Back when we were smug health science students at the UP Manila, we would snicker among ourselves whenever some bachelor of arts (BA) major became a college or university scholar.
“Ano ang course nung summa cum laude?”
“(Insert BA degree here).”
“Ah. Kaya naman pala lagi siyang uno. Nyahaha!”
On top of our inside jokes about “people who have plenty of time”, we would sit in those classes under the “Departamentong Sabik sa Singko”* wondering how on earth we were going to use those factoids about the Mesozoic era once we handle patients.
Now that I’m a clinician, I’ve realized that downplaying the humanities and the social sciences comes at a terrible price. That’s because while our science subjects taught us what is and some of the things that should be done in patient care, they couldn’t tell us other things that must be accomplished for non-empirical reasons. The latter belongs to the realm of the Department of Social Sciences. They are also the Department of Arts and Communication and the Department of Behavioral Sciences’ jurisdiction. Our limited understanding of these disciplines has led to the inhumane treatment of both patients and healthcare workers (HCWs).
The truth about clinical work is that medical professionals don’t always follow the science. If we did, the majority of our patients would be annihilated. The anime Monster’s main protagonist Dr. Kenzo Tenma epitomizes the unconditional love that should guide the application of scientific findings.
Tenma is a Japanese physician. He migrated to Germany, where he became one of the country’s top neurosurgeons. He saves lives because for him, all human beings are created equal. But according to natural selection, certain organisms are better at adapting to the environment than other organisms. The ones with superior traits will most likely survive and will produce even better organisms to ensure the species’ survival. Tenma therefore adheres to an unscientific principle in his surgical practice.
If we HCWs will follow only the science, then we shouldn’t cure the sick or rehabilitate persons with disabilities (PWDs). Our main focus should be on eliminating patients with difficult medical problems and enhancing the strengths of the more capable ones. After all, the latter will ensure mankind’s survival according to the theory of evolution. That’s exactly what the Nazi HCWs did. Yet we refuse to do that because we have non-scientific presuppositions from religion, ethics, and philosophy that point to every human being’s intrinsic worth. Because of their inherent value, we must save people to the best of our abilities regardless of their weaknesses. So science is not the sole authority on healthcare though it gives us a wealth of valuable information.
Moreover, HCWs are human. Even if we are informed by science, we also have hopes, emotions, biases, sins, and personal problems that influence our decisions. They can cloud our judgment and corrupt our scientific findings. We also work within systems that can bring either the best or the worst out of us. Piling up on more credentials will not change that fallen nature.
Dr. Tenma embodies that conflicted HCW. At the start of the anime, he plays hospital politics at the patients’ expense to attain renown. He is on his way up and has all the trappings of a good, successful physician...until he saves the helpless boy Johan against the hospital director’s order to operate on a powerful politician instead. Many years later, he meets Johan again. But this time, the boy he saved has become a mass murderer.
Guilt-ridden over unleashing a serial killer upon the world, Tenma decides that the only way that he can preserve human lives is to murder Johan. He becomes so consumed with killing the 20-year-old criminal that he refuses to eat, sleep, take a bath, and practice medicine in a legitimate health facility. Johan says to him towards the end of the anime, “Dr. Tenma, you said that all lives are equal. Now you know that all lives are equal only in death!”
The problem with Tenma before he met Johan was that he was a privileged nice guy: caring, gentle, timid, and conformist. A minor character suspected that Tenma became a physician largely because he was compelled by family members who were doctors. Moreover, Tenma was torn between loving solitude and yearning for the collective’s acceptance. He even got romantically involved with the hospital director’s daughter to secure a political advantage in the medical world.
Battling Johan was necessary for Tenma to see the evil in himself despite his reputation as a caring and excellent doctor. Discovering his shadow gave him a capacity for violence and a sense of superiority that he could’ve used to crush those who were beneath him. Instead, he used that newfound strength to protect the weak. That’s why he’s my favorite anime protagonist.
There’s a shadow that lurks within the heart of every HCW. Yet we also have the immense capacity for humility and unconditional love. May we HCWs be always informed by science while remaining captive to such virtues.
*a term coined by The Manila Collegian, specifically the writers of Lola Patola
(Photo by the National Cancer Institute)
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