The Monster Called Diagnosis
- Madhukar Dama
- 11 hours ago
- 9 min read
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Prologue
Hospitals were once places of healing, born from compassion and necessity. Diagnosis was once a tool, meant to help the sick find clarity and relief. But slowly, quietly, and then with a roar, it changed. Today, diagnosis has outgrown its purpose—it has become an industry, a business, a monster that feeds not on illness, but on fear. Every scan, every blood test, every “full-body checkup” is less about saving lives and more about creating customers. Behind the white coats and gleaming machines hides an empire that thrives on uncertainty, preying on ordinary families who only want peace of mind. And in this empire, the patient is never healed—only harvested.
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The Trap Begins at Home
Rajesh, 38, works in IT in Pune. His wife Meena, 35, is a schoolteacher. Life is busy but smooth—until Rajesh’s company announces a “Free Master Health Check-up.”
They go on a Sunday morning. Blood is drawn, scans are done, reports are neatly packed in glossy folders.
Rajesh is told his cholesterol is “slightly high.”
Meena is told she has “vitamin D deficiency” and “pre-diabetes.”
They leave the hospital anxious: Are we already sick?
This is the entry point of the diagnostic business—turning healthy people into patients.
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How the Business Works
1. The Package Hook
Hospitals market “Gold” and “Platinum” health checkups—30, 40, even 80 tests bundled for healthy people. Almost everyone who takes them comes out with a few “abnormal” values. Those numbers become hooks to pull patients back for medicines, supplements, and repeat tests.
Rajesh is asked to return in six months for repeat lipid tests. Meena is asked to start diet plans and supplements. Neither was actually sick.
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2. Redefining Normal
“Pre-diabetes.” “Pre-hypertension.” Slightly low vitamins. Ordinary variations are rebranded as illness. Every time medical societies shift the cut-offs, millions of healthy Indians become patients overnight.
Meena remembers her father, who lived till 80 without ever hearing the word “pre-diabetes.” Now she, at 35, is carrying a patient label.
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3. Incidental Findings – The Nodule Game
Modern scans are powerful. They see too much. A harmless nodule on the kidney or thyroid is labelled “suspicious.” Fear sets in. Follow-up scans, biopsies, and sometimes surgeries follow.
Rajesh’s mild back pain led to an MRI. The scan found a tiny kidney spot. Panic. Months of repeat scans and a biopsy later, it turned out harmless. The hospital made lakhs. Rajesh was left with debt and scars.
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4. Fear as a Sales Tool
“What if it’s cancer?” “Better safe than sorry.” Fear is the sharpest weapon. Once the word “cancer” enters the room, patients rarely refuse.
Kavita, Meena’s friend in Nagpur, had her thyroid removed after a camp labelled it “suspicious.” Later, the biopsy showed it was harmless. Now she takes thyroid tablets for life.
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5. Kickbacks and Commissions
In many towns, labs pay doctors for referrals. Regulators ban it, but it survives in shadows.
In Indore, Dr. Sharma refers all cough patients to one X-ray lab. He gets his cut. The patient pays twice—once in money, once in lost trust.
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6. Manufacturing Epidemics
When more people are screened, more disease is “found.” In Kerala, thyroid screening camps suddenly “discovered” thousands of new thyroid cancers. But death rates never changed. Harmless lumps were simply being labelled as cancer.
The epidemic existed only on paper—created by machines, not reality.
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Why the Monster Keeps Growing
Money talks: Hospitals must keep expensive scanners running. Labs earn per test. More volume, more profit.
Fear rules: Patients fear missing disease; doctors fear being blamed. Over-testing feels “safe.”
Culture believes: Indians are told more testing means better care. It becomes a symbol of “responsibility.”
Harm hides: False alarms, surgeries, and pills for life are scattered across millions of people. The system never gets blamed.
Everyone is feeding the monster. Everyone is trapped by it.
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The Real Cost
Money lost: Families spend thousands chasing shadows.
Peace lost: Healthy people live for years thinking they are sick.
Health lost: Unnecessary surgeries, tablets for life, scars from biopsies.
Trust lost: Patients don’t know if doctors are healers or businessmen.
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How You Can Protect Yourself
This system won’t collapse tomorrow. But you can protect yourself.
