To further support this here is a story of close friend of mine - a medical professional in the NY/NJ area. Her profile can be described as a mixture of petit bourgeois, noveau riche sensibilities with personality cult and libertarian attitudes toward society. We were close friends since college times, so she confided in me all her personal stories.
Several years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a prognosis that she does not have much time left, followed by intensive treatment, she was cured. After recuperating from the effects of chemotherapy, she went back to work and her normal life. Then, several years later, the cancer returned. She again underwent intensive treatment involving chemotherapy, and gain was able to beat the bleak prognosis that the doctors had given her.
When the treatment was almost over, she 'discovered' alternative medicine. She went to some alternative cancer treatment just south of the border, which she could afford because both her and her husband were making pretty good money. She came back raving about wonders of the alternative approach to cancer treatment and telling me one horror dotty after another how drug companies conspired to keep those wonders out of the public reach. Mind that she was a medical professional - - an RN with highly specialized technical training. I politely listened to her difficult to believe stories and nodded. After all, if that made her feel good, who was I to question this?
Last fall, the cancer came back again, this time spreading over many organs. The doctors gave up treatment and provided only the palliative care. Her condition worsened dramatically. Since she was very image conscious, she refused to see any of her friends - I suppose because she did not want to see her in such a poor shape. She went back to Mexico to the 'alternative' center, but they refused to 'treat' her. She died last week.
So why would someone trained as a medical professional, and saved by conventional medicine several times, at the end renounced that medicine and turned into quackery? I think there are two factors. One was her petit bourgeois, libertarian personality centered on me, me, me. Quacks are very skilled in pandering to that me-cult, and making their victims feel "special." She certainly received more personal attention from the quacks than from doctors and hospital staff. In fact, hospitals were something mundane, something that she knew in and out through her line of work. The quacks, otoh, offered her seemingly undivided attention and made her feel special - as any good con-artist does.
The second factor was her "new age" social networks - bored middle class people looking for excitement and exotic experiences. New ageism which marries consumerism with the touch of the exotic to produce an "instant karma" feeling provides an excellent vehicle for the spread of quackery. For a petit bourgeois, image conscious person, such networks create a difficult to resist pressure.
So it was a mixture of the new ageism, personality cult and bored petite bourgeoisie looking for 'being special'; in the heartless and commercialized world, and the army of quacks and mountebanks ready to meet that demand.
Wojtek