Inappropriate
Standards for Complementary Medicine
Your
editorial of Issue 47 clearly hits the problem that we have had for many years around
Orthodox Medicine’s insistence upon standards of evidence that are neither
appropriate to models of Complementary Medicine nor are achieved with most of Orthodox
Medicine. However, the problems that this creates for us are immensely exacerbated when
representatives of the Comple- mentary Medicine field set us up as intrinsically
subordinate to the OM profession.
I have before me a copy of the submission of the BCMA (dated
17/11/99) to Sub-Committee III of the Science and Technology Committee, House of Lords,
under ref. “Complementary and Alternative Medicine – Call for Evidence.”
BCMA claim to be “the major Complementary Medicine multi-therapy umbrella body in the
UK”, speaking for “over 20,000 practitioners of 11 different therapies.”
Most of their sub- mission is unobjectionable, and the normal coinage of comment among the
CM community. However, they include in the submission their own definitions of
“Alternative” and “Comple- mentary”, which have caused disquiet in
some quarters in the past.
“Alternative is where the therapist is trained to a level in
Orthodox Medicine (OM) such that he/she can be an alternative to a medical doctor, ie, can
make a medical diagnosis (eg, osteopath or chiropractor) while Complementary means that
the level of training in OM does not permit this but is sufficient for the therapist to
complement an Alternative therapist or a doctor (with the doctor in clinical control of
the case).”
Such a view denies the freedom to practise that has been assumed for
many years, and denies the public the freedom to choose their path to health.
I wonder how many of the people who are represented by BCMA,
either individually or as members of some affiliated organisation, are happy to be
portrayed in this way. I have asked two of the registers that represent my particular
discipline to publicly disassociate themselves from these damaging definitions, and others
may wish to do the same.
As your magazine is not associated to any register, and is
available to the public, I wonder if you might make this issue the matter of an
independent article that could bring the various views and politics to the open attention
of all those who are interested in the future of Complementary Medicine.
Tom Litten
Shiatsu Practitioner,
Roswell Shiatsu Centre
|
The Government has
appointed a Cancer Supremo to try to prevent 100,000 cancer deaths over the next 10 years.
On the news bulletins have been reports of more money, more Consultants, more student
doctors available for cancer training, more operations, more drugs, more tests – you
get the picture!
Has there been a single word discussing Complementary approaches
to reduce cancer incidence and deaths – Research and Clinical applications of
Nutrition and Herbal Medicine, and Lifestyle changes – NOT A SINGLE WORD! Despite the
existence of tomes of Scientific literature showing that Diet, Nutrition and Lifestyle
probably account for perhaps 75% of cancer incidence? And a respectable scientific
literature showing the clinical efficacy of diet and nutritional supplements to treat many
cancers?
For hundreds of examples from the literature,
please click on Cancer on the Research
Updates on Positive Health’s huge (>1,000 pages) internet
website – positivehealth.com.
Most of us are aware of the brute-force confrontational way to
defeat something. Fight it, blacken reputations, discredit the entire substance of the
idea and its leading proponents. Well, that direct war approach has been waged over many
decades by many interests against Complementary Medicine, as many in the field can
confirm.
However, now that complementary approaches are starting to
dovetail with conventional approaches – i.e. improve nutrition, reduce stress, reduce
exposure to free radicals and toxic chemicals – another policy appears to be
underway, that is to completely ignore and sidestep Complementary Medicine. That is until
Complementary Medicine can be taken over and controlled by the allopathic establishment.
Unless you think that paranoia or deep cynicism has begun to
settle in, (and I quite understand it if Positive Health readers might think me guilty of
the above), I include a short extract from distinguished psycho-oncologist Prof Stephen
Greer, regarding what would happen if it were shown that psychotherapy for cancer patients
actually prolonged survival.
“... however large the patient sample, however rigorous
the methodology, however sophisticated the data analysis, if psychotherapy were shown to
have an effect on duration of survival, this result would be disbelieved and disregarded
by the medical establishment until the biological pathways mediating such an effect were
identified.”1
Thus, 10-20 years ago, researchers in complementary medicine were
told that there was no evidence for the efficacy of complementary medicine. We were told
to go away and do research to demonstrate that what we were advocating actually exerted a
therapeutic benefit. During this period, the research mountain has been burgeoning, with
tens of thousands of published articles regarding the results of this research. Positive
Health is but one example of a research-based publication devoted to complementary
medicine. Dr Amanda Jackson-Russell has brilliantly categorised the breadth of this
variety in her in-depth article A Synthesis of Healing Therapies (see page 12).
But, when the Cancer Supremo is announced and policies trumpeted
to save lives of cancer patients, is there even a mention of anything other than drugs,
high-tech machinery or surgery? Not a whisper!
It is such a tragic pity that while millions of people who could
benefit from information about how nutrition and herbal medicine and lifestyle changes
could help prevent or even help in the treatment of their illness, complementary
researchers are still being tied up in discovering the brilliant effects of their
therapies, only for these facts to be kept a complete secret.
It is sad that in order to help people, complementary medicine
almost has to wage war to be listened to, and then win the war even to be heard.
This issue features many substantive articles across the spectrum
of complementary medicine, including Healing, Energy Medicine, Breathing, Bodywork and a
special feature regarding the importance of Organic Food, and the scientific horrors of
the pesticides abounding within the non-organic food – fruits, vegetables – we
are all buying and consuming.
1. Stephen Greer. Mind-body research in psychooncology. Advances.
15(4): 235-306. 1999. |
