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Last week I stumbled onto a local radio talk shown in which the host and her guests were discussing the virtues of the holistic medicine being practiced at the Wellness Centers under construction by a local hospital. The two hospital employees sounded like very nice people and they explained that they preferred "Holistic" to "Alternative" because their services were meant to complement regular medicine and not replace it. They provided some typical alternative medicine factoids which, if taken seriously, would suggest that eliminating western medicine would be small loss. After all if you eliminated the health effects of bad habits, environmental poisons, bad genes, bad thoughts, and stress, the trillion dollar plus medical industry influences only ten percent of illnesses.
The absence of any evidence for the efficacy of holistic treatments (therapeutic touch, therapeutic massage, reflexology etc.) is not a problem because most western medicine has not been tested. If it does no harm, then it is as good as most medicine and certainly worth the fifty to sixty dollars an hour that will be charged at the three new centers. Sister Kathy explained that the real problem is that the patients are so confused by the plethora of new treatments that they need the medical equivalent of a spiritual advisor to help them sort out which treatment is compatible with their particular set of problems. A group of nurses have volunteered for this hazardous duty. In only ninety minutes or so for $75.00 they will help you select the specific panacea that will influence your unique body, mind, soul, demon, or spirit misfit.
I was with her every second until reflexology appeared on her list of cures. Reflexology? Old foot rubbing "zone therapy"? All of those diseased organs connected to the toes, or is it ears, or fingers, or meridians? Is it all of them, or only those you believe in? I would love to be a fly on the wall in a therapeutic advice session or two to find out if anything is too implausible to receive support. It has been my experience that the Holistic Community is loathe to engage in, if not completely ignorant of, constructive criticism. They chuckle and brag about how truly ancient their methods really are when they have no mechanism for sorting out the useful from the placebic. Western medicine relied on leaches, bleeding, and calomel in 1800 and if it had trusted to the critical approach of the American Holistic Medical Association would it have changed since? Middle class suburbanites are probably not threatened by flirting with comforting mental or spiritual treatments, and in the present day and age it sure beats going to church. But at sixty dollars an hour, not on my health care!
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