Today, I sent an email to the authors of Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine, the book that is the subject of this book review. In this email I directed them to this book review and made them an offer of 12 free healing sessions to be used within one year if they are willing to embark in good faith of a journey of personal healing. I anxiously await the response of Edzard Ernst, M.D. and Simon Singh to this offer!
Through a series of unlikely coincidences, and unwittingly at first, I tried alternative health care. Desperate for relief I learned to meditate at a local Buddhist mediation center. This helped me understand how thought patterns contribute to pain. Across the street from my doctor’s office was a store selling traditional African art. I developed a curiosity about the store. One day, after a troubling doctor’s visit, I went into the store. Because, I was an atheist with no religious or spiritual education, I did not understand what it meant that the owner was a traditional spiritual healer or that many of the objects for sale in her store could be used for healing purposes.
As I developed a friendship with this woman my symptoms improved dramatically. My symptoms improved even though I did not ask the woman to do any healing work on me. Although I did not see how it was possible, I intuitively understood that my new friend and my improved health were connected. Overtime it became apparent that during our early conversations she had been using her traditional methods on me. The fact that I was not aware that she was healing me - and more than this, that I was an atheist and a fervent disbeliever in alternative health care - means that I could not have received a placebo effect from her work. I credit this woman with helping to restore my health and for opening me to a world of new possibilities.
These early experiences with meditation and spiritual healing prompted me to try other alternative modalities, like castor oil packs, astrology, yoga and Reiki. This, combined with my own intensive training, has, ten years later, left me free of the disease that plague me for so long and for which no real cure could be seen. As a result, for myself, I know that alternative remedies work.
What Singh & Ernst do not do in their book is create a compelling explanation for why people – including me - heal with alternative methods. They explain why science predicts that people will not heal, but they do not explain why, outside the double blind studies - in real life - these predictions do not always hold up.
As demonstrated by my story, the placebo effect is not a one-size fits all theory. For these reasons I do not feel that is necessary to wait for science to prove something before taking advantage of the benefits. However, just as with conventional medicine, users of alternative benefit from (1) education themselves about any existing health conditions, (2) taking charge of their own health, (3) learning about various, (4) learning about the practitioners with whom they work.
Moreover, in making the claim that they are more capable than anyone in getting at the truth of alternative therapies, Singh & Ernst suggest that they do not believe in the intelligence of the public or of practitioners who may have drawn different conclusions. They are also resistant to developing a positive partnership between conventional and alternative medicine, a partnership that could bring a higher, more satisfying level of care.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Importantly, the scientific method is not the only method for finding truth. Likewise, the scientific method cannot prove the existence of the driving force of much of human activity. Yet, absent scientific proof, humanity goes on.
For instance, the scientific method cannot be used to prove the existence love, willpower or intellect. Nonetheless, we believe in love, willpower and intellect because we experience the realities of love, willpower, and intellect within ourselves and others. This personal experience is what makes us comfortable basing major life decisions – for instance who to marry, what to eat and how to overcome life challenges – on our belief in the existence of love, willpower and intellect - even though the scientific method is useless at proving their existence.
Singh & Ernst's central assumption, “If science cannot prove it, it cannot be real and cannot be trusted” does not help us to learn much about alternative healing methods other than that they are a bit mysterious and that science does not understand them. This assumption, when compared with the experience of people getting relief from alternative medicine, shows that the scientific method is not a universally reliable method for discerning truth.
(for more see next post )
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