial success. It might not be viewed as a ‘cure’, because we are stuck with a flawed vision of cure ‘to cure all of the symptoms’.
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Conclusion:
Today, there is no science of cure. Cure is not defined for most illnesses and as a result, most illnesses simply cannot be cured.
Today, if someone claims to have been cured, or to have cured a patient, the medical profession pleads ignorance. Cures are simply ignored because they cannot be proven. Sometimes, there arises a search for ‘the medicine’ to prove that a medicine cured the illness, but when no profitable medical cure is found – the cure is ignored or dismissed.
The proof is in the cure. When the patient is cured, they don’t care about definitions. The science of medicine needs to catch up to the realities of patients. Of course, sometimes, a patient, even their doctor, believes they were cured, but they were not cured. In these cases too, we need a science of cures, to detect errors, and to improve on cures.
Today, there is no science of cures. Pity.
To your health, tracy
This post was written in 2016, as I began the search to understand cure, cures, curing, and cured. In 2018, my understanding culminated in the publication of the book
The Elements of Cure
This post was written when I began to search for an understanding of cure. It has been updated as my understanding progressed, and that understanding led to the publication of a book which defines the elements of cure. You can buy it on Amazon, in Kindle or print format.
The flow diagram in this post has been updated, several times over the past three years.
Tracy is the author of two books about healthicine, and working on the third: The Healthicine Creed.
