The Best Medicine

An interesting piece in the New York Times Magazine, which looks at the rise of doctors in politics (as opposed to the current domination of the field by lawyers). It wistfully wonders how Dean and Frist might enrich the public debate:

There are a lot of issues right now that I would like to hear Frist and Dean discuss. After all, more and more of policy is tied to medicine: AIDS, stem-cell research, health insurance and H.M.O.'s, Medicare, prescription drug benefits, drug use and mental illness. It would be thrilling to have these issues considered as science instead of as politics and morality. And there's no reason to think that they would have to stop at medicine. Good doctors understand how affordable housing, a good education and secure jobs actually contribute to our physical health. I would rather trust a doctor to make a decision about war than I would a businessman or a lawyer; a doctor is more likely to remember the value of the lives he would be sacrificing.

No one says that doctors are infallible or even capable of across-the-board good judgment. The story of the surgeon who left the operating room in the middle of a case to deposit his paycheck springs to mind. Still, I think a healthy dose of doctoring may be what our government needs. Then we can add a sentence to the bottom of the presidential seal: First do no harm.