An ancient Indian fable tells of blind men disagreeing about the nature of a large object before them, because they fail to realize that they are touching different parts of an elephant. A scientist can be like the blind men in her narrow focus: the physicist sees the world as energy, the chemist talks about atoms, the biologist thinks in molecules, the sociologist focuses on organisms, the ecologist considers systems. Science works because countless investigators in many different fields are all studying different aspects of a single elephant named Nature, and our greatest educators are those who tie the disparate accounts into a cohesive narrative. The analogy works in patient care: the internist, the cardiologist, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the nurse, the physical therapist, the pharmacist...each of these players views the same patient through a different lens, focusing on particulars related to his specialty. Unlike the foolish blind men, however, health professionals rest easy with the knowledge that their superficially dissimilar fields are all ultimately based in empirical science. The same models of human physiology and pharmacology support each medical discipline, from nephrology to psychiatry. A big problem I have with "alternative medicine" is that it has no such elephant connecting its diverse claims.
First of all, alt.med lacks a good definition aside from "any ideas about health that are not accepted by most modern physicians." Some advocates use language that smacks of post-modernism or cultural relativism, which has no place in an empirical discipline like medicine. If you think "Western" physicians are "closed-minded" to ancient folk remedies, please take two
Aspirin and call me in the morning. Modalities less ancient and foreign are also welcome into the potpourri of alt.med, with no prerequisites except failure of acceptance by scientific thinkers. Worshiping ancient philosophies and popular superstitions is no basis for a system of health care.
Secondly, am I the only one bothered by the fact that alt.med ideas conflict not only with accepted theories of reality but also with each other? Reiki, homeopathy, and acupuncture are laughable individually, but I cannot understand how one person can simultaneously advocate all three. Not only would my campus alt.med group encourage me to accept an "alternative" pharmacology that defies all chemistry, not only should I believe in "auras" that make a mockery of physics, but I am also asked to accept that ancient Chinese discoveries baffle anatomists to this day. Sorry, you crossed the line by disrespecting our anatomy profs.
The lack of discrimination required to embrace divergent alt.med claims reminds me of the title of a book by another type of true believer:
The Psychic Sasquatch and their UFO Connection.
But surely, the alt.med agnostic implores me, no one is really saying that homeopathy cures all disease. Perhaps some diseases are treatable by balancing humors, some by manipulating auras, and others by unblocking chi. That is not what the believers suggest, I respond. The homeopath advocates using his sugar pills for any disease for which no "conventional" treatment exists. I equate such apologia with the scientifically bankrupt idea of Intelligent Design; your treatment of "last resort" is nothing more than a "god of the gaps." If its definition and theory cannot be formulated more precisely, then count me an alt.med atheist.
Professional codes of medical ethics clearly state that our actions should be guided by evidence when possible and scientific plausibility at all times. I fail to see how most of alt.med meets that standard. Certainly accepting it wholesale, as I seem to be asked to do by campus groups, is ethically and intellectually ruinous.
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