Germ Theory and the Spirit

[The germ theory] is a powerful concept. Great things have been accomplished in medicine by application of this theory. Ask today what the cause of pulmonary tuberculosis is, and nearly every physician will answer, “Mycobacterium TB” or one of the other Mycobacteriaceae. More than just for infectious disease, the germ theory is typical of a set of models which posit a material cause for each disease.

Common to these models is the idea that each disease is caused by an unbidden, alien, and usually unseen agent which invades a person against his will. The job of medicine is to find the alien and cut it out surgically or poison it out medically. Preventive medicine is supposed to lock out the alien substance or to lock it up harmlessly -- be it cholesterol, elevated blood glucose, uric acid, or a developing nest of malignant cells. The patient's job is rather passive in all of this. The patient is basically to hold still while the doctor identifies and destroys the invader. The whole idea of prevention or therapy is to change as little of the person as possible. Only the invader needs to be destroyed. The person's attitudes, beliefs, motives, loyalties, or character are largely incidental to the process.

The germ theory has worked!

One and a half centuries later, we have become victims of our success in exploiting these models of disease which feature a "physical causative agent" that comes in willy-nilly on a gene or a germ. Thus planted and matured, this model of physical causation of disease has borne such fruit that people are trying to grow it well outside of its natural range.

Physical causation for presenting complaints of patients has been transplanted to problems which do not have a physical cause, though they may have a physical consequence in the body. In addition, though multifactorial models for disease are now in ascendance, all of the multitude of factors examined are physical factors. The spirit of the suffering person is neglected as a factor, let alone as a key factor. The idea of physical agency for medical complaints has pushed the spirit of mankind out of its proper claim.

I wish to maintain that the spirit of mankind is actually the primary factor in determining health or sickness in the United States, and that the "basic science," as it were, of spiritual matters is Biblical theology. It follows then that Medicine should be functioning from a biblical framework that makes the natural science methodology subsidiary to theology.


Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"