This interesting Lawrence Altman/NY Times article examines the theory that that an undiagnosed melanoma contributed to the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevent in 1945.

Of course, regular readers of this blog know that another killer disease — the dire implications of which were not well-known in 1945 — was probably the main cause of FDR’s death.

But despite the historical curiosity, the most important point to glean from FDR’s demise is the importance of continued investment in clinical and scientific research.

We sometimes forget that it was the generation of doctors and researchers who came of age after World War II who embraced the optimistic view of therapeutic intervention in the practice of medicine, which was a fundamental change from the sense of therapeutic powerlessness that was taught to these men by their pre-WWII professors. In short, it has not been that long since medical science has understood that it could cure disease and prolong life.

For example, if FDR’s doctors had known in 1945 what specialists in hypertension discovered in the two following decades, then those doctors would never have allowed FDR to be subjected to the stress of the Yalta Conference that doomed Eastern Europe to almost 50 years of totalitarianism and economic deprivation.

Stated simply, earlier discovery of the research into the implications of hypertension could well have changed the course of human history.

In fact, we all tend to under-appreciate the advancements in medicine since World War II. For male babies born in the U.S. in 1960, the life expectancy was about 66.5 years and for female babies a tad over 73 years. By 2005, the live expectancies had increased to over 75 and 80 years respectively. Although medical advances don’t account for all of those gains, newly-discovered drugs and medical devices — as well as enhanced understanding of disease — have had an enormous impact on improving the quality of life of most Americans.

Thus, as Congress considers reforming the U.S. health care finance system, it is important for citizens to understand that American medical care and research remains the hope of the world. The current health care finance system has generated enormous investment in that medical innovation, which has been a crucial and treasured export of America to the rest of the world.

Let’s think hard before radically changing a system that generated the investment that produced those benefits for us and the rest of the world.