What Doctors Have In Common With Nazis And What They Can Do About It

I can see how medicine can be used as apowerful means of social control. Incidentally, Hitler’s mad dad made Hitler’s mother weep.

I work with doctors, and I know where you are coming from, but as with many things, this isn’t completely black and white.

I agree with you in terms of anything minor as well as management of many chronic diseases.

But – you were in a bad car accident, or some other sort of physical trauma where you were in danger of dying … you would probably want a physician.

Dude, this post is a joke. I get it that you’re talking about Western medicine as an ‘authoritarian’ knowledge system, but comparing the NHS to the NSDAP is utterly ridiculous -and people who have lived through that sickening regime would find it offensive. Authoritarianism is less extreme than fascism, and fascism is slightly less extreme than National Socialism. And really, there isn’t just “one way to do things in medicine”: that’s why there is such a thing as a ‘medical opinion’ and a ‘second opinion’ in the physician’s world. Medicine is starting to develop personalised medicine based on taking biomarkers such as brain scans and genetic data to customise treatment specifically for one person. Drugs are also being developed that work best for people with certain combinations of genes, thus improving the likelihood that they work and the side effects are minimised.

Whilst you could analyse Western medicine as a ‘power structure’, it’s actually technology based on a scientific epistemology. Doctors use evidence to choose the best choice from the possible treatments available and it’s done a fantastic amount in creating the world we have today. Calling it a ‘belief system’ is technically true, although talking about it with the connotation that medicine facts are *just* beliefs is highly misleading. Medical facts constitute scientific knowledge, like it or not. The real problem with Western medicine is the influence of capitalism. Yes, pharmaceutical companies are out to make a profit, and will think most about what can sell rather than what is best for the patient. However, it does take 15 years to develop and test a drug, costing millions of pounds to do so; obviously they need to get their costs back somewhere.

Holistic techniques work because they have an underlying biomedical mechanism that can be studied by scientific techniques; it’s just that not much research has been done at the moment so some of it looks a bit mysterious. There’s some good examples of how these work below:

1) Acupuncture works because it induces a complex adaptive response from the nervous system that alters the regulation of pain circuitry. To put it simply, the spinal cord and nerves get ‘stuck in pain mode’, and need to be ‘jump-started’ or ‘reprogrammed’ to get out of pain mode.

2) Meditation can work because attentional systems can indirectly regulate somatic nervous circuits. Most of the chakras in Ayurvedic medicine are located in the same place as nerve plexi. For example, the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) is literally a mini-brain that lines and controls the gut. Stress, for example, can cause aggravation of the gastrointestinal tract.

3) Homoeopathy works, it’s just no better than placebo, and shouldn’t be taken without conventional medicine. People who do that tend to die more often than people who take the proper drugs.

4) General positive thinking can improve health because the nervous system controls the endocrine system. This is studied formally in the field of psychoneuroendocrinology.

The irony in your argument is that you implicitly believe that you are above the system. Doctors *are* taught to critically evaluate the things they are taught. However, you are jumping head-first onto some spiritualist bandwagon with no critical thought yourself. Part of the reason that medical institutions don’t want to listen to stuff about alternative medicine is that its proponents are people with arguments like yours: you aren’t proving the effectiveness of alternative medicine, yet you argue in an arrogant and extremely patronising way. Like it or not, the world is something we can understand, and by understanding it, we can better it. This requires well-researched medical methods, whether Western or alternative, their effectiveness must be validated before their advocacy.

Although you make some good points, your argument in this post is dangerously one-sided and downright patronising to medical professionals. You are not going to cure cancer with spirituality: you need evidence-based methods for that.

Well if there isn’t room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, then what sort of hippie free-for-all is this?

Thanks mate. And best wishes for the future.

