[Noseshine]

After taking a lot of medical courses just for fun, and a lot of neuroscience, I took a course "Introduction to Clinical Neurology" offered on Coursera that had some stringent exam conditions so that it would even count towards having taken an official course for practicing doctors as part of continuing education. I also took one on the same platform actually taught by African doctors about various parasites common in Africa, leishmaniasis was in it too. (Note: Can't link, after the reorg. of Coursera those free courses are not even available in archived form.)

So anyway, especially the neurology course was kind of depressing. Basically, apart from watching and treating a few symptoms, and maybe delaying symptoms (the main example being Parkinson's and brain implants), there is nothing that can be done.

Looking at the state of medicine I'm reminded of the movie "City of Ember" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970411/), where survivors of the nuclear apocalypse were placed in an underground city, and the movie starts a few hundred years later when their (1960s level) technology and especially their power plant starts falling apart after many, many repairs. The engineers there, with no access to make anything new, only the supply they were given at the beginning, are like doctors, and the machinery like human bodies. You start with what you are given and it all goes downhill from there, with more or less horrible kludges and hacks around arising problems along the way.