Traditional Chinese culture is summed up in one sentence as being a human being, the essence of which is to destroy human nature, i.e., how to extinguish human nature and “preserve the Divine Principle and extinguish human desires”. Confucian culture advocates being a benevolent and virtuous person, including being a loyal subject and a filial son, with the aim of maintaining the ruling class and the status quo unchanged and maintaining authority. In fact, there are positive elements in Confucian culture, such as “prudence” and “to conscience”, but due to the ruler’s choice of hobbies, many of the dregs of Confucian culture have been promoted, resulting in a general lack of scientific spirit and innovation among Chinese people, who blindly worship experts and authorities. However, due to the ruler’s choice of hobbies, many dregs of Confucian culture were propagated, leading to a general lack of scientific spirit and innovation among Chinese people, a blind worship of experts and authorities, and a lack of compliance with norms and spontaneity in everything. Liu Baodong, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University
Medicine is a science, and being a science means never-ending. At present, our knowledge of the human body or disease is only its approximate phase, for example, how does cancer get sick? Therefore, doctors are also students in front of diseases, and they need to keep learning, exploring and researching, which is what I call “clearing the ignorance”. Nevertheless, there are certain standards for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, such as the American version of NCCN and the Chinese version of NCCN.
As a patient, you should face your disease correctly, especially if the cause of the cancer is not clear, because the cause is not clear, so the treatment is more difficult, and the doctor may not know more than you in front of this kind of disease. As a patient, for the sake of the progress of medical science, you should support doctors to adopt new methods and means to promote the further development of medical science. As a patient, you should not blindly worship some “so-called” experts, but rather worship experts who follow the norms.
As a physician, we should follow the treatment standards when diagnosing and treating diseases, especially for difficult tumors, because these diagnostic and treatment methods have been validated or proven to be clinically beneficial by evidence-based medicine. As a surgeon: Is the selection of surgical indications standardized? Is the intraoperative operation standardized and resection complete? Is surgery for the sake of surgery? As an internist: How to arrange the sequence and course of radiotherapy? What chemotherapy regimen is used? Do you use drugs that are available or not? As an oncologist: Do you continue to recommend to patients methods that have been proven to be ineffective in the diagnosis and treatment of the cancer in the name of exploring or leading the progress of the discipline?
In short, in the presence of cancer, the information between patients and physicians is still asymmetric, although physicians’ understanding also needs to be deepened. Therefore, starting from not harming patients’ interests, doctors treating cancer can be said to be a work of conscience.