Maoisin and Medicine

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The article Medicine for the Masses' in SP 59 is a useful attempt to illustrate the possibility of a new development of science under socialism; but whilst the central theme, that science, and culture generally are held back under capitalism is undeniable, there are two weaknesses in the article which deserve comment.

The first is the argument that workers have as much knowledge as trained bourgeois scientists. Thus "the ward cleaner observes the patients with as much perception and for longer than doctors" (my italics).

This is clearly nonsense. One of the problems of capitalism is that Synthesised insulin ERed Sea SAUDI ARABIA NORTH SOUTH YEMEN Aden ADJIBOUTI BERBERA ORIA OGADEN Greater Somalia knowledge is denied to the masses and science and medicine are mystified so as to make them.the preserve of the bourgeoisie.

Marxism is not the only form of science which is not thrown up spontaneously by the working class.

Secondly in using the example of the health service in China to illustrate one way In which a society based on the working class can incorporate the special experiences of workers into the body of scientific knowledge, and go on to use that knowledge in the interests of the masses, the article paints an uncritical picture of Chinese medicine.

The enormous progress made by the Chinese in the control of disease is undeniable. Much of this progress results from the teaching of the rudiments of medicine to selected peasants and since 1965 over a million "barefoot doctors" have been trained to use both traditional Chinese techniques, such as acupuncture, and Western drug therapies.

At the same time, mobile medical teams tour the countryside to treat those cases too difficult for the barefoot doctors.

One important aspect of the treatment is that there are no class barriers between the doctors and their patients and there is no mystification of medicine to frighten the patient and maintain the status of the doctor.

Simultaneously, an emphasis on preventative medicine has resulted in the control of diseases once common in the countryside. The use of political campaigns to fight disease carrying pests has been particularly successful.

For example, millions of disease carrying snails have been picked by hand and destroyed, and there have been similar campaigns against mosquitoes and flies.

But the use of such techniques as barefoot doctors and resorting to hand picking snails eradicate them reveal as much a weakness in Chinese technology they do a spirit of improvisation amongst the peasantry.

Leading the world in such prestige projects such as the synthesis of insulin, the Chinese economy is still not sufficiently advanced to provide insecticides on a large enough scale to control pests.

To state, as does the article in Socialist Press that the old ways are as good, if not better than the new alternative technological ways is to make a virtue out of necessity.

As such it closely parallels recent statements by our own medical specialists who, with the IMF at their backs, have discovered that high technology hospitals are not the best places to treat their patients after all.

They now tell us that ideally the sick should be cared for at home by their womenfolk. We may be forgiven for being cynical about such claims.

It is not surprising that as a result of this technological backwardness. the ideology of Chinese allowed to contend freely, and questions of right and wrong in science should be settled by discussion and through practical work.

This is a conscious rebuttal of Stalin's administrative solutions to scientific problems which became especially evident in his support for the peasant's son Lysenko, in his scientific arguments on genetics with the petty-bourgeois classical geneticists.

The deciding factor in this debate was that Lysenko's class background was impeccable, whilst his opponents had been opposed to the revolution!

The fact that Lysenko's theories were rubbish did not enter into it. It is a credit to Mao that on this issue at least, he disagreed with Stalin.

However, a glance through a copy of a Chinese scientific journal. such as the Chinese Medical Journal will reveal exactly the techniques used by Lysenko to discredit • his opponents in use today.

And many of these dwell on the contrast between the instinctive science of the masses and those of bourgeois science.

An article on snail control in the June 1976 issue for example, contrasts a technique devised by the peasantry with "foreign" techniques using pesticides.

The attempt to use foreign' techniques came about, apparently, through "the interference and sabotage of the revisionist line pushed by Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and their like" , and perhaps unsurprisingly in that light were unsuccessful.

The main fault of Liu Shao-chi in this case was in "denying the masses are the real heroes and putting their faith in foreign methods and specialists"

Trotskyists are all too familiar with Stalin's use of identical techniques in the fhirties to cover up the deficiencies of Soviet technology as a result of his own policies.

Under such conditions, the idea of a healthy 'proletarian' science is inconceivable.

As the article in Socialist Press points out, *the method of Marxism and the fight for development of medicine and all fields of science are inseparably linked."

This is as true of the development of science in a deformed workers state as it is of science under capitalism.

Fraternally, Dai Stephens.

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