on Feb 5th, 2006Alternative Medicine - The Great Carnack or Dr. Zhivago
Whenever I read about alternative medicine, I always imagine a doctor wearing a sari, burning incense, and speaking in a language that might just as well make sense to whales. Flowery explanations of how the mind is connected to the body form the introduction, which is usually followed by a set of products to cure the ailment.
Then there’s the alternative name for it, complementary medicine. It sounds like a benign practice of thanking the gods for good health. Sorting the quackery from the practical requires more than Johnny Carson donning a turban and playing The Great Carnack. So beware! Even when you’re on your death bed, the charlatans are busy hawking their complementary medicine, no money down, just four easy installment payments — listing as a beneficiary in your will is an accepted form of payment.
So-called complementary and alternative medicine has gained a foothold in today’s medical world, garnering grudging respect from many mainstream physicians and researchers. Medical centers such as UCLA and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City have created integrative programs, and medical schools increasingly offer courses in the field.
But with this measure of legitimacy has come a rise in unprofessional, even fraudulent, practitioners. Using the Internet and word-of-mouth to promote their services — and nuggets of science to defend their treatments — these peddlers of unproven cures offer hope to desperately sick people in imaginative new ways.
Life and Death on Fringes of Medicine
Erica and Clive McLean turned to alternative therapy to beat his cancer, but he died. Still, it’s a practice gaining widespread acceptance
By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 4, 2006
