Books in Focus: Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience by Miguel A. Faria, MD

My objectives in writing Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023) were to enlighten medical science researchers, edify life science scholars, entertain science enthusiasts by relating selective and controversial issues in medicine and medical history as well as fascinating topics in neuroscience and neuropsychiatry, and to educate novitiates in the resolution of ethical and moral issues from the contrasting perspectives of medical ethics versus bioethics. The book was needed because some of the controversies in medicine and neuroscience have reached a fevered pitch, and in few cases, even a boiling point.

Since the book bridges varied but related areas of specialized knowledge, I envisioned an audience of readers including neuroscientists, medical practitioners, public health workers, bioethicists, and medical historians; both for students as well as post-graduate scholars and experienced researchers and other life science academicians. Additionally, several sections of the book will be of particular interest to health care policymakers. Nevertheless, the conclusions drawn were formulated from an empirical perspective and the personal research and experience of an academic neurosurgeon and medical historian.

Without hesitation the book plunges directly into fascinating and at the same time controversial issues in medicine and neuroscience. To be more specific, the issue of violence, mental illness and the brain discussed in Part 1 will instruct the reader in the historic advances made in psychosurgery up to the present time.

In Part 2, the discussion branches out into the fields of neurobiology and the advances in learning and memory; neuropharmacology and how hallucinogenic drugs or the “Plants of the Gods” affect the human brain; and neuropsychiatry with intriguing frontal and temporal lobe syndromes.

Neuroscientists throughout the world are still formulating theories about learning and memory. I try to bring the reader up-to-date without overwhelming him with minutiae, while at the same time explaining the meaning and ramification of the most important points. For example, in Chapter 4, I wrote:

One point that Kandel repeatedly makes is that because of evolutionary development, animals, including invertebrates, such as the sea snail (Aplysia), and the fruit fly (Drosophila), maintain the biological systems needed for survival, and this includes simple neuronal circuits involved in flight or fight reactions. Moreover, the inference is that complex (conscious) explicit memory in humans is only more complex and only quantitatively different from simple reflexive implicit memory in the sea snail. The intimation is that the puzzle of learning and memory is largely solved; all we have to do now is to work out the mechanism for human consciousness, and then once and for all, we can end the concept of the duality of mind and body and delegate Plato and Descartes to the dustbin of metaphysics! As I will discuss later, with due respect to Kandel, this is far from being the case.

Another dilemma that is purportedly solved by evolutionary theory is the associated phenomenon of the random process of natural selection and adaptability accounting for similar neurobiology in all animals. This implies that, for example, by studying the neural circuitry of the sea snail (Aplysia) or the earthworm (annelid) that we can learn the intricacies of the human brain. But here again, Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who once suggested that his greatest teacher was not Lamarck, Linnaeus, or Cuvier—but “old Aristotle,” may not have all the answers as far as the evolution of the human mind. Although Aristotle and Darwin both believed in a hierarchical systemization of animals, Darwin, of course, believed in natural selection as a random event in evolutionary theory. Aristotle believed in intelligent design, a teleological theory of final cause—i.e., an efficient universe in which all actions have been designed by the prime mover (God) toward an end.[4] Plant and animal life preserve systems because in following utilitarian principles, nature does not waste its resources uselessly. In this regard, Kandel’s proposition is consistent with current thinking: “In the course of evolution, humans have retained some of the cellular mechanisms of learning and memory storage found in simpler animals,” not according to him by intelligent design but by random natural selection (p. 144). It may turn out in the end that Kandel is correct, but the scientific proof is not yet in evidence.

Medical history is replete with enthralling mysteries and alluring secrets. In Part 3, I relate a surprising new hypothesis that I believe has solved the mystery of Neolithic and Bronze Age trephinations as investigated by the late Dr. Plinio Prioreschi. I wrote:

Observing that small injuries to the head, more frequently than other injuries, resulted in “dying” (i.e., LOC with a concussion or a contusion resulting in coma) and “undying” (i.e., spontaneous recovery), they must, according to Prioreschi, come to believe that “something in the head had to do with undying.”[5,6] More blows would not accomplish the ritual, but an opening in the head, trephination, could be “the activating element,” the act that could allow the demon to leave the body or the good spirit to enter it, for the necessary “undying” process to take place. If deities had to enter or leave the head, the opening had to be sufficiently large. Prioreschi writes: “It would appear that he was trying to recall to life people who had died (or were dying) without wounds (or with minor ones), in other words, people affected with diseases and people whose small wounds (e.g., undisplaced fractures of the skull with small lacerations of the scalp) were not so serious as to prevent ‘‘undying’.”[6] Incomplete trepanations, as mentioned previously, are explained, not because the patients died during the procedure, but because of patients waking up and interrupting the procedure by suddenly becoming “undead.”[5,6]

The head was chosen for the procedure, not because of any particular intrinsic importance or because of magic or religious reasons, but because of the unique and universally accumulated experience observed by primitive man in the Stone Age with ubiquitous head injuries during altercations and hunting. Otherwise, the pelvic bone or femur could have served the same purpose. We must recall that even the much more advanced ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hindu, and even Hellenic civilizations believed the heart to be the center of thought and emotions, not the brain. In fact, the association of the heart with emotions lingered to the present age.

