Medical Flat Earthers

Posted by Michael Lingard on 22 June 2008 | 2 Comments

Tags: Mind-Body Medicine

Recently a certain Professor of Exeter University department of complementary medicine proclaimed “Homoeopathy doesn’t work, there is no scientific evidence that it does”. Here is a well-educated intellectual “medical flat earthers”. After a thorough and lengthy investigation by the House of Lords Science & Technology working party, all the mainstream CAM therapies were given a guarded acknowledgement that they truly contributed to the health and healing of patients.This was indeed a positive step towards a better philosophy of the healing arts, a significant shift in the old mechanistic paradigm.

The Gold Standard of medical science, we are all told, is the double blind controlled trial. It is this test that all therapeutic systems and methods are supposed to pass in order to be accepted as valid and worthy of financing or research funding. I

magine that it wasn’t generally known that we live in a three dimensional world, that we believed everything went on in our lives on a flat surface, there were north south east and west backwards and forwards left and right but no up and down. Our scientists would develop trials and tests based on this model of the world and all new concepts would be put through these trials. Any system which required the third dimension for its validation would automatically be denounced as beyond scientific possibility, no rational explanation, and any benefits that the system demonstrated in practice would be put down to “placebo effects” or by chance only. To try to point out that what makes people special is their ability to stand upright and walk tall would be seen as scientific heresy or madness since “everyone” knows we all crawl around flat on the ground! Whole medical systems would be developed to help the sick so they felt better crawling over the earth, anyone complaining they felt they ought to be upright and feeling depressed because they weren’t would be given appropriate drugs to ward off these aberrant sensations. Groups of folk believing there could be a better life, develop ideas of this “other world” and little by little have great numbers of followers who claim there is a better world in which we could all move in all directions and where we would all walk tall with our heads held high and filled with a sense of wonder. They are persecuted, by the established thinkers or dismissed as misguided simpletons needing better teaching. Some will have recognized the problems that beset the flat earthers are the very problems that challenge us today.

If we demand the only accepted reality is one that says all knowledge is already known, there can be no other unknowns of any consequence, life is as it is demonstrated to be an inevitable outcome of an infinite number of chance events over an infinite time span, or a most beautiful concoction of mindless atoms, then what we have is much the same as our amusing flat earthers. The dangers arise when anyone dares to suggest an alternative scenario; trying to conceive the unknown is a hazardous task. Anyone in the “real” world will be able to demolish any concept on the simple basis that it is not proven by our current science, therefore cannot be. Is this because the belief is wrong, or that the current science is inadequate for the task?

Many are now suggesting we need to broaden our science to be better able to encompass the present unknowns. This happens easily in the field of particle physics, cosmology, and all the frontiers of material science. Why has this not happened in the field of the nonmaterial sciences? It is here that the flat earthers are holding back man’s scientific advances, they are forcing every life experience, observation and phenomenon into the straightjacket of old material scientific thinking.

Over a century has passed since one of the great thinkers of this era tried to meet this challenge, to somehow bring the precision and critical power of scientific thinking and research to help us bridge the divide between the material observable and measurable and the immaterial unseen and un-measurable. Rudolf Steiner was one intellectual and spiritual giant who gave the world a personal glimpse of how we might achieve this task. If we make some faltering steps in the right directions we may discover this world is not so flat as we have been led to believe! Rudolf Steiner used the expression “spiritual science” to describe this melding of all knowledge and wisdom, the seen and unseen, the measurable and the immeasurable, the here and now and the timeless and infinite, the earthly and the cosmic. Few, if any, have attempted such an awesome task since. We cannot measure love, kindness, sympathy, grief, fear and hate, but all sane people know these things are as real as metal and stone. These things and many more that involve imagination, inspiration, and greater awareness, are not only real but perhaps should be regarded as the foundations of reality in life and the universe.Then there is the faulty application of our modern medical model. The double blind trial (DBT) reminds me of Economics; that “the demand for pigs depends on the price of pigs” (Ceteris Paribus) or in the vernacular if everything else in the world stays the same!! The reality is it doesn’t! The other criticism of the DBT system is that it is only applied when it suits; the vast majority of surgical procedures are not subject to it, nor are the majority of non-drug treatment regimes of doctors. Perhaps a touch of good common sense has been behind this anomaly, trying to subject the infinite variations of practical therapeutics with the uniqueness of each patient would not lend itself to “double blind trials”.

Let us try to develop some more substantial trial system that can work with such complex therapeutic systems rather than force a simplistic measuring tool on them. When we do find such a system it will help improve all forms of healthcare including surgery, general practice, nursing and CAM. We will first have to agree on what constitutes a successful outcome for our patients! While this is restricted to survival rates or suppression of symptoms we will not make much progress. It will have to incorporate the concept of health and well being, of patient happiness and peace, of individual, family, community and world health.

As another giant in the medical world, Professor Konstantin Buteyko, once remarked that modern medicine has no philosophy, but is driven by blind empiricism. Must we continue through these Dark Ages of Medicine allowing the old flat earthers dominate our thinking? Or dare we be courageous enough to acknowledge our ignorance and lack of understanding of the world beyond our normal senses and try to incorporate it into a broader scientific model of health and medicine which will allow us to make more rational statements about the validity or otherwise of any therapy, CAM or orthodox?

A dawn of a New Age of Enlightenment, not only in medicine but across all disciplines?

Michael Lingard BSc, DO, BIBHProfessional Health Consultantwww.totalhealthmatters.co.uk