Dan

Interesting comments here. As a CAM practitioner of 10 years and a part Native person I can say that healing techniques that are alternative work but it depends on the individual and on the practitioner and the medicine used and many other things like timing and intention, etc… I believe evidence-based medicine is often manipulated and controlled and outcomes are skewed often by the research investigator(s) and by pharmaceutical companies for mere profits. Now if we go back in time surgery started in Asia, specifically China and then India- there traditional doctors practiced plant-based therapies, rituals along with surgery which are now claimed to have originated in Western society- not true. The Asian were doing surgical techniques long before Western medicine came along…. In Russia and Romania, they often combine Western and natural medicine but certainly very little of this happens in NZ because of mainstream medicine and Christianity overall, who are often superstitious of alternatives. Studying various forms of natural medicine there are good and bad practices of course because people are people. Herbs bought in a bottle are not the same as herbs taken fresh or in dried form, so often because people are using things in a bottle the effects are limiting. When one lives in an environment that they are really apart of by using plants and hunting and eating things that live and grow w/in that environment naturally whether Native plants or introduced or invasive species people carry different energies than the average person. There are different types of energies in the natural world and people who have an affinity with their natural environment and are apart of the environment have more power to heal and I am not talking about educational skills or degrees here- I am talking about something that can be closely associated with Maori word ‘mana’ or else referred to as ‘power.’ Very few Western doctors have any special ability to see into people without using instruments or tests and then many alternative practitioners impose false assumptions onto their patients or in other words give false positives to people to instill belief or hope into their clients and to keep the dependent and the money rolling in. Sometimes this works but when the patient ends up in the hospital because of some alternative practitioner not being realistic then all the alternative practitioners get a bad wrap for it. Their is a lack of practical sensibility here and there is also no insight in providing accurate information to the client be the alternative practitioner who is also playing god. In W. medicine- the doctor has very little independent skill/intuition unless he is a surgeon and he must rely on synthesized drugs to treat his patients because he has no real healing power to know how to eliminate or reduce the problem without his cookbook of drug prescriptions or common advice. People do not use their senses overall and there are times you need a Western doctor for emergencies but there are times which are more often than not that you do not need a doctor or his drug prescription(s) but only a change in your lifestyle or eating habits or to get out of a bad or stressful situation or to stop exposing yourself to chemicals. It is important to use both forms of medicine and to know how to use both so that you have control over your life. Doctors are not GODS and people should stop putting them up on pedestals. There are some good doctors who really care for people and who are good surgeons and smart about what they do and those are the ones we should seek when we need their assistance. However many doctors as I said have no insight or healing abilities to be able to help their patients without the use of drugs- and many of those drugs are not necessary at all and can cause more problems in the long run with long-term use/exposure. Of course it is a persons choice whether they wish to use drugs or not to treat their problem. Herbs are also drugs but they are processed differently and believe it or not most prescription drugs are based off herbal-drug molecular structures but are synthetically derived/produced and often chemically altered. Foxglove is a good example which is known as the drug digitalis, which in natural form is a Native American herb used for heart ailments. Now people spend all their money buying this as a drug prescription when all they have to do is take a bit of the root of the plant which is toxic but in small doses for a short duration very effective in healing (best to gather in late summer). However because people do not know how to use the plant itself and W. medicine shuns people away from doing this because they wish to control/regulate and require that a patient buy a prescription drug- and they are afraid of nature but not drugs….. and most indigenous people or first nation people who lived in an area for many generations knew what plants or minerals to use but when European diseases arrived (and practices were lost) that were often deadly W. medicine eventually became the super power and dominated other forms of medicine because 1) white people wished to control others with their medicine and religion and 2) they did not have any affinity or power with the natural world and instilled fear into people and prevented them from knowing nature because the white people were scared of them and believed they were satanic. It is not all that different today but the only thing is that indigenous people have stopped practicing or reviving their cultural practices because they either got too forgotten or they themselves have taken on the white mans ways. Now we have white people using more natural medicine and having a greater understanding of plant medicinal use than indigenous people who were forbidden but many do not know the power of nature still. Luckily there were branches of Christianity that believed in the power of natural healing- and those Christians believed god gave us nature or mother nature to help heal us- the 7th Day Adventists, Quakers and some Baptists groups maintained a belief in natural healing more than other religious groups who conformed to mainstream religion and practices and believed plants and natural powers belonged to the devil! Funny thing is that the evil that is being practiced out there in W. society is mostly done by people who have been messed-up in the head from mainstream religion/abuse.

One true story- a man who was put in prison back in the old days was diagnosed with colon cancer. At the time the food provided to the inmates was not very good or health. However he ate the food but each time before he ate he blessed his food. In due course while remaining in prison he cured himself of colon cancer just by blessing his food.

Moral of the story- Attitude (or belief) is not everything but it can sure help! and sometimes that is all that is necessary. But in some cultures like NZ one must pay someone a fee to instill this attitude or belief in them- sometimes the higher the doctors fee, the stronger the belief that it is going to work. Once Dr. Jeremy Ross said in an herbal class I was in (he is from the UK btw), “if the patient does not pay then the treatment does not work!” This is very Western mentality and it would be the opposite in some Asian or indigenous cultures who disbelieve doctors who charge high prices because they often feel they are fake and not caring of all people! and only catering to those who can afford to pay.