[jtmckinley]

Medicine is definitely a science. It's certainly not fully mature in the sense that it can cure all ills, but medical research is very much science. M.D.s on the other hand are sometimes quacks. Most M.D.s are responsible and are trying their best to heal their patients given the tools they have to work with. Some doctors are more skilled/smarter/harder working than others and so one doctor's best will be better than another doctor's best. Also doctors are just humans so they have good days and bad days like the rest of us.

I guess for medicine to be a fully mature science it would need to be able to cure all disease as well as cure death. This may happen some day. For example it may be possible to some day design little nanobots that will float around in our bodies and fix things at the molecular level ensuring our health and immortality (barring catastrophic accidents like a fatal car crash or falling off a cliff). Obviously we're not there yet.

However, I don't really think it's fair to criticize the medical profession because they haven't gotten everything figured out yet. Most of the folks in the medical profession are working very hard to try and develop new treatments and heal their patients. Sometimes the side effects of the cure are worse than the disease and sometimes M.D.s have no choice but to try experimental treatments simply because there is no known treatment for a particular ailment. In that case it's up to the patient to decide if they want to be treated or not. To my knowledge nobody today is forced to undergo medical treatment of any kind (except maybe children since their parents have legal rights over them). One always has the option of refusing treatment and living with the symptoms of the disease, or if the disease is fatal, dying (assuming some self-righteous jackass of a politician doesn't pass some law preventing one's choice).

On the other hand, I certainly think it's worthwhile for people to get a 2nd or even 3rd and 4th opinion before they agree to a particular treatment. As I said above, some doctors are better than others and do a better job of keeping up to date on the latest treatments and sadly a few others are just quacks. Unfortunately it's sometimes difficult for us laymen to know which doctor is better, but I think the more information you have the better. As for the cost of medical treatment, that's a completely separate issue from medicine as science IMHO and gets into the question of whether there should be nationalized (or even globalized) health care and whether that would result in better care overall.