The Scientific Deity

My earlier post today about patient doctor relationship has sparked a wide ranging and welcome debate from patients and health professionals across social media.

It led us to discussing whether the emphasis is too much on scientific care and not enough on the patient experience of the condition. Do we trust science too much, put too much emphasis on what science and medicine can achieve.

Years ago, as a teenager trying to navigate and make sense of a medical approach that often hurt or damaged me, that I often found fallible, yet omnipotent and unquestionable. Science as the new God.

I wrote a poem about it but have never published it - many of us would cringe at the thought of sharing anguished teenage thoughts.

But reading it today, I wonder if I hadn't learnt more than I knew already.

The Scientific Deity

Our Father, who art in Heaven, who recalls thy name?
What authority must sinners bow to now?

***

We used to have an absolute; a safe, sorbent net,
That saved our souls from all the wrath of Bishops and their Hell. 
Repent! Confess! For all shall be absolved
when God, the Almighty, meets us at the gates. 

Go Murder! Steal! Abuse and Lie! 
Then, in the silence of the sacred shrine spill all
for He will see and He will judge and every act is stored away.

Hide your Lust beneath the Guilt of incense and of prayer. 
Deny, Restrict, Repress, Confine and He will guide the way. 

But Hail! The new Almighty power, slowly won the day like cancer, Creeping, spreading, silent - all the world agrees :

The Scientific Deity has truly set us free. 

And all is proved and tested
No shadow of a doubt. 

All the pain and suffering injected quite away.
Cut out the rotten debris of misery and sickness
We're sterile now, so clean and pure. 
Vacuum sealed at every edge. 
Aided and abetted by the New Messiahs, bacteria with penicillin potions dealt a sweeping genocide. 

Not Priests or rusty Cardinals with arbitrary zeal
But Science and her ever spreading roots will Heal us all. 

And if a few are mutilated, mangled by her wheels,
Well, Democratic rules apply : "We cater to Majority"

(And most agree to compensate the victims of success 
if proof be linked and Scapegoat can be found)