I am no more naive about being a doctor than naturalists are about herbal medicine. I believe in what doctors do, and the work they put into their careers and what they go through. And I'll be the first to tell you I've had some awesome horror stories with doctors nearly killing my mother with one-tracked thinking.
With that said, I'm not naive to say that doctors have to really want to be doctors. If people go in it for the money, it's because money is that strong of a motivator. The profession is a hard one, and 9 out of 10 doctors right now do Not recommend young people go to medical school because of the work load and craziness.
Yeah, they have to be good at taking tests. But they have to be good at a LOT of things to make those tests happen. Medical school is the first step. You spend years and years working under the supervision of other doctors to become a great one.
I'm doing the barney version of medical school right now with nursing school. And Yeah, some of those girs SUCK at their job in reality and are great at tests. But those girls also will gain that experience with time and effort. No one starts out great at their jobs. And you can't expect an entire population to be stellar. It's not naive, however, to say OVERALL doctors are not money-hungry lazy test-takers that can't think outside the box. That is just as naive, and a lot less founded in actual experience.
First. A dentist is not a doctor. It's a god damn dentist. And second, your sister got your sister hooked on pain pills. I don't think that dentist was exactly forcing those down her throat. She could have decided to stop those at any time. I don't see what any of that has to do with the fact that I think people are giving doctors and modern medicine an unnecessary bad rep lately with not a whole lot of evidence backing it up, and that I think people are trying to take modern medicine 2 steps backwards with their hippy bullshit.
I'm almost positive somewhere in this thread I mentioned bad doctors definitely exist, so I don't see why you think I'm thinking doctors are all magical life-making machines of salvation. I just think that the stuff they do wrong makes more sense than hippies going bananas over vaccines because a celebrity thinks they're not cool. That hippy shit tends to catch fire like crazy with the internet, and before you know it, people are doing unsanitary and stupid things in the name of being 'natural' and pretending they're not super hypocritical the whole way home.