Recent column sparks charge of bias
Dear Dr. Fox: Your appeal to indigenous wisdom was a big disappointment. Your biases sure do come through. When these systems are actually scientifically tested, they fail, and by promoting them, you give false hope to people who use them instead of real science and medicine. Just ask Steve Jobs. Oh, you can’t — he used naturalistic treatments instead of real medicine, and by the time he realized it did not work, it was too late.
M.J.P., West Palm Beach,
Florida
Dear M.J.P.: Your declaration that I am somehow “biased” in referencing indigenous wisdom as a contributing element in One Health philosophy is understandable, considering your own evident biases of scientism and rationalism. Indigenous wisdom includes, in modern parlance, evidence-based medicine in our ancestral determinations of harmful and beneficial herbs. It is also a source of complementary therapies in holistic human and veterinary medicine.
Science alone cannot be the basis of disease treatment and prevention.
For instance, there was no scientific basis established until relatively recently for the analgesic benefits of aspirin. Aspirin contains salicylate, a compound found in plants such as the willow tree and myrtle. Its use was first recorded around 4,000 years ago. Hippocrates used willow bark for relieving pain and fevers, and some people still use willow bark as a natural remedy for headaches and minor pain.
People in the U.S. spent some 8% of their income on food and 11% on medicines and health care in 2019, according to one review. Other reports put per-person annual food costs at around $7,700, and $11,170 for medical expenses. Healthful food and its production are more costly, but are the first principle of preventive medicine. This is being realized by evermore enlightened vegan, vegetarian and organic-food advocates.
Albert Schweitzer spoke of the physician “awakening the healer within,” which is also one of the aims of the practitioners of indigenous healing wisdom, as was told to me personally by Fools Crow, the well-known Sioux leader. In psychodynamic terms, this is stimulating the will to live, which all good physicians and veterinarians look for in their patients when deciding on a course of treatment.
All of this sounds “unscientific” to the Big Pharma pill-pushers, who have neuroscience evidence of the effects of various psychotropic drugs on brain and behavior — convincing many doctors to market antidepressants, anxiolytics, sedatives and sleeping pills. I say this is nuts.
Dear Dr. Fox: We would appreciate you posting this notice.
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