‘Whole New Medicine’

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 11

‘Whole New Medicine’

The direction of Western medicine is being increasingly questioned and alternative approaches to the orthodox treatments are being accepted. On Two tonight, a Horizon programme, “A Whole New Medicine,” explores some of the alternatives to conventional treatments.

Horizon reports on the critical state of medicine in America where, in spite of the increasing sophistication of modern medical care, people are not getting any healthier. In particular the programme looks at the beginnings of a revolution in health care, based on holistics, described by its adherents as “the medicine of the whole person: mind, body and spirit.” Holistic medicine is, to say the least, unconventional. Its practitioners use unorthodox therapies like

acupuncture, meditation, homeopathy and even laying on of hands on their patients. Ignoring the accusations of quackery from their colleagues, the new holistic doctors firmly believe that orthodox medicine is on the wrong track. Orthodox medicine, they say, views the body as a series of interchangeable parts and has developed very sophisticated procedures for removing and repairing them, while holistic medicine views the mind/body system as an integrated whole.

They claim that in spite of the many successes of orthodox medicine it fails to treat successfully up to 80 per cent of illness — in particular the chronic diseases like heart disease, arthritis and cancer.

In the programme a professor of anaesthesiology is

shown treating arthritis with acupuncture, a professor of cardiology gives his high blood pressure patients not drugs but meditation, and a family doctor lays his hands on a woman with an enlarged thyroid.

How often do such therapies work? Orthodoxy has, up till now, rejected them as unscientific; they have no apparent mechanisms and so cannot, in theory, be efficacious. The benefits are said to be due mainly to the patients’ faith in the therapy. The holistic doctors admit this may be part of the answer but say, “Let’s use the therapy now and work out what the mechanisms are later.” They also argue that the alternative therapies are much safer and cheaper.

Behind the new movement is a growing recognition that the mind has a far

greater role to play in health and sickness than was thought. With the help of bio-feedback, patients are now being taught to control bodily systems that were once considered not to be under conscious control: for example, blood flow, temperature and heart rate. More controversial is the idea that diseases like cancer can be reversed if the patient visualises the natural immune systems of his body actually'attacking and destroying the cancer cells within him.

Is this the beginning of a revolution in medical thinking? Is the medical profession ready to accept these new therapies? The film shows the challenge they may have to meet. “A Whole New Medicine” was written and produced for the 8.8. C. by Tony Edwards.