Guest guest Posted October 21, 2003 Report Share Posted October 21, 2003 Emmanuel, Wainwright, Ken, Rory and all you wonderful enlightened souls who dare to resist mediocrity, I am reminded of Ionesco's wonderful play (later a movie staring the late Zero Mostel) " Rhinoceros " . It starts off with these two guys sitting in a bar, when all of a sudden in charges a rhinoceros. But instead of a reaction of horror and fear, the people are astounded by the strength, the power. To make a long story short, one by one, each person in the town turns into a rhinoceros. Written in the 30's the play is an allegory as to how an entire nation, seduced by power and drawn in by a herd mentality could become Nazis. That being said, it will be a very slow process changing the way scientists, educators and physicians think, after a century dominated by wonderful technological advances, and a giddy belief that with enough money, any illness can be conquered. I'm sure, that all of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s recall how the cure for cancer was just around the corner. Remember? Just a few more million and for sure it will be conquered . Well the only thing around the corner has been earlier detection. It is the rhinoceros mentality, the ooing and ahing in admiration of all of the magnificant technology, such as genetic engineering, that has dulled bright people to stop thinking, and stop considering with appropriate analysis whether there are inherent flaws in the foundations of scientific method. What will change this inertia? The same thing that spurred the great Italian renaissance: a few brilliant and charismatic heretics willing to think differently, to dare to challenge the accepted assumptions, to be unafraid to publish their innovations, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, TO DEVELOP MANY STUDENTS. The money will come around, I am sure of it. But it is critically important that ideas be packaged attractively. That is what sold Carnegie 100 some odd years ago to endow allopathic medicine and essentially cut off any funding to homeopathic or eclectic medicine. Until that time there was no dominent medicine in America. With incredible clinical success, little funding, an educational farm system which leaves room by in large for much improvement, and all this in the face of a hostile and suspicious allopathic medical establishment, Oriental Medicine has already made astounding inroads into how medical consumers spend their money. I happened to pick up a book written in the 80s by a popular western MD today, and just 15 years ago, the accepted belief was that acupuncture efficacy was due to placebo. Few MDs believe that today. So don't be afraid. remember, the line " we can change the world? " Well we can! Yehuda On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:34:09 -0700 " Emmanuel Segmen " <susegmen writes: > Yehuda, > > I, for one, am more than happy to describe CM in the English > language by the following tenets of Wainwright. I would then go on > to tell you this .... my Chinese-born friends who are scientists in > the U.S. are in some cases the most anti Chinese medicine people > that I know. They are personally embarrassed by Chinese medicine. > Others of this same cohort are secretly supportive of CM for > personal use, but they tend to keep their use of it very low > profile. Your views, Yehuda, are certainly my views. I agree with > you completely. The truth is we've been out-voted. If you and I > apply for a teaching post at a public college or university in some > department of science and we present our honest views of CM, we will > likely not get the job on that basis alone. The level of teasing I > get from my science faculty colleagues who know of my daytime work > at Asia Natural is fairly intense. It keeps me amused. That said, > I completely share your views. > > Emmanuel Segmen > > > Wainwright wrote: > >It is pluralistic and heterogenous > >It is incoherent > >It is not scientific in any narrow, modern Western cultural sense > >It is associated with ways of thinking and approaching reality > which are different from the modern Western worldview > -- > > So, the next time a patient asks me about Chinese medicine, this is > what I should say to them?! > > Rory > > Dear Emanuel and Rory, > > I think that it's important to look at the glass as half full. > Pluralistic, heterogenous, and incoherent? perhaps, but recall an > exchange I had with Ken a couple of weeks ago where I was astounded > to realize that characters have served to unite " China " for at > least the last 2000 years and that unity of written language gives > the Chinese the > emormous advantage over any other culture or civilization in our > planet's history, of being able to have billions of people over a > large area communicate in a common written language. It is that > unity which by necessity creates some degree of unified and > distinctly unique " chinese " thought, in medicine too. > > Couldn't you also say that science seeks to create order out of > observed, often chaotic phemonena, and define those phenomena > according to rules which seem to work, that is until they are > disproven? In essence to try to establish the finity of the > previously unknown or infinite? > Knowledge, therefore, would be a relative term, and would only be as > good as the validity of information acquired. That is (from my > small perspective) why we can indeed consider Oriental Medicine to > be a science, like all sciences constantly evolving, and like all > sciences very imperfect. > > Yehuda > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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