[lbo-talk] putting quackery to the test

[info at pulpculture.org]

At 11:02 AM 8/12/2006, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Whenever any useful medical procedure appears outside organized
>medicine, organized medicine incorporates it. There is simply no such
>thing as "alternative medicine," since there are no systematic relations
>among the huge pile of this that and the other thing that get trumpeted
>as "alternative medicine." It does not exist. You cannot define it. You
>cannot distinguish it the the jumble of procedures and medications "in
>the pipeline" of systematic medicine. Every so-called "alternative
>medicine" that shows actual promise is incorporated into organized
>medicine, so the  _only_ kind of medicine there is is organized
>medicine. (*Drug companies of course include the powerful enterprises
>which produce and market various remedies incorrectly labelled as
>"alternative medicine," though they are only a particularly chaotic
>sub-field of organized medicine.)
>
>Because of the gross inefficiency and often dishonesty of all capitalist
>enterprise, and because of the legal protections of those organized
>criminal institutions (drug* companies and insurance companies) which
>control social relations and internal communications within the area of
>human health, the development AND USE of organized medicine is in a
>continual state of chaos. This is of course an old marxist truism (order
>within the workplace, chaos in the economy as a whole).
>
>In any case, since alternative medicine doesn't exist, I'm not clear
>what the debate is about.
>
>Carrol

I think this is a really good point. What carrol highlights is the way in 
which proponents of alternative medicine end up arrogating to alternative 
medicine a claim of superiority because it is, ostensibly, 'outside' the 
system of organized medicine.

it's ideological power lies in the appeal it makes to a deep suspicion of 
anything organized -- much like USers are often deeply suspicion of 
'organized' religion to which claims to 'spirituality' are always 
counterposed. The truly spiritual can only lie outside the social because 
it supposedly comes from an interiority of the individual -- an interiority 
protected from that which is 'organized' and which is otherwise corrupted 
if anything organized (social) infiltrates the interiority of the 
individual's access to its own spirituality.

Simimlarly, althernative medicine lays claim to something that lies outside 
organization, something which must be protected from the 'organized' for 
otherwise it will be corrupted by the introduction of the "modern" and the 
"Western" -- the organized.

As Robert Bellah et al argue in _Habits of the Heart_, this thematic is 
very old in US culture, because it locates the problem in the corruption of 
something that was otherwise 'naturally' good. They show how this upholds a 
rampant, relentless individualism that leaves the individual "suspended in 
glorious, but terrifying, isolation".

I personally have no truck with using homeopathics. My mother, a nurse, has 
a drawerful of prescription meds and homeopathics. She lives in Vermont. 
Surprise. But the problem is there are so many quacks out there, it isn't 
funny. I never in my life thought chiropractors were quacks. Then, I 
started participating in health related forums and met them. Sorry. I 
didn't meet one who was a responsible person. The peddled information based 
on some pretty ridiculous claims. I know they aren't all like this, but if 
you really want to tout homeopathics and the like for the poor... just 
fugly. In which case, the only responsible approach is some sort of 
regulation -- and then it seems you're pretty much back to square one.

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