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The Truth About "Natural" Healing --- Ten Things You Should Know
2. The Issues --- Widespread Claims & Misconceptions
To more and more individuals with all kinds of maladies, ailments
illness and disease, the idea of a natural "cure" with natural
"medicine" sounds like an ideal therapy, or at least a more gentle
and harmonious approach.
So, what IS all the fuss and furor, the debate, the controversial
wrangling -- or sometimes, simply inner turmoil -- often over OTHER
PEOPLE'S personal decisions? Another writer (and evidently keen
observer), Dr. Daniel Callahan, introducing his BOOK REVIEW of Joel
James Shuman's and Keith G. Meador's "Heal Thyself: Spirituality,
Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity" (Oxford University
Press, 2003 ) in the Summer 2004 Johns Hopkins University Press
"Bulletin of the History of Medicine" (Volume 78, Number 2, pp. 523-
524) expressed it this way: "A few years ago I organized a research
project on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). I was drawn
to the topic not as a CAM supporter but because I had been intrigued
by the HOSTILITY that many physicians feel toward it". Sadly, that
describes the attitude to a tee in a great many cases. But, why?
There are a number of possible reasons (and many more "excuses") for
skepticism, objection, even outright opposition; and if we're serious
about "natural" healing, we'll most likely have to deal with them
sooner or later --- preferably, without becoming antagonistic and
"polarized" ourselves. (That would NOT be good "therapy"!)
To encourage insight and understanding instead, let's examine some of
the chief objections, misconceptions --- and realities:
"Aren't non-medical therapies awfully risky, even dangerous?"
"It isn't proven, scientific or "evidence-based" healing."
"Is it moral, ethical, legal?"
Interestingly, the first response from the average individual if you
state that you've chosen an entirely NON-MEDICAL approach to a certain
ailment is: "What else IS there?" If any OTHER business, industry, or
profession had only HALF so successful a "monopoly" THEY would be "up
to THEIR ears" in anti-trust litigation, wouldn't they?
The prevailing misconception held by most people --- IF they even know
about the other healing professions --- is that a Chiropractor,
Homeopath, Naturopath, Osteopath, Acupuncturist, or Herbalist is not a
"real doctor". In most states of the U.S. however, many of these
professionals must be licensed by a state board and therefore not only
be college graduates, but also finish their profession's equivalent of
"Med School". Futhermore, many of them reportedly spend more
classroom time studying the anatomy and physiology of the human body
than most medical students.
What medical students spend most of their time studying is described by
several regular and medical dictionaries as well as the Association of
American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Medical Association
(AMA) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
(ACGME) as "allopathic medicine".
Other terms that have been proposed include: conventional medicine,
Western medicine, evidence-based medicine, clinical medicine,
scientific medicine, regular medicine, mainstream medicine, standard
medicine, orthodox medicine, and authoritarian medicine. And while
"medicine" is broadly defined in most dictionaries as "the art of
preventing or curing disease" or "the science concerned with disease
in all its relations" (which actually defines "pathology" - Gr.
"pathos" = suffering and "ology" or "logia" = study of), Stedman's
Medical Dictionary quite logically, correctly and simply lists the
actual current customary use of the word first: "(med-i-sin) A drug".
By that realistic definition, virtually all of the so called
"alternative medicine" is actually alternative NON MEDICINE; and
the term "allopathy" (al OP u thee --- from Gr. allos, other, and
pathos, suffering) seems particurlarly insightful and foresightful
to have been coined in the first half of the nineteenth century, in
view of the current mandatory practice in some countries of listing
on drug labels and in drug advertising the known side effects of the
drug --- the "other suffering" it causes. Could this be the real
reason some in the medical profession despise the term so much ---
it's implications of breaking that famous Hippocratic rule of
healing: "First do no harm"?
This logically brings us back to the first major objection listed
above, doesn't it?
So, IS "Natural" Healing Safe?
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