Take X pill to solve Y, but side effect(s) are Z.
Your best bet in life now is to invest in your health early. It's a compounding effect. Walk regularly. Exercise. Eat healthy (mostly vegetables, fruit, reduce animal products). Sleep well.
People have been taking medicines for mellenia, and pills are just medicine that has been measured and packaged in a convenient way. Its the difference between telling patients "Go find a willow tree and eat some of its bark" vs. "take two aspirin".
I just feel like they are a disappointing "solution" to a yet fully understood problem. I'm hopeful that we (humanity) continue to invest in real cures, rather than treatments that often come with side effects.
It's entirely possible that some diseases will be cured by pills, as they are just a delivery mechanism for medicine (and I would like to reiterate they are pretty great at that).
To your main point about treating symptoms vs. creating cures, yes its pretty unfortunate. But most likely, we will be finding cures for diseases one at a time, and there will always be conditions where we can only treat the symptoms.
Big Mac and Big Farm love you ;-)
I’m pretty sure we have a pill to stop you from worrying so much about that problem.
Until then, I'll happily take my ibuprofen pill instead of wondering where my life went wrong so that I now have fever and am in pain.
It's a really hard problem, in all sorts of ways. We're still at a very preliminary phase of that research. But that'll really help with the "side effect" problem.
Your best bet in life now is to invest in your health early. It's a compounding effect. Walk regularly. Exercise. Eat healthy (mostly vegetables, fruit, reduce animal products). Sleep well.
Why not both?