By Jack Raso, Samuel Homola
Posted: Thursday, March 1, 2001
ARTICLES
Publication Date: March 1, 2001
Modes of alternative medicine lack—arguably by definition—a scientific evidential basis, and most alt-med methods lack even a scientific theoretical basis. Thus, those who promote such methods do so in mythological, spiritual, subjective, and/or pseudoscientific terms. In the United States, those who promote alt-med methods especially as treatments for specific or alleged forms of organic disease* tend to frame "scientifically"—i.e., pseudoscientifically—how the methods supposedly work. This tendency among such proponents is no wonder: Most Americans would not preferentially (or in ordinary circumstances, even just intentionally) seek help for any serious condition of a doctor who manifestly bases his ostensive ministrations on a belief system remote from logic and the laws of physics. Regrettably, most Americans are untrained in logic and science and have been favorably exposed to magical, mystical belief systems. Such persons are ill-equipped to discern pseudoscience in any field and are thus especially vulnerable to the scientific-sounding rhetoric of the quacks, hucksters, cultists, and gurus of alternative medicine.
The proliferation of religious, dietary, and quasi-medical cultism suggests that logic and scientific knowledge are not deciding factors for a large portion of the U.S. population. Too often, science is replaced by, or at least subjugated to, postmodern beliefs, which are characterized by approval of the philosophical mainstay of alternative medicine: wayward empiricism.
If It Feels Good . . .
The word "empiricism" has several meanings, one of which is medical quackery. Webster's 1828 Dictionary (http://www.christiantech.com/websters.htm) describes empiricism exclusively as tantamount to medical quackery. In another sense, however, "empiricism" refers to two scientific fundamentals—observation and experimentation. In a very different sense, the word refers to reliance on experience as the only source of ideas and knowledge. It is this sense of "empiricism" that marks alternative medicine.
In The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine (1992), for example, Matthew Wood, a proponent of homeopathy, stated:
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It is no accident that many of the theoretical constructs of alternative medicine are at least analogous to the Christian conception of the soul. |
Since human beings are deeply affected by subjective, spiritual, and even supernatural events, it is impossible to create an adequate system of healing for them which does not include this side of their being. . . .
If medicine is to address the patient in a realistic manner it is going to have to make peace with the hidden side of humanity. How is this to be done? How can people used to mistrusting their own instincts learn to discern and judge from a subjective standpoint? . . .
The way to learn to perceive in this fashion is to learn to trust "what feels right." No one can learn to use this kind of knowledge by copying other people. Each person works out what is right for him or her self. . . .
If medicine is to address the patient in a way which is realistic, it must encompass our true nature. It must include the spirit, the life force, and the wisdom of nature in its view. Rather than beginning with the body and excluding all other phenomena as subjective and unreliable, medicine must begin at the central point, the magical staff.
And in an interview reported in Challenging Orthodoxy (1991), author Robert C. Atkins, M.D., founder and director of The Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine, in New York City, stated:
I'm really critical of the scientist who believes that the double-blind [see page 13] is an appropriate modality to screen out certain types of doctor-patient interrelationships. I feel that as medical philosophers that's a flawed conclusion. Throughout the history of mankind, the effectiveness of a doctor in healing a patient depended on a relationship between the healer and the healee. And, for the healer to be effective, he has got to believe that he is a healer. He really, in essence, has got to believe that whatever he's got in there works.
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. . . [T]here is nothing in the field of alternative medicine that even approaches a consensus on what vitalistic pseudo-energy comprises. |
This is hogwash. First, the double blind is not a modality. The expression refers primarily to a procedure used to prevent statistical errors in experiments. The double blind is not used to screen out any kind of human relationship. Second, while the practitioner-subject relationship may often account for the healthfulness of a treatment, (a) such relationships can also make for treatment ineffectiveness, (b) their effects are unpredictable, and (c) there is no good reason to believe they can cure organic disease. Third, the healthfulness of practitioners does not necessarily depend on their trusting themselves; neither does it necessarily depend on their trusting the medicinals and methods available to them. (But then, perhaps with the word "effective" it was not to "healthful" that Atkins was alluding.)
In alternative medicine, unbridled empiricism—with manifestations ranging from trial and error to going with the gut—tends to eclipse, and often replaces, the clinical utilization of scientific evidence that is consistent with what is known in science (i.e., evidence established in the biomedical and public health communities).
Spirits in the Material World
Well over 1,300 modes of alternative medicine are reasonably describable as mystical, supernaturalistic, and/or vitalistic [see page 35]. Many of the theories attached to such methods, which far and away constitute the bulk of alternative medicine, are nonfalsifiable. Among the indefinite and untestable suppositions that these nonfalsifiable theories include are ancestral spirits, angels, demons, God, "missing soul parts," "Fairy Folk," pixies, trolls, "Cosmic Consciousness," "Holographic Beingness," chakras, "karmic doo-doo," kundalini, marmas, prana, chi, Innate Intelligence, "Divine Light," "divine energy," "healing dolphin energy," "Living Energy," "negative energy," "positive energy," "spiritual energy," "transformational healing energy, " "Universal Fifth Dimensional Energy," and "vital force fields."
