Imagine this: you go to the doctor. She tells you that you need surgery on your knee. Ok good. Schedule it for the week after. The operation theatre is all prepped. You lie on the table and take a deep breath. ‘What about the anaesthesia?’ you ask the doctor.
’Oh no anaesthesia,’ she says, ‘but here’s some whiskey. It’ll numb the pain.’
Seems absurd? We expect ‘modern medicine’ to follow the latest theories on pain reduction. But this is exactly what would happen if modern medicine behaved like ‘alternative medicine’.
What is seen as a strength of ‘alternative medicine’ - an ancient system used for millennia, surely can’t be wrong! - is actually its weakness. Systems need to improve in order to become less wrong. That is how progress is made and this is how modern medicine works.
Unless the claim is that this system is perfect you have to allow for progress. And obviously, none of these systems are perfect. Many of their treatments for major medical problems have been abandoned precisely because they are obviously wrong. Even the most ardent proponent of homoeopathy isn’t going to eat pills to treat their cancer. They know what will happen if they do - death. In the case of an aggressive and fatal disease, the feedback loop is quick and clear - if you don’t do the correct thing you die. In cases where the feedback loop is slower and more ambiguous - perhaps the illness goes away on its own - these alternative medicines excel. And sometimes a palliative treatment is mistaken for a cure, for the same reason as above.
This is not to say that there is no truth in alternative medicine. Like most traditions they contain some truth - but the important thing is that these traditions have to be subjected to criticism. Keep the parts that survive, discard the rest. The parts that survive are then part of modern medicine.
But if they aren’t allowed to change and are shielded from criticism they become dangerous because the false parts remain. In the case of a system of medicine, these false parts can cause death and suffering.
Its a fantastic piece