Holistic Medicine vs Quackery

Whilst habitually clearing out my inbox one day, during a post-waking pre-caffeinated state, I came across an forwarded email entitled "fringe medicine." I thought, odd, especially coming from a holistic doctor's mailing list.

Scrolling past the various replies, I read the first email, from someone I did not know, but was adamant about the public attack on the NZ medical council's newsletter. It went something like this:

"... the fear of death as a sequel to illness is a powerful and not always helpful emotion. In the cloud of serious illness, the unwell human believes any number of claims to 'cure'. Most patients simply do not have the training nor the knowledge to make valid judgements..."

Then the author started to list the ways in which doctors practising alternative therapies were turning against their training in logical, scientific rationality and embracing financial gain and satisfaction in making diagnoses and inventing treatments for many conditions that conventional medicine do not treat.

And simply concluded:

"... Fringe medicine has been around for a very long time. There was hope that the modern scientific method would rid us of dodgy practices. This has not happened. None-the-less a doctor’s role is clear. That role is to protect the patient from false claims and from futile or harmful treatments."

And so, the sentence is clear, any non-conventional doctor is a shady character of questionable ethical standing. Thus, by encouraging segregating and rejecting these people, the author is ultimately protecting masses of innocent unsuspecting patients.

Or so it seemed.

I have to agree with the fact that there are a lot of charlatans about, and in my experience there are a lot of well-meaning but somewhat ignorant therapists, and that there are also a number of skilled but incredibly poverty-stricken healers... but what about doctors?

"First do no harm" - first principle of medical ethics

We are trained to be cautious, to give promises only when based on solid fact or evidence. Diagnoses are made when certain criteria are reached. And if not, "subclinical" or "prodromal" or "viral" or "nonspecific" terms are used and no treatment can be commenced. The diagnostic train grinds to a halt, and the patient is offered a reassurance that it is nothing significant. Yet.

Somehow, preaching healthy lifestyle is not popular. But, selling a health-promoting substance is. If we cannot take a drug for it, then why not a tonic, or hope? Why try to change the unhealthy habit that caused it in the first place?

What a strange world we live in.

My grandmother is admitted to hospital again, while I look after other grandmas on the other side of the world. She was found drowsy at home and brought in for treatment. She had high blood pressure and, alas, traces of amphetamines in her blood. She is now recovered and spritely following various IV infusions and nasogastric feeding, the tonics of the medical world.

Amphetamines?! I gasped when I heard on the phone. How on earth does an elderly house-bound conservative Christian woman get hold of a street drug? And then mum added nonchalantly, "she is always taking some herbal remedy."

My mind spins. No wonder any alternative therapy is guarded against. And this is in tranquil New Zealand, where so far I have not heard of any immoral tainting of "herbs" with synthetic toxins. But already so much animosity in such a public domain.

It will be interesting to be doing a practicum with my mentor during the next period of time, when the group of complementary medical practitioners will be formulating their reply, hopefully with more integrity than reactivity, so that the air can be cleared once and for all.