A new wrinkle

I have a creeping suspicion that the healthcare industry secretly prays all the time for human beings to have a long life, for some very good economic reason, as it finds a highly lucrative business o

I have a creeping suspicion that the healthcare industry secretly prays all the time for human beings to have a long life, for some very good economic reason, as it finds a highly lucrative business opportunity in geriatric medicine. Perhaps, the very survival of the medical care ecosystem is, to a large extent, based on this hypothesis.

A little before SARS-COV-2 started spreading its wings in India, I accidentally discovered that my vision in one eye was not what it used to be. Being in my mid-seventies, I suspected that it could be cataract. A visit to a specialist revealed that it was something else, and a test, with hospitalisation, was prescribed. However, the ensuing lockdown made me defer it for more than a year. Next visit to the doctor, egged on by a doctor relative, revealed that the story was something very different. It was diagnosed as age-related macular degeneration, or ARMD. It required injecting a “life-saving” drug into the retina.