Politics. The giant medical/pharmac...

Politics. The giant medical/pharmaceutical lobbies. Irrational fears. Bias. Misinformation. Just plain ignorance. These factors must be what's at play behind sum of two units recent articles by Gina Kolata in The fresh York Times (June 17 and June 18 1996)

In the titles and headings, alone, we have: "On Fringes of Health Care, Untest Therapies Thrive"; "A Reliance in succession Anecdotes"; "Natural Healing, or Quackery?" "In inquirys Outside Mainstream, Medical Projects Rewrite Rules"; and "Advising the Public upon Risky Therapies"labels and questions that are clearly loaded with negative associations and rife with journalistic (and philosophical) bias. Let's await at just one of the more misinformed/biased remarks: "On Fringes of Health Care, Untest Therapies Thrive": Can't be safe what Ms. Kolata is referring to here.

Fringes? About 1619 years ago, Hippocrates, the father of recent "conventional" medicine, embraced concepts closer to the principles of homeopathy (e.g., like method of treatments like) than the the "drug `em and forget `em" approach popular with many of the so-called "orthodox" or "mainstream" physicians. Homeopathy also has correlaries in naturopathic medicine, which began with the revereed European nature-cure movement of the nineteenth hundred Ayurvedic Medicine, Tibetan Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine are orthodox medicine for billions of population today. An unsophisticated drug-happy Western physician would be considered the quack in societies which venerate the wisdom, and efficacy, of these ancient medical methods Therefore, if anything, so-called "orthodox" medicine is upon the fringe of health care methods which were helping people thousands of years before it was level on the scene.

Untested? Vitamins, minerals, and other natural mingles are also the subjects of rigorous scientific analysis and clinical investigation, with centurys of studies each year examining the drifts of vitamins and vitamin-like combines (such as A, C, E the carotenoids, flavonoids, alpha-lipoic acid, etc) minerals (selenium, for example), and various nutriment compounds, not to mention treatment modalities.

Why worry? As industry analyst and veteran journalist, Peter Barry Chowka, pointed without in a July 9th letter: "The fresh York Times' enormous influence as the `newspaper of record' makes these articles a cause for pertain to The timing seems ironic forward the heels of two prosperous alternative medicine conferences in the nation's capital [] and the imminent [approval] of the Access to Medical Treatment Act by dint of the U.S. Congress."

The mainstreaming of credible complementary medicine must happen. I encourage you all to write The of the present day York Times and let them know for what cause much respect we have for natural medicine and natural harvests and how little tolerance we have for inaccurate reporting.

In pious health!

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