The reader’s journey then continues through aspects of primitive and ancient medicine as well as Greek and Roman medicine. I culminate the part with recently released details from the Soviet archives about the controversial death of Joseph Stalin, and question the conventional theory that Stalin died of a stroke.

The exploration of controversial issues, such as end-of-life care, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and infanticide, continues in Part 4 with the contrast between medical ethics, practiced according to the precepts of Hippocrates, and bioethics, based on utilitarianism; and I probe whether in that context bioethics and longevity are two incompatible concepts in modern medicine in Part 5.

In distinguishing traditional medical ethics from the utilitarian motives of bioethics, I wrote:

Bioethics (and potentially neuroethics) is based on utilitarianism and collectivist, population-based ethics that are susceptible to manipulation by social engineers and the influence of government monetary and funding considerations.[1,5,7,10] Bioethics and the veterinary ethic are applicable to humane animal research and when treating sick and injured animals—in which the veterinarian does not act necessarily in the best interest of the injured animal, but according to the wishes of the animal’s owner, the person responsible for paying the bill—but not to sick human patients.[5,7,10]

Bioethics is not concerned with individual autonomy, natural law, moral principles, or the dignity of human life, as it claims. Instead, its tenets are based on situational ethics, moral relativism, utilitarianism, and what is in the best interest of society or more apropos, the state. Attorney and moral philosopher Wesley Smith has called the bioethics movement “a culture of death” because it supports euthanasia of the elderly and infirm; abortion on demand; physician-assisted suicide; and the withholding of food and water for terminally or chronically ill patients.[15] Pope Benedict XVI decried the movement and reaffirmed the tenets of beneficence, nonmaleficence, natural law, and the sanctity of human life.[16]

In Part 6, I explore specific problems in the American health care system and look at whether socialized medicine is the proper solution. In the final section, Part 7, I return to medical history to discuss past plagues and epidemics in public health and conclude with a brief review of a book dealing with the source, events, and politics revolving around the recent COVID pandemic.

I hope the book closes several gaps of knowledge in the various fields of medical history, medical ethics, and neuroscience—and I would be very satisfied if at least some of my learned readers agreed.

Written by Dr. Miguel Faria

Miguel A. Faria, M.D., is Associate Editor in Chief in neuropsychiatry; history of medicine; and socioeconomics, politics, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). He was appointed and served at the behest of President George W. Bush as member of the Injury Research Grant Review Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2002-2005. Dr. Faria is a Board Certified Neurological Surgeon  (American Association of Neurological Surgeons; retired, Life Member, AANS); Clinical Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery, ret.) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History (ret.) Mercer University School of Medicine. He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995); Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997); Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002), and America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019). His most recent books are Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023) and Cuba’s Eternal Revolution through the Prism of Insurgency, Socialism, and Espionage (2023; in progress) both published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain.

This article may be cited as: Faria, MA. Books in Focus: Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience. HaciendaPublishing.com, May 24, 2023. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/books-in-focus-controversies-in-medicine-and-neuroscience-by-miguel-a-faria-md/.

Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023) by Dr. Miguel A. Faria, was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. You can order the book from Lauren Blackwell, Admin Assistant, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. It is a beautiful hardback book and for a 25% discount, enter code PROMO25 to redeem or ask for it when you email Lauren at orders@cambridgescholars.com.

Copyright ©2023 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.

Share This Story:

3 thoughts on “Books in Focus: Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience by Miguel A. Faria, MD”

  1. Dr. Adam Bogart

    A related Facebook conversation on Dr. Miguel Faria’s timeline. This took place within the last several days of 5/31/2023.

    Eric Voehlim
    Behe and Meyers are molecular biologists at the forefront of intelligent design. Both have written several books and peer reviewed articles that demonstrate evolution cannot alone explain the development of life and speciation. Evolution and natural selection have limited power and that intelligence is required to do what evolution can’t.

    Adam Bogart
    Kandel is likely incorrect, but since most animals will develop retrograde amnesia after injection of strong antibiotics like cyclohexamide or anisomycin, there seems to be some common connection. Additionally, any physical methods of inducing RA have proved to work similarly in both humans and the lower animals.
    It could be that every one of these methods of inducing RA does so by completely different mechanisms, but that wouldn’t make much sense, as nature tends to be conservative with a successful mutation, if it proves to confer a definite advantage.
    Many of these treatments may be uncomfortable for animals, inducing a state dependency. So when they are tested later for changes in learning and memory, they might perform poorly, because the testing context does not include pain. What’s learned or consolidated under pain (or any other pathophysiological state) is what’s best recalled under pain.
    It’s a mystery though, because we know that new memory formation and its consolidation involve new protein synthesis in the cortical association areas. So that might explain why some antibiotics, which hinder bacteria from forming a cell wall [by inhibiting protein synthesis] also inhibit the transfer of short term to long term memories.

