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> "Science" takes place in the real world; it is carried on by real people
> who are motivated by greed for money, fame, or security as much as they
> are motivated by respect for truth. To shout "science" through a
> megaphone does not obviate these realities. You will argue that bad
> results will be disproved by other labs running similar tests, but
> that's not quite how it works. First of all, there is not always money
> to fund parallell research; second, a less prestigious lab will feel
> pressure to duplicate the results of a more prestigious lab; third, a
> lot of "research" is funded by drug companies who have vested interest
> in the outcome of experiments and in the interpretation of data. There
> have certainly been plenty of stories about data that has been
> suppressed and about people who have died as a result.
Good points all, but they suggest to me that one should treat any new medical doohickey (whether shark cartilage or Vioxx) with caution. I'm aware of pressure on doctors to throw the latest and greatest at their patients, but my blessedly limited interaction with the pharma industry has been marked with conservatism -- I got perscribed one of the older drugs on the market precisely because it had a track record.
Why should a treatment that hasn't even been considered by the FDA be treated differently?
There are other systems (ayurveda, Chinese medicine) that I'd be less demanding of since they've had some time to iron out the wrinkles. But that doesn't apply to some of the failures noted in the article Doug posted.
> I also have problems with the ideology of western science. To take two
> examples
>
> -- its drive to disarticulate the body and to treat one part as if it
> existed in isolation from the other parts (its lack of ecological sense
> and its dismissal of psychological factors follow from this approach).
I'm curious if there has been much discussion of the curative uses of the placebo effect, instead of throwing it out as experimental error.
But much of what falls under "alternative medicine" seems to take the same reductionist approach of medical research -- instead of pill X for your liver, take herb Y (ground up into easily oxidizable form in a capsule of uncertain age), and keep doing the same unhealthy crap you've always done. And since herbs are natural, you don't need to show any respect or caution toward them, kind of like that guy in _Grizzly Man_. That's about as western as you can get.
> -- its bent to essentialize and universalize the subject of medicine,
> not being willing to understand that the universal subject is a
> construct of the mind rather than an actual given. Since differences in
> age, sex, race, etc. actually require different medical treatment, this
> has resulted in gross mistreatment and misdiagnosis.
Good point here, but how do other traditions deal with this?
> I also have a problem with a concept of medicine as that set of buttons
> we push that should magically restore a body that we have insulted in
> every conceivable way -- with drugs, stress, poisons, indolence, etc. It
> seems to me that most of medicine/health should be synonymous with the
> way we live rather than with what happens after we get sick.
A set of buttons is what I think of when I see those reflexology diagrams of the foot.
Mainstream western medicine has been no stranger to preventative lifestyle approaches in my memory. Eat your fruits and vegetables, eat fiber, lay off the animal fat and sugar, drink in moderation, don't smoke, get out and exercise, learn to relax -- you don't need to go to an alternative practitioner to get this message. I was going to chalk my perceptions on this up to personal experience -- I haven't had a medical encounter since my pediatrician where I wasn't quizzed about eating, drinking, sleeping and exercise -- but even if you have sucky doctors or no doctors at all there's rather less excuse to know about this stuff than, say, the history of Iraqi weapons programs. That people hear the advice and conclude that the thing to do is to get fat-free ranch dressing for their iceberg lettuce, Splenda and non-dairy creamer for their decaf coffee, and pop a vitamin pill doesn't strike me as being the fault of western medicine.
One could certainly argue that modern medical research has been a bit of Johnny-come-lately with the nutrition angle (the veggie cookbook _Laurel's Kitchen_ has a history of the research that went into the mainstream set of advice outlined above), but I'm not sure how that factors into this discussion.
I think a lot of what gets percieved as mainstream western medicine is really western medicine strained through massive research budgets, commercial media pressures, and the constant need to sell at a profit (whether drugs, diet plans, or alternative medicine) rather than provide well-grounded knowledge that has you buying cheap broccoli instead of expensive flavored vitamin water and fat-free whateverthefuck that tastes like shit to boot. Western medical research upholds cheap prevention fine and dandy, but there's a wider problem that we're all familiar with. Not to mention a good dollop of laziness -- sorry for the individualistic moralizing, but I think a lot of people prefer the entertainment of chasing some esoteric diet plan (western or otherwise) than the boring stuff they already know.
-- Andy