Perhaps the so-called traditional medicine people ought to quit being so nervous and defensive about alternative medicines and figure out how to bridge the two communities. Big Medicine is always so afraid of anyone who questions what they believe is their sole authority on health issues, they resort to the old fear & smear. Having watched my father go through chemotherapy (a $12B per year industry) really made me take a closer look at the pharmaceutical industry and its relationship with doctors and institutions such as NIH, CDC as well as Congress. The medical profession considers my father a success story, because his cancer is gone but they do not recognize that he is terminally ill with two new sicknesses (emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis) as a result of the chemotherapy. If the medical profession wonders why so many people are investigating alternative medicines, they only need to look at their own record of treating patients to figure out the answer.
"A majority of Americans are now trying to cure their ills with prayer or unconventional remedies, including herbal tonics, acupuncture, massage and yoga, federal researchers reported yesterday.
A new government survey of more than 31,000 U.S. adults nationwide, the most comprehensive assessment of the use of alternative medicine in the United States, found that 36 percent are using some kind of "complementary and alternative" therapy. That number jumps to 62 percent when prayer is included.
"The distinctions between alternative and conventional are really going to have to fall away," she [Dr. Maggie Covington] said. "We have to look for a type of medicine that addresses not just the physical aspect of the disease but the whole picture -- the physical, the spiritual and the emotional." - Wash Post
