I Believe in Medicine

August 4, 2011 by

By Pamela Bond

This I Believe, National Public Radio

March 11, 2010

I believe in medicine. It’s come a long way and I have every reason to believe it will go even further. Will we find a cure for cancer? AIDS? For this, I don’t have the answers, but I know that there are some very dedicated people working to find out.

I believe that medicine has made our lives better and longer. I believe that doctors should be given all available resources to help their patients, even if this means working across borders. I believe that geneticists and researchers deserve more funding. They are the ones helping to save lives and should be rewarded with the type of funding we dedicate to entertainers and sports professionals.

I do not believe medicine holds all the answers. I know from experience that not every ailment gets diagnosed. Behind medicine, there is a science. But behind science there are people, and people can make mistakes. I don’t believe patients should be prescribed the pharmaceutical with the biggest advertising budget. Pharmaceuticals shouldn’t even need to advertise. They should let doctors do their jobs. I don’t believe doctors should be on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies, either. Once again, they should be prescribing the drugs that work best for the patient, not the ones they are getting money from. This is unethical.

I believe health insurance should be affordable and available to all. I believe that those with pre-existing conditions should not be among the least insured. Instead of creating a new program, the government should expand Medicare and Medicaid to fill in the gaps between those poor enough to qualify for the program and those who make just enough money to be ineligible for it but not enough money to afford health insurance on their own. The government should not run our healthcare system. If we want to keep the most advanced healthcare in the world, we cannot let this happen.

I believe medicine saves lives. It saved mine, many times. When a brown recluse spider bit me, I may have lost a chunk of my leg but I lived, thanks to medicine. When a Staph infection developed at the site of the bite, modern medicine made sure that I lived. It may have taken a year to diagnose my autoimmune disease, but doctors were finally able to pinpoint it. When doctors suspected a tumor, they were able to investigate it. Today I am functioning just fine.

And medicine is part of my daily life now. The pharmaceuticals I am taking have worked nothing short of a miracle. I know that not every story has a happy ending like mine, but that’s the thing about faith. You have to believe.

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Filed Under: Health Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

I Believe in Writing

August 4, 2011 by

By Pamela Bond

This I Believe, National Public Radio

March 11, 2010

I believe in the power of the written word. I believe that it can take you places and tell you things that you could never know without it. I believe it has the power to influence, to entertain and to teach.

Some believe this power is slipping away. With T.V. and podcasts becoming more popular than newspapers and magazines, music and movies more popular than books, it’s hard to say what the future will hold for print media. People used to crave this medium, eagerly awaiting a next printing or edition. But I believe it will hardly lose its place in our society, and in our hearts.

I was the type of child who couldn’t get enough of books and news. I would read under the covers with a flashlight after I was supposed to be asleep. I craved news as I grew older. I was one of the few in my high school who knew as much about Matchbox Twenty as African politics. That’s why I decided to become a journalist. My first job working for a medium-sized town newspaper certainly did not have the same impact on international politics as working as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press (my dream job at the time), but it still taught me about the power of words.

Every so often, we catch a glimpse of what might be the future of writing. I admit, I have a Barnes and Noble Nook and I love it. Shortly after I got my Nook as a Christmas present, I read an article about how digital eReaders would become obsolete within the year. So what’s next? I don’t know, but I don’t believe it will be the end.

I love to see young people reading. They emergence of Twilight as the next teen trend had me so excited. I believe that reading is one of the best habits we can teach the next generation. And yes, I read all the Twilights and was happy to read that they passed literary muster.

So what’s the future of print media? I don’t know for sure, but the important thing is I believe it has a future.

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Filed Under: Children and Education Tagged With: , , , , , , ,