Medicine Is a Cure and a Disease

We talked in a previous article about the phenomenon of misusing medications in our society, and how many families in our society keep drugs in their house that cannot be bought without a doctor’s prescription in the United States, and how a family member usually plays the role of the doctor and prescribes medications for the rest of the family members with confidence and without any reservations or feeling the need to consult with a physician. We also talked about the dangers of these acts and how it is spread in our society, and some of the mistakes that one can make if he doesn’t handle this science correctly and doesn’t receive a practicing license.

Today, we talk about antibiotics in particular, as the increasing use of antibiotics helps bacteria in adjusting gradually to endure any antibiotic. When one antibiotic is misused, it leads to the emergence of a new kind of bacteria with immunity against that antibiotic, making it less effective in treatment. The new generation of bacteria can be transmitted to another person and can be even passed on through generations.

The effects of misusing antibiotics surpass the individual and reach to the whole society, and that is why antibiotics cannot be prescribed in the United States without a doctor’s note that carries his signature and his license number.

The reasons behind the misuse of antibiotics in the Arab world are the following;

• The ease of obtaining antibiotics from pharmacies without prescription, and even though some Arab countries issued laws to prevent that act, most pharmacies do not abide by them and some pharmacists even play the role of a physician in diagnosis and prescribing medicine, which overrides his power and the limits of his practice.

• The ignorance of most patients regarding the difference between bacteria and viruses, and when using an antibiotic is necessary and when it is an offense.

• The patient’s lack of commitment to use the antibiotic according to the doctor’s recommendations.

A patient might not need an antibiotic, but a lot of patients pay the doctor to prescribe a medication and if they don’t get the prescription they want, they look for another doctor who’s less strict about giving prescriptions, and that’s when the doctor might become part of the problem.

It is worth mentioning in this field that a doctor needs to take the suitable culture (sample) from the patient before beginning treatment, and if the patient does not respond to treatment a doctor can revise the results of the swabbed culture and identify the bacteria that caused the illness and the antibiotics that can treat it effectively.

God created everything in certain measures and assigned us a scale for reference. The manipulation of these accurate measures that were put on earth and in ourselves can lead to imbalance and corruption. One of these measures that God put in ourselves is the accurate percentage of bacteria in our bodies, some of which are harmful and some are not, and some are even beneficial when it comes to helping in digestion in the intestines and the digestive system, and when the number of that bacteria decreases, the number of the harmful bacteria increases in the body, which leads to illness.

That’s why we need to follow the thorough approach when studying God’s methods in our bodies so that the measures we take are compatible with the accurate percentage that God put in our bodies, to prevent imbalance and corruption as a result of what we do. The misunderstanding of these ways results in following the wrong methods which lead to the wrong effects and can harm instead of benefit, and damage instead of construct.