>'Alternative' medicine in my experience largely fails to break from
>many of bad things about medicine under capitalism - the authoritarian
>position of the practitioner,
Who is often deified, invested with mystical healing capacities.
> the focus on symptoms (even if the
>symptoms are broadened into the 'lifestyle' catagory)
I once saw a list of symptoms of "yeast infection," which was an obsession of the alternacrowd a few years ago. It included things like sleeplessness, restlessness, digestive complaints, difficulty concentrating - in other words, classic somatized symptoms of anxiety and depression. Now either the purveyors of these diagnoses - who are usually purveyors of a cure, too - know this, in which case they're frauds, or they don't, in which case they're frauds of a different kind.
My father visited some quack sidekick of Gary Null's for his arthritis. The quack discovered that he was infected with cytomegalovirus. Something like 2/3 of adults carry CMV. But the quack prescribed a round of intravenous vitamin C at $100 a pop (for what must have been pennies worth of vitamin and saline). Thankfully, my father told the guy to get lost, though I'm sure that's an uncommon reaction.
Doug