Health Risks of Having Sight

Most people know that just because you can’t see or hear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In a technological age, we are almost naturally aware that invisible things like radio waves and invisible gas particles exist. The current trend of scientific advances, however, make it obvious that people are less aware of the unperceivable aspects of the world than they think. The way new technologies and social behaviors assault our health show that we are not all that scientific and our societies are not all that advanced.

Our society may not be as advanced as we think. An advanced society should consist of people who behave in a manner that is in their own best interest. Yet, paying more attention to the immediate surroundings that you perceive and less attention to things you read about and hear about results in naivety of your true surroundings.

For the longest time I wondered why I rarely, if ever, see anyone with skin allergies as bad as mine. Its obvious that my condition is severe, but I’m sure there still are folks out there with similar conditions. The reason, I suspect, is that the majority of sick people (such as myself who have a hard time with everyday life) are in a hospital somewhere or homeschooled or resting at home. They probably aren’t as crazy as me trying to lead a real life and thereby exposing myself to the environment- the very environment I’m allergic to.

50,000 Americans suffer from the esophageal varices and cancer that my spring ‘04 clinic aimed to treat. Most severe medical illnesses have cases of this magnitude, yet where are these millions and millions of people with heart problems, cancer, handicaps, etc?

People without the ability to function on their own are hidden from the sight of society. They are hidden in hospitals, hidden in special centers, and hidden in their homes under the care of family or nurses. For most people, illnesses don’t seem as immediate and real as they actually are. This is because don’t see the old men in the retirement homes nor do they see the cancer patients in the centers. Although medical reports, warnings on the news, and cancer donation commercials make people aware of the problems, people aren’t aware that these illnesses can as easily affect them as they are affecting those already in the hospital.

This blindness of the reality continues because the healthy world and the “hidden” world is separated. When people do get sick, they are moved from the healthy world to the “hidden” world of hospitals, centers, and confined rooms. They are removed from the healthy world before the real world has a chance to see the true problems it faces. These patients with severe illnesses do not exist in the healthyworld long enough to accumulate and form an image large enough to make an impression.

It is natural for people to separate the sick from the healthy world to keep the healthy world healthy. Call it an organism’s natural defense mechanism or some spin off of survival of the fittest. Don’t get me wrong, hospitals are one of the few great institutions of the modern world. However, as I have shown, hospitals and their function of removing the ill from the healthy world gives those young and healthy the misconception that they will be young and healthy forever.

People are born with the sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch because we need it and we have used it well. Similarly though, people are born with a brain, a brain that can think about the new information it learns and make judgements about that new information. It is important for us to expose ourselves to the emerging research reports and honestly understand the extent of the situation.