The Truth About Conventional Medicine and Science by Burton Goldberg
From: "Sherri-Lee Pressman"
Date: Mon Nov 29, 1999 3:13 am
Subject: The truth about conventional medicine and science
This article is written by Burton Goldberg of Alternative Medicine. I thought it
might interest some of you. I found it very eye opening
Sherri-Lee
The U.S. government has belatedly confirmed a fact that millions of Americans
have known personally for decades-acupuncture works. A 12-member panel of
medical "experts" recently informed the National Institutes of Health (NIH), its
sponsor, that acupuncture is "clearly effective" for treating certain
conditions, such as fibromyalgia, tennis elbow, pain following dental surgery,
nausea during pregnancy, and nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.
The panel was less persuaded that acupuncture is appropriate as the sole
treatment for headaches, asthma, addiction, menstrual cramps, and others.
The NIH panel reported that, in their view, "there are a number of cases" in
which acupuncture works. As the modality has fewer side effects and is less
invasive than conventional treatments, "it is time to take it seriously" and
"expand its use into conventional medicine."
The benefits of the NIH endorsement can be added to a favorable FDA ruling in
1996 that finally took acupuncture needles off the list of "experimental medical
devices." The combination of these two positive developments will likely usher
acupuncture into widespread insurance coverage and increasingly greater public
acceptance.
These developments are, naturally, welcome, and the field of alternative
medicine should, by rights, be pleased with this progressive step. However,
underlying the NIH's endorsement and qualified "legitimization" of acupuncture
is a deeper issue that must come to light. I refer to a presumption so deeply
ingrained in Western society as to be almost invisible to all but the most
discerning eyes. The presumption is that the "experts" of conventional medicine
are entitled and qualified to pass judgment on the scientific and therapeutic
merits of alternative medicine modalities. They are not.
The matter hinges on the definition and scope of the term "scientific." The
mainstream media is continually full of carping complaints by supposed medical
experts that alternative medicine is not "scientific" and not "proven." Yet we
never hear these experts take a moment out from their vituperations to examine
the tenets and assumptions of their cherished scientific method to see if they
are valid. They are not.
Medical historian Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D., author of the landmark four-volume
history of Western medicine called Divided Legacy, first alerted me to a
crucial, though unrecognized, distinction. The question we should ask is whether
conventional medicine is scientific. Dr. Coulter argues convincingly that it is
not.
Over the last 2,500 years, Western medicine has been divided by a powerful
schism between two opposed ways of looking at physiology, health, and healing,
says Dr. Coulter. What we now call conventional medicine (or allopathy) was once
known as Rationalist medicine; alternative medicine, in Dr. Coulter's history,
was called Empirical. Rationalist medicine is based on reason and prevailing
theory, while Empirical med-icine is based on observed facts and real life
experience-on what works.
Dr. Coulter makes some startling observations based on this distinction.
Conventional medicine is alien, both in spirit and structure, to the scientific
method of investigation, he says. Its concepts continually change with the
latest breakthrough. Yesterday, it was germ theory; today, it's genetics;
tomorrow, who knows?
With each changing fashion in medical thought, conventional medicine has to toss
away its now outmoded orthodoxy and impose the new one, until it gets changed
again. This is medicine based on abstract theory; the facts of the body must be
contorted to conform to these theories or dismissed as irrelevant.
Doctors of this persuasion accept a dogma on faith and impose it on their
patients, until it's proved wrong or dangerous by the next generation. They get
carried away by abstract ideas and forget the living patients. As a result, the
diagnosis is not directly connected to the remedy; the link is more a matter of
guesswork than science. This approach, says Dr. Coulter, is "inherently
imprecise, approximate, and unstable-it's a dogma of authority, not science."
Even if an approach hardly works
at all, it's kept on the books because the theory says it's good "science."
On the other hand, practitioners of Empirical, or alternative medicine, do their
homework: they study the individual patients; determine all the contributing
causes; note all the symptoms; and observe the results of treatment.
