The Associated Press reports that the Vatican says Pope John Paul's suffering with Parkinson's disease is an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all, calling this a "religion of health" that is taking hold in affluent countries.
"While millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care, in rich countries the concept of health as well-being figures in creating unrealistic expectations about the possibility of medicine to respond to all needs and desires," said the Rev. Maurizio Faggioni, a theologian and morality expert on the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.
A Vatican psychiatrist said the Pope is "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness." Vatican officials stressed that all people should have access to basic health care.
But "it is difficult to establish what a decent minimum is," Faggioni said, when asked about unaffordable health care for many in the United States.
Posted by schwitz at February 18, 2005 07:52 AM