Progress hardly broke its stride

We have moved on

‘We have moved on’ (said doctor Knows Best)
didn’t you notice?!

Today we have targets, tooled by incentive,
and our patients are our numbered ‘partners’.
Betjeman has been realised:
not in poetry but in his warning.

We must ‘Release time to care’

Illness is our paradigm.
Though (of course) we only seek health!
But sadly, long since did guid Dr Osler ‘move on.’
and Today disorder is our norm.

‘Neuro-everything’ may seem necessary, but it is never sufficient –
unless we are no more than ‘our brains’.

And Peter’s principle is that –
evidence can help inform,
but cannot be sufficient amidst poverty of thought.

‘We have moved on’ and ‘we can be certain’
said Dr Knows best:
history is ‘irrelevant’ and our social world ‘unreal’.

‘We have moved on’ and ‘we can be certain’
of the boundary between ageing and illness.

And more certain still
that we are (indeed) (today) more humane.

Dr Knows Best you are a marvel!
A neuroscientific wonder.

and we have moved on . . .

The PROTOCOL.

The Protocol asks:
“What year is it now?”
“1984” I reply.
The machine stamps ‘Cognitive impairment ESTABLISHED:
and I fall down a dystopian Orwellian memory-hole.

The Protocol knows what’s best:
do not stray from the pathway
Evidentially (or not)

The Protocol has no need to consider
maleficence and Hippocrates’
but I am an oaf.

The Protocol has moved-on:
ageing is a thing of the past!
Patterns of pathology
have become
TODAY.

The Protocol is unstoppable in its progress.
“It is an all out fight”
our Prime minister confirms.
The metaphors
engaged
are indeed pathological.

The Protocol fights stigma! [The machine confirms].
And any ‘diseased Other’ has nothing to fear
from The Protocol.