People who otherwise seem educated and rational continue to refuse vaccinations for their children due to a long-discredited study falsely linking vaccines to autism. They choose herbal remedies instead of well-researched medications and operations to treat serious illnesses like cancer. They flee from modern medicine to visit any other guru possible. But at what cost? What is fueling the mistrust?
Steve Jobs is a classic case in point. In Jobs' 2011 biography, author Walter Isaacson highlighted a tragic mistake fueled by hubris. Jobs could have been very fortunate; a medical exam for something else incidentally picked up an early pancreatic carcinoma. Although pancreatic cancer is usually deadly, Jobs' tumor was felt to be curable with immediate surgery. Yet this brilliant inventor, who revolutionized modern technological society, refused the recommended surgical procedure. He chose herbal treatment instead. By the time he noticed nine months later that he wasn't getting better, it was too late. His tumor had spread, and the next six years became a painful game of catch-up, one that he ultimately failed.
Isaacson muses, with good insight, that Jobs' tendency toward "magical thinking" was what did him in. In psychology, magical thinking is a term referring to a type of primitive rationalization used by children, before maturity brings about abstract thinking. This thinking can seem innocent and endearing in children; if you will it, it will be. There is a simple optimism in the notion that anything can happen if you want it to. It's only the brick wall of logic that brings the fantasy ride to a bracing halt; adulthood teaches us that there are laws to the world around us that we, for better or worse, have to adapt to. There is no Santa Claus. The Earth isn't flat. People die. Science becomes the lens through which the adult brain peers at life; and the view isn't always pretty.
Yet even as adults, many of us still cling to the wishfulness of childhood wonder. In some cases, it can be a magnificent and inspiring force. Not unlike the mantra of the movie Field of Dreams—build it and they will come—the power of the human imagination can be transformative. Jobs was willing to think outside the box, literally and figuratively; he combined elements of intuitive playfulness with the usually dry complexity of computer science. He made adult-level toys for the masses, because he believed in his own dreams.
But sometimes one needs to sober up. In particular, the area of modern medicine seems particularly feared by people who otherwise employ reasonable amounts of logic to the world around them. It's perfectly normal—important, even—for people to be anxious about health and illness. Life and death are nothing to joke about. Yet the hardest thing about illness for people to face can be the lack of control, the uncertainty around one's fate. People notoriously avoid the doctor for this reason; magical thinking pops in. If no one tells you you're sick, you're not sick. So don't let the doctor tell you you're sick. Never mind that it's the doctor who can cure you.
Say one does finally go to the doctor, gets the bad news, and then gets the doctor's recommended advice on treatment. A typical physician goes through 14 credits of tough pre-medical science and mathematics college courses, takes a difficult admissions exam, and only 5-10 percent of these hardworking candidates get accepted to medical school. After two years of intense advanced-level biology and biophysics courses (likened by many to "drinking from a fire hose") and two more years of rapid-fire clinical rotations, one enters residency for another four to seven years, and often an additional fellowship after that.
Still, many patients fall into the rut of "noncompliance," or "nonadherence" as it has more recently been termed: the refusal, intentional or not, to follow a doctor's medical recommendations. Skipping visits, medications, lab work, and procedures.