    Adam Bogart
    It is still a hot topic today, Miguel, as you can see from the 2007 review article I coauthored at Kent State. Behavioral Neuroscientists and Biological Psychologists have now embraced molecular biology to assist in explaining basic phenomena in learning and memory. One big problem is that whatever is given to destroy proteins necessary for long term memory synthesis does indeed induce a retrograde amnesia, but the forgotten memory can always be recovered under the right conditions. This suggests a number of possibilities, one such being that memories are never truly lost, but simply rendered inaccessible.
    Other intriguing findings include microscopic observation of a living bacterium in a state of photo or chemotaxis. Despite that it is a single cell with no nervous system whatsoever; it seems to remember prior areas where food was, and avoid areas that previously were harmful.

    Adam Bogart
    Whether a person accepts evolution or not, these problems do not need to consider it to be solved. Also, on a micro level, almost everybody does accept evolution. It is on the macro level that people disagree.

    Bruce Bare
    I do believe that all the factors mentioned (natural selection and adaptation leading to evolution, as well as intelligent design) have a role in our makeup. The one thing I think everyone skirts around without addressing directly is our soul, if you want to point to the one catalyst that leads to what Luke refers to as `immeasurably insane’ it is the conflict between the soul (the holy spirit) and the animalistic instincts that drive us. We constantly struggle with the primal instincts and what we deeply feel is morally and ethically right. This schism is exacerbated when we deny the source of this morality or the intended meaning of our existence. This is more of a philosophical than a scientific comment.

    Miguel Faria
    Bruce Bare I address those issues in the book (Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics)!

    Bruce Bare
    Miguel Faria I think that is the only one I haven’t read.

    Adam Bogart
    Bruce Bare This is an interesting issue, because of the ideological implications. To go slightly off on a tangent, atheists constantly mock the Abrahamic religions because they think believers need a God that will punish us if we act wrongfully towards another. Whereas, atheists don’t have a God, so they do not act morally out of fear of punishment. They are moral people because they want to be. I find this sentiment exceedingly ignorant. First of all, who says that theists only act morally because they fear God’s wrath if they don’t? Additionally, where did atheist morality originally come from? Obviously, from the Scriptures, and it doesn’t matter if they believe in God or not. At some distant point in time, notions of how you should treat your fellow human beings were written into the Old Testament, and these are what atheists are following today (or so they claim), whether they believe in God or not. Lastly, I personally do not find many atheists to be particularly moral people, anyway. Much of what they consider moral are merely twisted ideologies originating from the left.

  2. For some time I have felt that Western civilization has been under siege by unwitting friend and deliberate foe alike, and that to survive it needed a concerted defense. So, I felt I needed not only to explain myself to my friends but also specifically rebut those aspersions directed against Western mores. Although there is always a bit of truth in such assertions, there was also a lot of mendacity — another side to the story that was no longer taught in our unidirectional public school system distorting history. Today both the educational system and the popular culture engender and propagandize multiculturalism, diversity, and emphasize the alleged evils of Western culture, and at its center, the much-maligned Catholic Church. And so this apologia unfolded. Unless otherwise stated I was the “champion” of the conservative cause to some and the “apologist” to others, depending on the reader’s political perspective. I hope to re-educate those who have at least kept an open mind, despite the barrage of cultural indoctrination denigrating our Western legacy that we have been subjected to over the last several decades… As to the popular culture, the anti-religion bias, particular anti-Catholic propaganda, is exhaustive. Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a Protestant minister, or (even more rare) a Catholic priest depicted as doing a good deed or even being a good Christian?

    Yet, while the brilliant popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, may have made good cases in support of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, the present popularity-seeking Pope Francis I, is a good example that the doctrine not always stands. Yes, we must admit the Catholic Church has committed errors in the past. And yet on the balance sheet of actions, the Catholic Church has done much more good than evil. Those “monuments,” those Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages (such as Notre Dame in Paris) and the Renaissance (such as St. Peters in Rome), those marvels of Western civilization are true monuments and symbols of the Western intellectual tradition. The way they came about is not the way we have been led to believe. Gothic cathedrals were built by professional guilds, the first such specialized trade guilds in the Western world. No slaves or serfs worked in building those cathedrals. Laborers were well paid and if hurt on the job, were taken care of by the guilds, e.g., carpentry, masonry, etc., they belonged to. Guilds even arranged for the funerals of their members and families…. — Dr. Miguel Faria, Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023), Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. https://haciendapublishing.com/a-defense-of-western…/
    ,

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top