Alternative Health Care

1. The Emergence of Alternative Medicine

1 The Emergence of Alternative Medicine In 1983 when Joshua, my oldest son, was eighteen months old, a hot iron fell on his foot and remained there until the person watching him discovered it. Most ofthe skin on the top of his tiny foot was gone. The emergency room doctor, his pediatrician ' and three or four physician friends who examined him all agreed this was a "third-degree burn." There was no way it could ever heal by itself. The only reasonable course of action was a skin graft. The well-known surgeon at a highly regarded burn center concurred. Laura (his mother) and I both felt lucky that the surgery could be scheduled very quickly. But our feelings changed when we found out that our son would have to be tied to his bed for the entire lengthy hospitalization to prevent him from scratching at the graft, and that the sight of this would be so upsetting that we would be restricted to a briefvisit each day. There had to be something else we could try before subjecting our little baby, no less ourselves, to such an ordeal. Laura's brother had a suggestion. He knew that in Japan, after the atomic bomb was dropped, the juice ofthe aloe vera plant had been used to treat people with much more severe burns. When we decided to try this ourselves, the Japanese proprietor of a nearby nursery offered helpful advice on which parts ofthe plant to use and how to start growing our own supply so as not to be dependent on him. Three times a day I carefully dripped the freshly cut aloe vera onto the wound. As I did, I drew on my 1 Copyrighted Material 2 Chapter One own knowledge about how imagery affects the body. I would speak to my son in a soothing voice, pointing his finger at his foot and describing over and over what I wanted to happen: "The white part ofyour skin at the edge is a tiny bit bigger than it was yesterday, the dark part is a tiny bit smaller. . .. Good, good. Your skin is getting stronger. Let's think about how the juice is helping your skin grow." In about three months the foot had healed. By the time Joshua was six, only the slightest outline of the burn could be detected. fu soon as it was clear that the burn had healed, Laura proposed that we get in touch with all the physicians who had advised a skin graft for our son. Surely they would want to know about a less intrusive and less costly alternative. Those we spoke with were all happy about the outcome. But not a single one was willing to say that they might suggest our solution to someone else in a similar predicament. It wasn't only their fear of a malpractice suit. Most were frank: treating a third-degree burn with aloe vera was just too far removed from what they had learned, and what their colleagues would find acceptable. Our experience, no matter how important for us, meant little or nothing to them. By 1996, when I started to write this book, the situation was vastly different. In September ofthat year, a Life Magazine cover story, "The Healing Revolution," predicted that health care in America was about to be "completely transformed" by the integration of "ancient medicine and new science to treat everything from the common cold to heart disease." The first page featured a dramatic photograph of cardiac surgery being performed at New York City'S Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital , with an "energy healer" laying on hands alongside the surgeon . Anyone who frequents a newsstand would hardly have been surprised to come upon this cover story. During the few months prior, stories about alternative medicine had appeared on the covers of both Newsweek and Time. Copyrighted Material The Emergence ofAlternative Medicine 3 These prominent cover stories are but one manifestation of the immense amount of attention that the mass media have given to something that is variously referred to as "alternative medicine," "holistic medicine," or "complementary medicine ." A visit to any large chain bookstore will reveal an abundance of books about alternative medicine; they fill the large sections devoted to health, medicine, self care, and self help. Just one of Deepak Chopra's books on alternative medicine, AgelessBody) Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old) has sold more...