Modern medicine suffers from many different and severe cases of curanoia, fears of cures based on failures to understand cure. It’s not cure phobia, a phobia is an irrational fear without blame. Curanoia is easily and often rationalized and curers are often blamed. Curanoias exist in many forms, in every layer of our systems of modern medicine.
Why Curanoia? Why fear of cures?
Modern medicine has no functional definition of cure, no theory of cure, and is simply unable to cure most diseases – unable even to recognize a cure when it occurs. Doctors are often not permitted to cure, restrained to a Standard of Care which makes no attempt to cure. Few diseases or medical conditions have a Standard of Cure.
A cure is a change in status. An illness or disease was present, and now it is not present. We often think of an illness as a thing, but no. An illness is more like the wind. Illness is something we can neither see nor touch – we might only see or touch its causes and consequences.
Is healing curing? Is curing healing? Does caring cure? Does it heal? With the conceptual framework of the New Theory of Cure, we can look at these questions in a new light. In October 2023, I published a post on the differences between curing, caring, and healing, which – as often happens – led me to a much deeper thought. This resulted in a published paper that presents a complete framework for viewing and analyzing curing, caring and healing actions.
The paper draws clear lines of distinction between
healing and curing – curing is intentional, healing is unconscious. Healing and curing are a gradation between conscious and unconscious actions.
caring and curing – curing requires addressing cause, caring generally addresses the consequences of illness and concerns of the ill person, only rarely addressing cause. When illnesses causes illness, curing the secondary illness is addressing the consequences of the first, even if the first is past or never cured.
healing and caring – healing comes from the individual acting upon themselves caring comes from their communities. All life forms live in communities and to some extent care for each other.
The paper compares different healing, curing, and caring actions based on these definitions and explores gradations between each pair. Healing, for example is always a curative action, but curing is not healing, although it often supports and almost always requires healing for completion. Caring is sometimes curing, sometimes not. Curing – is sometimes a caring action, and sometimes not depending on the case, the goals, and the actions undertaken.
The paper also notes that
healing is limited to changes in body, mind, spirit, and communities.
curing might be accomplished by addressing causes of illness in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.
caring is accomplished by changing the ill person or their situation to support curing and healing, but sometimes – palliative care, is simply to support the patient when incurable conditions are present.
The paper concludes with a diagram that brings healing, caring, and curing into a single framework that illustrates the relationships between the three and how they overlap.
What do you think? I’d love to read your thoughts about these ideas and the paper.
I sometimes say “I’m taking my car to the vet“, to get its checkup, to cure its problems. Is a flat tire an illness? A disease? Is a bike, a car, or an airplane sick when it has a flat tire? Do we cure flat tires?
We can compare a flat tire to an illness, and its repair to a cure. Why should we make this comparison? Can we learn from it?
“Sometime last year, I noticed my eyes were itchy again. The problem has appeared off and on over the past few years. When I was in Arequipa three years ago, my right eye was very itchy. I went to an ophthalmologist who said “esta irritado,” – (it’s irritated). He prescribed some medicine, mostly vitamin and herbal supplements and went on my way. Over a few weeks, the problem faded. I forgot about it. Was it cured?
I suspect Vernon Coleman knows why he can’t cure dementia.
Vernon Coleman claims to have a cure for many cases of depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even some cases of Parkinson’s. He’s wrong. He cannot cure them. But it’s complicated. And it’s important to understand why.
TLDR: (too long, didn’t read)
Vernon Coleman claims to know how to cure many, perhaps most cases of dementia.
On the contrary, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, are all considered incurable.
Coleman suggests that addressing the correct cause produces a cure.
However, if this technique succeeds, it simply proves the diagnosis wrong, the illness was not mental, it was caused by the cause. The diseases depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s are all medically incurable.
Our current mental paradigm cannot recognize any cures of these mental disorders. It’s worse. Our current medical paradigm cannot recognize a cure in any case of a mental disorder.
QED: Coleman cannot cure any patient of depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. If a case is cured, the diagnosis must have been wrong, because these diseases are incurable.
What can you do, if you or a friend or family member are diagnosed with depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s? You can only try yourself. Modern medicine has given up on cures.
What if you cure? Modern medicine cannot recognize the cure.
