Farrelly Colin
Political Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6.
R Soc Open Sci. 2024 Jan 31;11(1):231102. doi: 10.1098/rsos.231102. eCollection 2024 Jan.
On 5 May 2023, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern. Medical science must now consider how it ought to recalibrate its imagination and idealism in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world. The fact that was the largest risk factor for COVID-19 mortality and serious illness, as well as for the most prevalent chronic diseases, reveals the urgency and significance of shifting the focus from mitigating each specific pathology risk, one at a time, to targeting biological ageing itself. In his 1910 JAMA Address entitled 'Imagination and Idealism in the Medical Sciences', Christian Herter made an important distinction between two ways imagination and idealism can be invoked in the medical sciences: (i) humanitarian medicine, which emphasizes the obvious and direct paths of ameliorating human suffering; and (ii) a curiosity-oriented approach which explores pure science and the experimental laboratory. The latter examines the indirect ways of winning, in Herter's words, 'the citadel' of health promotion. Herter's reflections on these two contrasting approaches to medicine have significance for both the COVID-19 pandemic and the aspiration to promote the ideal of healthy ageing in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.
2023年5月5日，世界卫生组织宣布新冠疫情不再构成“国际关注的突发公共卫生事件”。如今，医学领域必须思考在新冠疫情后的世界中，应如何重新调整其想象力和理想主义。年龄是新冠病毒导致死亡、引发重症以及大多数常见慢性病的最大风险因素，这一事实凸显了将关注点从逐个减轻每种特定病理风险，转向针对生物衰老本身的紧迫性和重要性。在1910年发表于《美国医学会杂志》的题为《医学科学中的想象力与理想主义》的演讲中，克里斯蒂安·赫特对医学科学中运用想象力和理想主义的两种方式做出了重要区分：（i）人道主义医学，强调缓解人类痛苦的直接途径；（ii）以好奇心为导向的方法，探索纯科学和实验实验室。用赫特的话说，后者研究的是赢得健康促进“堡垒”的间接方式。赫特对这两种截然不同的医学方法的思考，对新冠疫情以及后疫情时代促进健康老龄化理想的追求都具有重要意义。
