Actually, concern about doing harm is central to current concepts of medical ethics. The idea may be ancient but still highly relevant. Ethics declare a primary obligation of healers is "above all do no harm".
That of course doesn't exclude doing good, being helpful, using skills and technologies to produce favorable outcomes. It does mean that healers must exercise due vigilance for unintended adverse consequences of therapies, let alone knowingly providing services that cause harm.
The problem with "safe/not safe" designation is simply that these states are more often than not indistinct. Or put another way, it depends on subtle contextual attributes that are hard to discern. Furthermore individual differences can make it difficult to predict safety of applying a procedure.
As a result healers should be cautious in approaching problems. Definitely prevention is better than cure, it's simply that relatively little is known about preventing burdensome conditions. Exercising what is known is a high priority.
> Actually, concern about doing harm is central to current concepts of medical ethics. The idea may be ancient but still highly relevant. Ethics declare a primary obligation of healers is "above all do no harm".
I think GP understands this, and disagrees with the principle.
That of course doesn't exclude doing good, being helpful, using skills and technologies to produce favorable outcomes. It does mean that healers must exercise due vigilance for unintended adverse consequences of therapies, let alone knowingly providing services that cause harm.
The problem with "safe/not safe" designation is simply that these states are more often than not indistinct. Or put another way, it depends on subtle contextual attributes that are hard to discern. Furthermore individual differences can make it difficult to predict safety of applying a procedure.
As a result healers should be cautious in approaching problems. Definitely prevention is better than cure, it's simply that relatively little is known about preventing burdensome conditions. Exercising what is known is a high priority.