Closed-door medicine VS Health 2.0: guess who wins...

I'm back in France for a short while... It's cold here, while we've had a few drought episodes in New-Zealand (until yesterday actually... Don't forget it's summertime for us lucky Kiwis...). I've just had a meeting with French physicians, most of them are liberal doctors in a couple of posh parisian suburbs (not the rioters' suburbs)... Some of them are retired surgeons. The vast majority of their children (young adults) have landed their (supposedly) dream job with Dior or Big Pharma... Yet all those priviledged MD's (all in their mid-fifties, some of them retired) kept complaining about virtually everything and everybody in France: our politicians, our health system, the people, the economics, etc. Everything has gone to the dogs... Former President Chirac used to be a communist, many people are communists in France, we'll soon get a Moslem President, while every fifth student will be the victim of an education in catastrophic decline... And so on and on and on...

Then I turned to these guys (no women at all in the assembly...) and said: "Yeah, sure, couldn't agree more, that's why I left the country some time ago... Yet I'd like to ask you something. You sound pretty much like a tenant who is about to leave the apartment (or flat) he's stayed in for decades... and keeps complaining that the flat's not as beautiful and enjoyable as it used to be in the first place... There's moisture in the bathroom on the walls, smoke eaters and grease filters in all the rooms (especially in the kitchen, where grease filters are full and can hold no more) are no longer doing their job (did anybody ever clean one of them in the first place?); from the old style parquet, only one thing remains: it's old... It looks old, it smells old, it feels old... and so do the carpet and the various rugs... "As for the plumbing, well, don't get me started on that!", says the infuriated tenant... who keeps blaming all these calamities on the landlord... just like you, a smart bunch of Physicians, keep blaming everything on our politicians... So here's my question, guys: what did you do to prevent this from happening? Ever felt like you were in charge of the maintenance and repair of your apartment? My point being: don't we get the politicians and the journalists we deserve? (Physicians love to say: "Oh, our journalists do suck, all of them, no exception!")...

Would you like to hear about the conclusion of that meeting? I said I didn't feel responsible for all this... since, unlike them, I haven't been the lucky tenant of that once posh apartment for decades...

Oh, by the way, did you know that with a 3D printer, you can print humble garden gnomes? (read here).