remedies even if only as a placebo? According to studies in UK homeopathic hospitals, 70 per cent of patients report improvements in their condition when treated with placebos. Yet even this meets with resistance from practitioners of conventional medicine. The perceived success, they say, that a patient may experience from using alternative remedies to cure even one condition, could lead to the patient’s belief that these remedies can be used as treatment for future and potentially more serious conditions. A large amount of vital time and money could be wasted in the pursuit of ineffective alternative remedies, to the point where there remains not enough of either for the conventional care and cure the patient needs. In the case of Steve Jobs, who had all the money it would ever have been necessary to spend on treatment (and indeed, when finally agreeing to orthodox treatment, spent large amounts of money on pioneering work, such as DNA sequencing for €76.000), it was time he had sadly run out of. There is only a handful of alternative practices which have made it into the ‘complementary’ category, which is to say that they are recognised as being of some potential benefit when combined with conventional medicine. The UK House of Lords Select Committee has agreed that massage, counselling, hypnotherapy, nutritional medicine, yoga, aromatherapy, the Alexander Technique, Bach and other flower remedies, meditation, reflexology, ayurvedic medicine and shiatsu can now form part of mind-body complementary therapies; although, these are still considered largely only to be acceptable in the control of chronic pain as part of palliative care than in any other area. As conventional medicine is however the dominant paradigm and (in spite of the growing popularity of alternative treatments) will remain to be so, then the onus will always be on the proponents and practitioners of alternative therapies to prove their remedies to be scientifically effective. After all, every orthodox medicine on the market has had to do the same. If this cannot be done, then maybe the scientists have a point? As the comedian Tim Minchin controversially quipped, “You know what they call ‘alternative medicine’ that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” e
Practitioners of conventional medicine hit back with the undeniable truth that holistic treatments have very little scientific basis to support them
34 / ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE MARCH 2012
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