If they aren't there to give information about staying healthy, what are physicians there for?

A perplexing question, until one considers what a tough job they really have.

We've already pointed out that AIDS patients are taking enormous amounts of chemicals, on the advice of their physician, in pursuit of health. But simply getting all those chemicals into their patients' mouths is the last of their worries. Physicians have to figure out which is more healthy, three drugs, or maybe justtwo drugs. Hell, it could be four, five, or even six drugs that cause health to happen. What's a few more pills, anyway? Good health is very complex.

When you're dumping that many pills every day into someone's mouth, may as well err on the side of too much health than too little.

The fact that the new drugs are showing increasing signs of serious toxicity in those who take them is really the least of the physicians' worries. It is trouble enough just keeping up with all the drug interactions. And of course, we are completely confidant that all the physicians who are prescribing them are aware of the interactions, aren't we?

In such a high-skilled and demanding position as a modern AIDS physicians, who has time to think about toxicities?

Even given that this amazing little defective virus is able to hide from the new drugs, why on earth should physicians do anything other than, well, just keep pouring the drugs in? By the same logic, just because 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5 doesn't mean that, if you just add them together enough, 2 + 2 will never equal 5.

Physicians don't give advice about health because that isn't their job. Their job is to dispense pharmaceuticals. The only "health" that is relevant is that which might attach itself, however fleetingly, to the drugs dispensed. And it is not just AIDS patients who die as a consequence of this myopathy; they just feel the consequences sooner.