Surgery, together with drugs form the bastions of medicine.

Surgery became popular last century with the development of painkillers. Much surgery, late last century was experimental, often with very high death rates. All kinds of surgery was tried. Amputations (something which many people would presume would never be done unless it was for the best) was one greatly overperformed operation. Masectomies was one operation developed in this period.

Another common operation was trachetomies, slitting open the throat so a baby with whooping cough could breath. Death rates were high. One rationalization was that this was a more merciful death that dying from whooping cough. Perhaps the child may have survived the whooping cough, if they died from the operation, the whooping cough could always be blamed. Aggressive treatments contributed in no small part to deaths from illness in the last century.

Much fuss is made of female circumcision, usually called genital mutulation. Because of cultural conditioning, many people think this strange foreign practice, carried out a restrained screaming child is abhorrent, while carrying out genital mutulation on a restrained screaming male child (often a day or two old) is acceptable. Nor would anaesthetic justify this medically useless ritual.

Dr. Spock had a major role in popularising circumcision. He believed that this was extremely traumatic and could cause long-term emotional problems for young children, and urged it should be done on boys under the age of 4 days. Unfortunately, he believed the false dogma that newborn babies don't feel anything. My view is the younger its done, the more painful it is.

One rationale is that circumcised males are less likely to catch AIDS. Not only is this total nonsense, but I don't believe many infant males are sexually active. If there was any truth in this, they could elect to be circumcised when they reach manhood. I don't see mass circumcision of adults being practiced to prevent global aids.

Some surgery is rationalized by the thought that some parts of the body are redundant, hence the victim does not suffer from their loss, even if the organ was healthy when removed, which is often the case. This is not unlike the medieval practice of bleeding, to remove the 'bad' blood, instead we remove the bad organ.

Here is an example: The appendix is a vestigial organ, left over from a earlier period in evolution and has no useful function in the body (hence it is logical to remove it).

The above is an example of dogma mistaken for fact, and is used to justify numerous appendectomies, even where the appendix is healthy. It is also a good example of medical presumption which has become part of the of psyche of the public at large. It is highly arrogant is presume that because a function hasn't been discovered there is none. For example, appendices actually protect against kidney cancer.

Other useless parts of the body include tonsils, foreskins uteruses, breasts, ovaries, cartilage or anything else surgeons like to remove. "If in doubt, cut it out" is a surgical motto.

Mentality that suffering develops the character, pain is good for you, no pain no gain, pain makes you tough etc. has greatly supported use of surgery. I've no doubt that some people who have their baby boys `done' {i.e. circumcised) believe it helps to make them a 'man'.

The TV series, "The trouble with medicine" showed the case of a woman who was quite unwell, but whom the docs had no clue to as why. People in this state can become fair game for experimentation and the surgeons proceeded to open up her brain and poke around. They still found nothing, not surprisingly. The woman spontaneously recovered several days later (though not because of this). One of them commented, that the decision to operate was motivated 50% by a desire to help the person and 50% by intellectual curiosity. Perhaps curiosity was more than 50%. At least one surgeon was ashamed by the experience, but I betcha he still got paid by state money. I suggest that a LOT of medical behaviour is motivated by intellectual curiosity.

In the 1980s, death rate in the US for ALL operations was about 1 in 70 (including trivial routine ones). With hundreds of thousands of operations being unnecessary, even by conservative standards (e.g. due to faulty diagnosis), that makes thousands of deaths per year as a result of unnecessary operations.

An `operation' has almost a religious significance. Shop talk tends to lump them alltogether. He is going to have "the" operation. It is like an exorcism. There is a fear they will not make it "through". Perhaps the surgeons are helping the patient relive their birth experience.

What are the long term effects of surgery? A recent study suggested that men in their 50s, were much more likely to develop prostate cancer, if they had had a vascectomy, than if they did not. Some people become so upset after an operation, a new psychiatric condition "post-operative psychosis" has been invented. There have been a number of operations in which the patient has been immobliized, but is concious and has full feeling. A terrible thing.

A psychiatrist related the story of a woman who apparently was acting out extreme anger towards herself by going from surgeon to surgeon and unnecessarily having organs removed. Nothing was said of the surgeons, who must have been laughing all the bank. Were they "unconsciously" expressing extreme anger at this woman by mutilating her?

Surgery is not to be taken for granted and on average does more harm than good. Whenever surgeons go on strike, death rates drop.