Kelley Walker wrote:
>
> At 10:14 AM 5/11/01 -0400, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> > However, KPFK, WBAI
> >and other 'alternative' stations thrive on feeding newage health witchcraft
> >to their post-yuppie audiences, and that witchcraft often involves
> >conventional medicine bashing.
> >
> >wojtek
>
> would you mind coming up with some evidence to back up this claim? do their
> reports on these matters really come down on the side of newage healthcare?
> got any transcipts? content analysis research?
>
> i'd say you ought to read up on the sociology of the medical profession
> because incompetence and arrogance is nurtured by medical training, itself.
> and, moreover, the very structure of medical practice--with its extreme
> specialization--is part of the problem.
>
> kelley
Lenin remarked that anarchism is the price the working class pays for its sins of opportunism. "New Age Medicine" and other cult medical theories are the price that _we_ rather than the medical profession itself pay for the profession's sins.
As long as even the best medicine can not handle some conditions there will be a material base for quackery of various kinds, but free medical care (National Health Service) plus reform of the medical profession would reduce that margin for quackery. It would be interesting to study how much medical cultism exists in Cuba.
One source that can't be quantified of medically caused illness is the reluctance and/or inability of so many physicians to communicate decently to their patients. That kind of failure (spread over a decade on the part of several different physicians) probably hastened at least my first wife's death. Perhaps a positive example of successful communication will clarify.
My orthopedic surgeon included driving in a list of no-nos after I broke my wrist. (In an area without public transportation !!!!!) When my wrist began to improve and driving seemed less obviously infeasible, she made the point that the danger was not in an accident but in the tremendous forces unleashed by abrupt stops in an auto. And no one drives for very long with an abrupt stop or two or ten. Perhaps some patients would have gone ahead and driven anyhow, but at least she had made clear the technical basis of the advice. Or perhaps women as physcians/surgeons tend to be more communicative.
Carrol