Homeopathy and Chinese medi-cine are prime examples of this approach. Both
modalities may be added to because physicians in these fields and other
alternative practices constantly seek new information based on their clinical
experience.
This is the meaning of empirical: it's based on experience, then continually
tested and refined-but not reinvented or discarded-through the doctor's daily
practice with actual patients. For this reason, homeopathic remedies don't
become outmoded; acupuncture treatment strategies don't become irrelevant.
Alternative medicine is proven every day in the clinical experience of
physicians and patients. It was proven ten years ago and will remain proven ten
years from now. According to Dr. Coulter, alternative medicine is more
scientific in the truest sense than West-ern, so-called scientific medicine.
Sadly, what we see far too often in conventional medicine is a drug or procedure
"proven" as effective and accepted by the FDA and other authoritative bodies
only to be revoked a few years later when it's been proven to be toxic,
malfunctioning, or deadly.
The conceit of conventional med-icine and its "science" is that substances and
procedures must pass the double-blind study to be proven effective. But is the
double-blind method the most appropriate way to be scientific about alternative
medicine? It is not.
The guidelines and boundaries of science must be revised to encompass the
clinical subtlety and complexity revealed by alternative medicine. As a testing
method, the double-blind study examines a single substance or procedure in
isolated, controlled conditions and measures results against an inactive or
empty procedure or substance (called a placebo) to be sure that no subjective
factors get in the way. The approach is based on the assumption that single
factors cause and reverse illness, and that these can be studied alone, out of
context and in isolation.
The double-blind study, although taken without critical examination to be the
gold standard of modern science, is actually misleading, even useless, when it
is used to study alternative medicine. We know that no single factor causes
anything nor is there a "magic bullet" capable of single-handedly reversing
conditions. Mult-iple factors contribute to the emergence of an illness and
multiple modalities must work together to produce healing.
Equally important is the understanding that this multiplicity of causes and
cures takes place in individual patients, no two of whom are alike in
psychology, family medical history, and biochemistry. Two men, both of whom are
35 and have similar flu symptoms, do not necessarily and automatically have the
same health condition, nor should they receive the same treatment. They might,
but you can't count on it.
The double-blind method is incapable of accommodating this degree of medical
complexity and variation, yet these are physiological facts of life. Any
approach claiming to be scientific which has to exclude this much empirical,
real-life data from its study is clearly not true science.
In a profound sense, the double-blind method cannot prove alternative med-icine
is effective because it is not scientific enough. It is not broad and subtle and
complex enough to encompass the clinical realities of alternative medicine. If
you depend on the double-blind study to validate alternative medicine, you will
end up doubly blind about the reality of medicine.
Listen carefully the next time you hear medical "experts" whining that a
substance or method has not been "scientifically" evaluated in a double-blind
study and is therefore not yet "proven" effective. They're just trying to
mislead and intimidate you. Ask them how much "scientific" proof underlies using
chemotherapy and radiation for cancer or angioplasty for heart disease. The fact
is, it's very little.
Try turning the situation around. Demand of the experts that they scientifically
prove the efficacy of some of their cash cows, such as chemotherapy and
radiation for cancer, angioplasty and bypass for heart disease, or
hysterectomies for uterine problems. The efficacy hasn't been proven because it
can't be proven.
There is no need whatsoever for practitioners and consumers of alternative
medicine to wait like supplicants with hat in hand for the scientific "experts"
of conventional medicine to dole out a few condescending scraps of official
approval for alternative approaches.
Rather, discerning citizens should be demanding of these experts that they prove
the science behind their medicine by demonstrating successful, nontoxic, and
affordable patient outcomes. If they can't, these approaches should be rejected
for being unscientific. After all, the proof is in the cure.
This article is written by Burton Goldberg of Alternative Medicine. I thought it
might interest some of you. I found it very eye opening
Sherri-Lee
www.aloeessence.com
Join our mailing list and learn about ozone therapy at: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/ozonetherapy