Before any test, ask:
1. Will this test really change my treatment today?
2. What happens if I don’t do it now?
3. If it shows something abnormal, am I ready for the next step (biopsy, surgery)?
If the answer is unclear—or if the reason is just “to be safe”—pause.
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Red Flags to Watch Out For
“Master” or “Platinum” health packages for everyone.
Doctors who get irritated when you ask “Why this test?”
Labs tied to clinics that always find something wrong.
Sudden discovery of “pre” diseases in young, healthy people.
Fear-based talk: “What if this is cancer?”
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The Quiet Rebellion
Rajesh and Meena are wiser now. They still visit doctors when needed. They still respect medicine. But they no longer say yes blindly. They ask questions. They refuse unnecessary packages. They understand that health is not in glossy folders of lab reports—it is in how they live, eat, move, rest, and connect.
That quiet refusal, multiplied across millions of Indians, is the only way this monster will shrink.
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✅ Bottom line: Diagnosis is a lamp when used wisely, but a trap when misused. Don’t let machines and packages define your health. Your body, your story, and your choices matter more than any abnormal number on a report.
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Epilogue
The monster of diagnosis will not vanish tomorrow. It is too deeply rooted—in hospitals that must run their machines, in doctors who fear missing disease, in companies that profit from every number that looks “abnormal.” But monsters survive only when we feed them. Each unnecessary test we accept, each label we wear without question, each fear-driven choice we make—these are its meals.
The quiet rebellion begins when we pause, when we ask, when we refuse to be reduced to a report. True health is not printed in lab values but lived in how we eat, move, rest, and love. When families like Rajesh and Meena step out of the line, when they choose awareness over fear, the monster shrinks a little. And with every such choice, the business of diagnosis returns to what it should have always been—a servant to healing, not a master of our lives.
The Silent Trap: A Family Learns the Truth of Diagnosis With Madhukar
The family arrives at Madhukar’s forest home. It is quiet, green, and far from the hum of hospitals. They carry their folders of reports, thick with numbers and jargon.
Father (Rajesh): Doctor, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Every report says something different. Cholesterol high, sugar borderline, vitamin low… Am I really sick, or am I just being scared into it?
Madhukar (smiling): You are not sick, Rajesh. You are simply caught. Caught in a net that was never meant for fish like you.
Mother (Meena): But the reports—look, this says “pre-diabetes.” Isn’t that dangerous?
Madhukar: Let me ask you something. Did you feel unwell before this report?
Meena: No… I was fine.
Madhukar: That’s the first layer. Reports create illness even when the body does not. Numbers on a paper can make a healthy person feel like a patient. It is the easiest way to create business—by redefining health itself.
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Son (Arjun, 14): But why would hospitals do that? Aren’t they supposed to help?
Madhukar (gently): Arjun, hospitals are like giant machines. They are built of glass, steel, and debt. When a hospital buys an MRI scanner for 15 crores, do you think they let it sit idle? No. Every patient who walks in must pass through it, whether needed or not. That is the second layer. Machines must eat, and they eat patients.
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Grandmother (Amma): But in our days, we only went to the doctor when we were really sick. Why has everything changed?
Madhukar: Because fear changed. Earlier, people feared disease itself. Now, they fear missing a disease. The industry learned this and began whispering: “What if you don’t check and it is cancer?” That whisper is powerful. It silences all common sense. That is the third layer. Fear sells more than medicine.
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Father (Rajesh): But surely the doctors know better? Why would they order unnecessary tests?
Madhukar: Some do it knowingly—for money, for commissions from labs. That is crude, but it exists. Others do it for safety—their own safety. A missed diagnosis can end their career. So they order every test, just in case. That is the fourth layer. The doctor protects himself first, and you pay for it.
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Mother (Meena): And what about these health packages? My school insists we take a full-body checkup every year.
Madhukar: Ah, the grand annual harvest. Packages are built not to heal, but to hook. Ten, twenty, fifty tests bundled together. Almost every person comes out with at least two “abnormal” numbers. Not dangerous, not meaningful—but enough to bring you back. That is the fifth layer. The package is not a shield, it is a net.
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Son (Arjun): But isn’t early detection good? I read that it saves lives.
Madhukar: Sometimes. When used wisely, for the right disease in the right person. But early detection also creates epidemics that don’t exist. Look at thyroid cancer in Kerala—thousands “diagnosed” after screening, yet deaths never rose. That is the sixth layer. Machines create epidemics where nature did not.
