Alternative, integrative medicines are not 'jokes'
To the editor,
After reading and also hearing about a lot of talk about the debate over alternative medicine being taught in medical schools vs. traditional medicine, I began thinking how much the West has to learn about healing from Chinese medicine, Native Americans, Ayurvedic medicine in India, and naturopathy.
The one thing that bothers me is that for the sake of CLASSIFICATION, Chinese medicine and others are not part of traditional medicine. Chinese medicine itself is probably 5,000 or more years old.
What could be more traditional than that? People were being healed from many diseases in Asia and in the Middle East, while the Europeans thought bleeding was a way to heal sick people. All forms of medicine do have some form of scientific basis, and all parts of western medicine do not generally originate from scientific methods.
Dr. Relman was a fool in calling alternative medicine hodgepodge. He and many arrogant medical professionals like him are ignoring how 90 percent of the world treats diseases. Just because a form of medicine did not originate from Europe does not mean the form of medicine is quackery.
What we see here is not which medicine is good or bad, but rather how people's ignorance, politics, and racism have affected the study of medicine as well.
If people like Dr. Relman just open their eyes, then I can easily predict that medical treatments will improve 10 times.
If we do not have integrative medicine taught in medical schools, then in the short run no one would care. But in the long run, history books are bound to laugh and joke and criticize us if we choose the path of Dr. Relman. Alternative medicine was not started by Dr. Weil, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Ornish, or other contemporary BEST SELLING BOOK WRITING physicians, but it has been here longer than WESTERN MEDICINE.
No medicine is completely perfect, but no form of medicine is a joke either. We should respect and learn about all forms of medicine. Above all, no matter what type of medicine you use, the object is not to treat the disease but the patient as a whole person with a body and a soul.
Ahmad Saad Nasim
German studies and MCB junior
President Muslim Students Association
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