"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
[WS:] Joanna, there is a difference between technology and applications of technology. Does the fact that computers are used by businesses or government agencies to snoop on people mean that we should renounce them and uses abacus instead? Every technology, from a stone ax to a super computer has potential for both uses and abuses.
Certain technologies may have a greater potential for abuses than others (we all read Foucault), but that works in favor of modern science vis a vis "nonconventional" "traditional" folk wisdom (which in fact is quite conventional for those who believe in it.) You see, modern science - while certainly not panacea and free from error - at least has built-in mechanisms for systematic critical evaluation and verification of its claims. "Traditional" wisdom has few or none such mechanisms. Its claims are accepted basically on faith and authority and disproved, if ever, only accidentally, if someone happens to stumble into contradicting evidence.
Stated differently, traditional wisdom may be true or false but its practitioners have no rational way of knowing which. They accept or reject claims based on tradition and belief. Science, on the other hand, not only can disprove itself, but attempts to do so are an integral part of its basic methodology. Therefore, traditional wisdom/medicine etc. has a much greater potential for abuse - it simply lacks sufficient verification mechanisms.
As to your portrayal of the "ideology of western science" - I am sorry, but this is a caricature, a straw man. I challenge you to find a scientist, medical or otherwise, whose stated research objective is "to disarticulate the body and treat one part as if it existed in isolation from the other parts," let alone "essentialize and universalize the subject of medicine." In fact, those phrases are rather short on empirical meaning, a classic example of pomo-babbling that confuses reciting mantras with research. This is tantamount to someone trying to learn about or judge American political liberalism from the drivel of Rush Limbaugh and company.
Of course, there are ideologues who elevate their ideology to "scientific certitude." But that does not mean that this represent in any way what science is or what scientists do. In fact, such "scientism" - or belief that scientific claims are certitudes - itself is unscientific (cf. Karl Popper's or W.V.O. Quine's critique of logical positivism.) Science by its very nature is provisional and probabilistic. Certitude is the realm of ideology and religion.
To summarize, there are certainly abuses of science as well as abuses of any technology, modern or traditional. There are also caricatures of science, as well as of any other form of thought, concocted for personal, political, ideological, or commercial reasons. But those abuses or caricatures certainly do not reflect merits or demerits of science or any other form of knowledge itself. The value of any form of knowledge is determined, for the most part, by its internal ability to empirically prove or rather disprove itself. In that respect, modern science stands head and shoulders above traditional forms of knowledge, medical or otherwise.
Wojtek