The question is whether practicing medicine is like or unlike practicing law. Only those in distress come in search of physicians and lawyers. Thus, their clients need healing as well as protection from the ills in their innate systems or in the systems surrounding them. The absolute dependence or even surrender of those in need during times of need provides their physicians as well as their lawyers the moral high ground. However, the variability in skills to tap into highly variable medical and legal remedies to overcome the ills causing suffering in their clients may turn practicing medicine as unique and unpredictable as practicing law.
How often do clients suffer unexpected anaphylaxis? How often do medical errors become fatal? How often do the innocent get convicted? How often are the convicted sentenced to death? How often are pharmaceuticals abused? How often are the guilty acquitted? How often are physicians aware of how much they bill? How often are lawyers aware of how much they bill? How often are physicians in debt despite envious reimbursements? How often are lawyers in debt despite envious damages? Maybe the systems teaching Robert Kiyosaki’s “good debt, bad debt” differentiation, popularized in Rich Dad Poor Dad, are neither aptly understood nor aptly applied.
How often do physicians realize and resolve health care disparities? How often do lawyers realize and resolve legal disparities? How often do physicians over-diagnose and over-treat? How often do lawyers over-litigate and over-complicate? How often do physicians rely on pharmaceuticals and procedures? How often do lawyers rely on proceedings and prisons? How often are physicians litigated when they fail to heal? How often are lawyers litigated when they fail to protect? How often do physicians bear the brunt of clients’ frustration? How often do lawyers bear the brunt of clients’ anger? Maybe the systems have evolved conflicting contradictions to trust despite all evidence to the contrary, as well as distrust despite all evidence to the contrary.
How often do physicians practice for free? How often do lawyers litigate pro bono? How often do physicians realize their conflicts of interest while healing clients? How often do lawyers realize their conflicts of interest while protecting clients? How often do clients themselves become products when the costs for medical or legal remedies to their medical or legal tragedies are shelled out by third-party payors or defendants? Maybe the more systems humans insert amongst themselves to enhance the quantity of their survival, the farther they move away from other humans, thus sickening the quality of their survival.
How often are clients healed and protected in the over-convoluted and inexplicably self-learning systems? How often do physicians and lawyers work more for the systems than for the clients whose healing and protection were the primary reasons for designing those systems in the first place? How soon might humanity realize that systems evolved to serve humans are now evolving to expect servitude from humanity? How soon might physicians and lawyers realize their role as the last frontier preventing servitude to self-learning systems from becoming absolute and irreversible for humanity? Maybe the systems that evolved to bridge the gaps amongst humans are finally becoming artificially intelligent, self-learning to irreversibly widen the gaps amongst humans.
Essentially, physicians should be like lawyers sometimes and unlike them at other times. Physicians can learn from lawyers as well as teach them. As the origin of both professions is noble and rooted in client advocacy, these professionals and their professions are the last hurdle in the future supremacy of artificial intelligence. Humans may always need humans to medically heal their humanity as well as to legally protect their humanity in the artificially intelligent futuristic world.
Deepak Gupta is an anesthesiologist.
