Complementarity caught my reading-eye in the attached article from David Hunter, for two distinct reasons.
Epidemiology-driven advances in public health (clean water, vaccines, rural electrification, better housing,….) are principally responsible for the sizable 20th C increase in life expectancy,…..not medical care and high-technology interventions. Maldistribution of evidence-based public health and basic medical care, not the need for ever-more sophisticated “therapies”, is responsible for health disparities. Dr. Hunter’s steady plea for deeper understanding of epidemiology and population health is timely,…..and his Geoffrey Rose quote is essential.
Examples – preventing gestational diabetes is wiser (best one-word I can think of) than advanced therapies for related neonatal anomalies and childhood obesity,…….HPV vaccination is wiser than developing ever-more expensive treatments for infections and cancer,……you are likely thinking of 37 more examples.
Complementarity also refers to the fundamental paradox of quantum physics – it seems incoherent to describe basic matter (electrons, photons, electromagnetic radiation) two completely distinct ways, i.e., as both particle and wave. Yet, both descriptions are true (hence Niels Bohr coined “complementarity”). Albert Einstein could never accept this “sidestep magic”,…..he could not agree that anything in Nature can be described by two mutually exclusive, rigorous methods. That is worth meditation.
Einstein and Bohr famously debated this for 30+ years until AE was found slumped over in his office working on an elusive unifying theory, dead from an aortic aneurysm. And NB at the time of his death had AE’s objections sketched on his office chalkboard. I love it, inspiring, steadfast.
If you are intrigued, just Google ‘single-slit experiment’ – the paradigm-blowing experiment of beaming photons through two slits to a detector panel. Particle and wave,..….yes.
The implications of this are greater than any single scientific finding in History,……just my opinion, could be wrong.
Joe Kaempf, MD
District VIII Oregon Representative
Portland, OR
Volume 13, Number 27