Why Primum Non Nocere?

Who must we first not harm? Without doubt, the human body itself - itself the hero that is born, grows, fends off disease and heals itself against almost impossible odds. 

To inflict harm against this miraculous repository of structure and function and self-correcting aberrations is bad enough.  But to do so carelessly or wantonly must surely deserve to be the strictest, severest prohibition laid upon physicians.

Too often has modern science regarded its multiple pills and potions, vaccines and technologies as being responsible for ushering in a new utopia for mankind. In fact, the human body, even the severely diseased human body continues to be the hero - and drugs and technologies are merely add-ons and (often imperfect) tools with which to enhance life’s quality and quantity.

No antibiotic for example, can alone fight off infection - it must have the body’s active, dynamic cooperation. And the fact that most infections do not need any treatment at all is testimony to the body’s own ability to mount effective, ever-changing, adaptive and lethal responses against the billions of viruses and bacteria that daily challenge its defences.

Compared with the most sophisticated modern drugs, technologies, machines and robots, a single human cell is infinitely more complex, its internal mechanisms infinitely more fine-tuned and dynamic.

The robot starts as raw materials that must be put together by human ingenuity. A human (or animal) cell has never been assembled in this fashion. Molecular biology in contrast, is discovering what already exists in this miraculous, microscopic package. Many books have been written describing the animal cell. Many more books remain to be written, since mankind is merely unravelling what already exists and which gives up its secrets slowly.

The recent covid pandemic exposed to the world the terrible toll that a technocratic scientific and ruling class exacts from humanity when it continues to build its tower of Babel, brick upon spurious brick, wantonly discounting the body’s own ability to mount its own, very efficient defence against the covid virus after previous infection. This disregard for the human body is exactly the kind of malpractice that is prohibited by the ancient admonition to physicians to first do no harm. 

The many, wonderful and consequential advances in epidemiology, germ theory, drugs and surgery that the last two centuries have witnessed are all now under siege by the very physicians and scientists who ought to have known better than to build their house upon the shifting sands of technocratic hubris and greed.

The foundation of all medical advances must always be a recognition of the body’s own ability to heal, to repair itself and still to stand its ground. The scientific establishment must partner with the human body - not set itself up as its superior. 

No sooner does a particular tower of technocratic Babel fall, than the technocrats are at it again - the same, foolish, disastrous scramble to build still more towers that are destined again to fall.  In the Bible’s account, the fall of the tower of Babel was accompanied by a general, severe confusion amongst its builders, with each group speaking unintelligibly to the other. This is what has happened with the covid tower of Babel - its technocratic public health, industry and government officials have started contradicting themselves and each other in ever more ridiculous cascades of confusion.

The humility that accompanies the acknowledgement of the body’s own miraculous structure and function does not come easily to the present ruling class and physician leaders.  But they will regain their sanity only when they believe with the Psalmist that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

As a surgeon, I often reflect upon and admire the philosophical and scientific insight of the great French military surgeon Ambrose Pare who said simply, “I dressed him and God healed him.”

Better still, St. Paul’s advice to the Corinthian Church: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you”