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Grandmother (Amma): So what should we do? Refuse all tests?
Madhukar (leaning forward): No, Amma. Not refuse. Choose. Use tests like a torch in the dark, not like a floodlight that blinds you.
Ask:
Will this test really change my treatment?
What happens if I don’t do it?
Am I ready for the next step if it turns positive?
Most of the time, silence and watchfulness are safer than panic.
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Father (Rajesh, softly): So the monster is not in me. It is around me.
Madhukar (smiling): Exactly. Diagnosis is not always about you. It is about systems, money, fear, machines, and definitions. When you understand that, the monster shrinks.
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The family sits quietly. The forest hums. Their folders of reports feel lighter now, almost unnecessary.
Madhukar (closing words): Remember—health is not printed on paper. It is lived in the body, in food, in rest, in breath, in love. Do not hand over your life to numbers. Do not feed the monster.
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✨ This dialogue is layered—each family member represents a different angle: confusion, obedience, curiosity, tradition. Madhukar gently pulls back layer after layer: reports, machines, fear, doctors, packages, epidemics—until the truth is bare.
The Monster Called Diagnosis
it doesn’t knock at your door,
it doesn’t come wearing a mask of fever or pain.
it comes quietly,
like a polite clerk in a white coat
offering you a leaflet — “full body checkup, sir?”
as if health were a coupon you could redeem,
as if life were a sale at the supermarket.
you were fine that morning,
your tea tasted the same,
your breath carried no weight,
your legs walked without complaint.
but by evening
you held a folder of numbers,
and those numbers whispered:
borderline, abnormal, suspicious.
suddenly you were no longer a man,
you were a liver enzyme,
a cholesterol ratio,
a shadow on a scan
that even the doctor squinted at,
half unsure,
half hoping to find something
because something
always pays better than nothing.
the monster is not a beast with claws.
it is a scanner in the basement of a hospital,
a machine that cost 15 crores
and must eat every day.
it is a lab technician hungry for samples,
a hospital boardroom counting
how many “packages” sold this quarter.
it is the whisper of fear—
what if? what if? what if?
and you, nodding,
signing the form,
rolling up your sleeve,
becoming dinner.
i have seen Rajesh,
a clerk from Pune,
sent for an MRI
because of a headache
that was only bad lighting.
i have seen Meena,
a schoolteacher,
told she has “pre-diabetes”
though her laughter was stronger
than any pill.
i have seen Amma,
the grandmother,
sent for a bone scan
when all she needed
was sunlight and a walk.
this is how the monster feeds:
with fear, with commissions,
with words like screening and preventive,
with the genius of making
healthy people believe
they are ticking bombs.
they call it early detection.
i call it
digging graves in advance.
because once you begin
living by the numbers,
you never stop.
every test breeds another,
every abnormality another opinion,
every opinion another drug,
every drug another side effect.
the cycle spins
and your peace of mind
is billed by the hour.
the monster doesn’t roar.
it hums in fluorescent lights,
in the cold air of diagnostic rooms,
in the shuffle of slippers
in hospital corridors.
it wears the calm face of the doctor
who says, “just to be safe, we’ll do one more test.”
it never ends there.
it never ends.
and what is lost?
not only money.
money is paper.
what is lost
is the quietness of living.
the belief that your body
is more than a set of reports.
the freedom to laugh at pain,
to trust a night’s sleep,
to feel the sun on your skin
without wondering
if it is too much or too little.
the monster grows
because we feed it.
we feed it with panic,
with blind trust,
with our inability to say no.
we think:
better to check, better to know.
but the truth is:
sometimes not knowing
is the only way to stay sane,
sometimes not checking
is the bravest act of health.
you can starve the monster.
you can look it in the eye
and ask:
will this test really change my life,
or only my bills?
am i sick,
or am i just scared?
do i want numbers,
or do i want peace?
i write this not to condemn medicine.
medicine saves lives.
diagnosis saves lives.
but only when used with love,
with restraint,
with honesty.
the monster is not medicine itself.
it is greed dressed as care,
fear dressed as caution.
and it will not stop growing
until we stop feeding it.
so tonight,
close the folder of reports.
turn off the light of fear.
walk outside,
feel the earth under your feet.
listen to the silence in your chest.
it is telling you something
no machine can measure.
you are alive.
you are enough.
you are not a diagnosis.
