User:Maudus~enwiki/Luc Perino

Luc Perino

Luc Perino, a French physician, born in 1947 in Toulon, France, is an essayist, and a novelist with a passion for poetry but is also known for his advocacy and promotion of general and clinical medicine (the specific part of medicine practiced by the patient‘s bed, kliné in Greek meaning bed). He practised in France, in rural areas where he was permanently in contact with the ongoing life problems of his patients. His career brought him in Central Africa where he, of course, practised tropical medicine but there also discovered the daily problems of the patients. He later lived in the south part of China for two years. Luc Perino has known the difficulties and joys of a practitioner and those of a physician working in a team in various hospitals in the world. In 1990, he resumed his practice in France and then started to teach clinical medicine and Human and Social Sciences at the University of Lyons, highlighting his classes with his broad experience. He also launched a very productive writer’s career. It is noteworthy that today he is an ardent debater on many questions which lie at the heart of our modern society. He likes to stir up controversy on those subjects. He defends an independent continuing education and sanitation training for physicians but also fights against the ignorance of people themselves whose education is crucial and whose accountability for their personal health has become of primordial importance. Briefly, Luc Perino is a philantropist, engaged in the promotion of a humane and responsible medicine, ever questioning the limits of the use of technology and fighting against the monopoly of the drug industry. He plays the medical doctor in the movie « The Consultation » shot in 2007 by Hélène de Crecy, a one hour and half documentary taking place behind closed doors in the office of a general practitioner.

Luc Perino is the author of several essays and novels the main topics of which are medicine and biology, anthropology and the history of Science :

- A quoi sert vraiment un médecin? « Of what Real Use is a Physician? » Perino speaks out directly asking fundamental questions : what are the physician’s priorities, whether to diagnose, to heal, or « produce » medicine, or else serve the drug industry. The author drives the reader through his considerations of the changes of medical practice : how to make the best out of technological progress for the benefit of the patient and in the same time protect this patient from its misuse ; how to find a compromise between the cost of the recent biomedical cures given to patients and the necessary balance of Public Health policies?

- La sagesse du médecin : « The Physician’s Wisdom » The practice of a medical doctor can be seen as an iniatory journey and a way to discover oneself and the world. Each case leaves the physician pondering over life and Luc PERINO shows through many examples how simple questions has led him to thinking far from what he had been taught at the Medical school.

- Une brève histoire du médicament : « A Short Story of Drugs » An essay about drugs and their history, ranging from the remote times of Homo Sapiens, when they resorted to magic and the divine to the new scientific market dominated by the invading and intrusive drug industry which influences the medical thinking and everyone’s behavior. - Humeurs médicales : « Medical Humours » The author plays on words : « humor » in French means moods and fluids. We all agree that the maintenance and promotion of health is at the core of today’s life. Luc PERINO, drawing from his experience, denounces with humor and knowledge, never with pedantry, the erring ways and absurd policies of the French medical system about major questions related to euthanasia, medical risk, cancer, pain, social security systems, the use of drugs and the drug industry, psychotherapies, the patient’s wanderings from one physician to the other, etc.

- Carnets de santé : « Medical Records » Luc Perino has chosen to comment twenty two patients’ records. He draws a very human portrait of each of them far from the medical picture which can be given by the description of their pains and illnesses. He looks at the whole patient : body, heart and soul and never ignores their pain and suffering. He tells the reader that it is the person in one’s wholeness who needs to be healed and cared for. In the end, he points out that it’s not only patient’s problems but society’s that must be looked at. These are serious problems but always dealt on a humorous, and light mood and even with a touch of poetry.

- Darwin viendra-t-il? « Will Darwin Come? » The setting is in Oxford, Saturday, June 30th 1860, a few months after the astonishing publication of Charles Darwin’s « The Origin of the Species ». The British Association of Sciences has set up a debate between the representatives of the Anglican Church and the Science Academy, both hostile to the natural selection theory promoted by Darwin. The author takes advantage of this debate to draw a gallery of portraits of Victorian scientists, religious and public figures.

- Le Bobologue : a neologism which could be translated as « Physician of scratches, sores and pains » With the third edition, this became a best seller where the author shows the true life of a clinical physician through vignettes from his abundant experience. Luc Perino describes true stories which are sad, funny, bizarre but which all took place during his thirty years of practice. He has a knack of describing happy alcoholics, old couples still in love, morally and physically wounded patients, poor and rich suffering from the same pains. Today the healing roles of a physician are multiple : psychiatrist, confessor, healer of many sores and wounds. In the end, the author is inclined to think that after 10.000 years a clinical physician is for his patients a shaman or a wizard. Though he seems very critical, one can see his tenderness towards the eccentricity of people.

- Ordosur (software) Perino, impressed by the increase of iatrogenic illnesses due to the multiplication of medical specialists and the multiplication of drugs, has conceived the first software of for the detection of interaction of drugs. Ordosur was one of the first integrated management software platform used by French medical surgeries and some medical insurance companies. It has been gradually replaced by other data banks and other software but has the merit of having pointed out the necessity to monitor the compatibility of the various prescriptions.