They only want your money

I heard an advertisement over the radio the other day enticing its listeners to visit their medical centre which they boast of being a forerunner in the field of preventive medicine. The ad cajoled further by by highlighting the fact that prevention is better than cure. Yeah, sounds quite novel and logical but why am I not convinced?

You want to prevent lung cancer and other respiratory ailments, refrain from inhaling those noxious tobacco and industrial fumes. Afraid of looking like Sivaji in 'Vasantha Maaligai' , jaundiced and all, drink modestly to keep liver diseases at bay. Avert life style diseases, embrace healthy styles! Sound easy and logical enough.
But why is it that I am not convinced when a business person tells me that? Why do I feel that you just want to make a sick person out of me to tell me that I have this and that? I will be more worried of a disease that I may have a condition which may not bring me down and may earn me a label. Thanks to your zillion screening procedures that you extend to a zillion healthy individuals in the hope of finding a zillionth chance picking out an abnormality which is turn would demand more test and more test until you drain me dry financially and drive me blind flabbergasted with statistically bombastic jargon and predictive values. And put me at risk of risking my life through your tests but cover your posterior by asking me to agree to it anyway, under duress, by telling me that it is a simple procedure but I may die but I still want it and I know the complications and consequences. If you do not find me a physical ailment in my apparently care free life, I may need to congratulate you of your possible success of driving me into one but of the loony bin type!
You may tell me that the frequency of my nocturnal thrust which is no concern to you but to my loved one alone is insufficient. You may show me that my urges fall in dangerously low centile of healthy living based on some obscure Sunset Boulevard kind of celluloid living and prescribe me this and that. You will say that my medications may interact with the new medication that you are about to prescribe (which I may need in the first place), and tell me that I would need a more expensive medications.

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