Any theory without falsifiability—the characteristic of any statement that enables specifying conditions whose concurrence would disprove the statement—is nonscientific. According to the eminent philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper (1902- 1994), knowledge of the material world improves only through the systematic refutation of rival scientific theories. Popper used falsifiability to differentiate science and pseudoscience.
A Lot of Soul
Of course, many Americans care nothing about falsifiability and even favor certain nonfalsifiable theories—particularly religious tenets affirmative of God and an afterlife. It is no accident that many of the theoretical constructs of alternative medicine are at least analogous to the Christian conception of the soul: For example, Ayurveda and various modes of yoga have prana; Chinese medicine and Qigong have chi; homeopathy has "dynamis"; naturopathy has the vis medicatrix naturae; orgonomic medicine has orgone; kahuna healing has mana; and traditional chiropractic has Innate Intelligence. Such concepts—commonly referred to generically by their U.S. proponents, e.g., as "life energy," life force, "vital energy," and the vital force—are inviting to most persons, because, unlike any scientific theory, they suggest that everyone might have a nonmaterial yet somehow conscious part that can outlast his or her death.
In Total Wellness: Improve Your Health by Understanding the Body's Healing Systems (Prima Publishing, 1997), Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.,** cofounder and president of Bastyr University, states: "Each of us needs to become more aware of the activity of the vis medicatrix naturae (life-force) deep within us. There are many aids to developing this awareness." In The Energy Within (1992), martial artist Richard M. Chin, M.D., O.M.D.,*** asserted that one can "actually feel" the vital force if one suspends disbelief "long enough to begin the work to find it." This exemplifies unbridled empiricism.
In the sphere of physics, it is axiomatic that matter and energy are interconvertible—different forms of one thing. Light, for example, consists of objectively demonstrable elements called "photons." Chi, Innate Intelligence, the vis medicatrix naturae, and the like are not energy in any modern, generally established, dictionary sense—general or technical—of the word "energy." They are alien both to the physical sciences and to physiology. Moreover, there is nothing in the field of alternative medicine that even approaches a consensus on what vitalistic pseudo-energy comprises. Proponents of methods whose basis is supernaturalistic or vitalistic often bedeck such methods in scientific evidence. But no effort to cite existing scientific evidence could render any such method genuinely biomedical, for biomedicine is by definition based on the natural sciences (e.g., biology and physics), and supernaturalism and vitalism remain repudiated by these sciences.
The Bottom Line
All manner of voodooism, hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo, and whimsicality may intrude on science-oriented healthcare, but the only modes of alternative medicine that have any chance of becoming biomedical are those that not (or are not invariably) mystical, supernaturalistic, and/or vitalistic.
Although some alt-med methods may (necessarily through scientific research) become (or become the basis for) parts of biomedicine, alternative medicine's track record in this regard has been dismal.
Jack Raso, M.S., R.D., is the author of three books on alternative medicine.
Samuel Homola, a retired reformist chiropractor, is the author of 12 books, including Inside Chiro-practic: A Patient's Guide (Prometheus Books, 1999).
* any disease attended by unhealthy changes in bodily organs and/or fluids, particularly one that results from a demonstrable anatomic or functional abnormality
** Doctor of Naturopathy
*** Oriental Medical Doctor
vital force: An alleged energy that is the cause of life and is necessary for its continuation.
kundalini (ahamkara, kundalini shakti): Alleged elemental, feminine energy that is ordinarily asleep and coiled at the human coccyx and whose activation can purify the activator. The word "kundalini" stems from a Sanskrit term meaning "circular, coiled."
mana: In anthropology, an alleged venerable supernatural instrument of magic in persons and other objects. The concept originated in Poly-nesia.
Innate Intelligence (the Innate, Innate Healing Ability): 1. The life force, which allegedly expresses itself through the nervous system. 2. That which guides this life force or guides "Innate Energy."
traditional chiropractic: Apparently, any form of chiropractic ascribed to D.D. (Daniel David) Palmer (1845-1913), chiropractic's founder, and to his son, B.J. (Bartlett Joshua) Palmer, D.C., Ph.C. (d. 1961), author of The Science of Chiropractic (1906). In "Chiropractic," the latter Palmer wrote: "We chiropractors work with the subtle substance of the soul. We release the prisoned impulses, a tiny rivulet of force, that emanates from the mind and flows over the nerves to the cells and stirs them to life. We deal with the magic power that transforms common food into living, loving, thinking clay . . . ."
Source Notes:
Priorities Volume 12 Number 4 & Volume 13 Number 1
