Bron: Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde

Gepubliceerd op: 20-08-2009


Commentaar

Geen bewijs voor minder griepcomplicaties door oseltamivir

Sinds 7 augustus heeft men het Nederlandse beleid in verband met de Mexicaanse griep bijgesteld en
wordt de behandeling met griepremmers, dat wil zeggen met neuraminidaseremmers, alleen nog aan-
geraden bij patiënten die een verhoogd risico lopen: zwangeren in het derde trimester, patiënten die
een oproep voor de jaarlijkse griepprik krijgen, kinderen jonger dan 2 jaar en mensen met een ernstige
immuunstoornis of een gecompliceerd verloop van de griep (www.rivm.nl/cib/actueel/nieuws/beleid-aangepast.jsp).1

Literatuur

In medieval Europe, those who posessed spiritual knowledge were easily seen as witches and burnt alive under great public attention. The small group of people who used not just the physical, emotional and cognitive quadrants of the brain, but also the spiritual quadrant, was considered a threat to the ruling class. The church considered themselves as the only institute with the right to use the power of the spirit and the only accepted recepy of how to use the power of the spirit. Everyone who used this power in a different way was considered a threat and was prosecuted.

Fortunately we've abandoned this way of handling those who think differently a long time ago. But have we really become so much more civilized? Nowadays, in many countries the so-called alternative or complementary medical practitioners are in a difficult position. They acknowledge the power of the spirit and use it in medical methods, just as the medieval witches, often with highly advanced tools and technology. Nowadays it is not the church hunting them, but the traditional system of medicine opposes represses the alternatives as being non-scientific, non-evidence based, etc.

This is much more a conflict of humans than a conflict of science. Traditional medical practitioners typically follow Descartes’ paradigm. The key of this paradigm is that humans are essentially machines that sometimes need mechanical repairing. In Descartes’ view there was no place for something like the ‘soul’ in science, because its existence could not be proved. Today we would call this paradigm the biomedical paradigm. Based on this paradigm we have built a sophisticated and fairly succesful system of curing health problems. The alternative practitioners have not kicked out the soul. They see the trinity of body, mind and soul as an indivisible part of humans and life. Although many of them do not realize it themselves, their work is very much in agreement with modern physics. Quantum physics, the Unified Field Theory and String Theory are all closely related to the foundations of treatment on the basis of the body, mind and soul trinity. We could call the alternative practitioners’ paradigm therefore the biophysical paradigm. Do these two paradigms exclude each other, like many traditional medical practitioners suggest?

We could see the approach of traditional medicine as a top-down approach, using external influence or force to repair material stuff, whereas the alternative approach is bottom-up, stimulating the body to heal itself by using natural supplements, adding energy, releasing the soul, etc. If we make the analogy with business organizations we see that these approaches are almost necessarily complementary. In business we distinguish top-down activities, from the management to the employees, and bottom-up activities, from the employees towards the management. An organization is most flexible and powerful if both these directions are present and well-balanced, or entangled. Having only top-down activities kills all creativity and having only bottom up activity makes the organization into a drifting ship. In contemporary traditional medicine the top-down approach is considered to be the only effective approach. In organizational terms it would be like saying that all employees are silly and that everyone should listen to the omnipotent management. This is the dominant view from the industrial revolution.

The opposition against alternative practitioners can become very strong. Whereas in countries like South Africa and Australia the alternatives have become accepted as complementary, in the Netherlands recently the situation has gone so far that some alternative practitioners have been put on trial. One of these is amongst the most innovative and knowledgeable medical practitioners in the Netherlands. The story was that three alternative practitioners had helped a Dutch celebrity who suffered from breast cancer. Unfortunately the person died. An anti quacksalver group of the Dutch medical practitioners association found this a good reason to start a witch hunt. Strangely enough, these traditional practitioners demand that all deaths from traditional medical treatment are treated as cases of ‘natural cause of death’, whereas this showcase from the alternative sector was a clear case of murder in their view. In the Dutch public opinion, which is currently dominated by conservatism, the whole trial got the character of a witch hunt just as in the middle ages.

The judge considered one person who was a healer/chaneller not guilty because she was not an official medical doctor. She was just considered a charlatan. The two medical doctors that had turned to alternative approaches were considered guilty of the fact that they had not taken the person to a traditional doctor, even though this was completely against the will of the patient. Furthermore they took the blame for telling the patient that a virus was causing the cancer, instead of just the cancer, whereas recent insights strongly suggest that breast cancer is caused by a virus. In the end the judges considered that the practitioners has suffered already enough from the whole situation and were convicted but not sentenced. In this case it seems that the judges wanted to set an example for the alternatives to watch out because the next time they will be sentenced.

The story makes clear three things. First, whereas traditional and alternative medicine are naturally complimentary as top-down and bottom-up approaches, with both valuable knowledge and techniques, they now often oppose each other in a childish way in camps instead of trying to be open and learn. The victim of this silly behavior is the patient. Second, the belief in the biomedical paradigm is capable of holding back decades of scientific insights in biophysics to the extent that anyone who brings it up is ridiculed by ego’s on pedestals and hunted as far as into court. This second point again proves that it is not about wisdom but about humans and power. Third, the strong conflict can also be seen as a sign of an approaching transition. The anti quack association is an extreme minority with which a large part of the Dutch, including medical doctors do not see themselves represented. The fact that this case has had so much attention by the media forces everyone to take position. In this an increasing number of traditional medical practitioners who experience the limits of their own approach in practice are willing to give the alternatives the benefit of the doubt. They can be the breakthrough scientist to find a workable balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches in medicine.

In spite of the fact that the anti quack group is a group of extremists, the judges saw them as representing the general interest of the Dutch people. This strongly suggests that just like these doctors, the judges were also not willing to learn and simply convicted the biophysicists. After this case, dutch jurisprudence now says that alternatives should always send their patients to the traditionals first. In a way this is saying that the soul has no place in medicine, which means that the opposition between (biomedical) science and spirituality is ultimately materialized in this case. Modern (bio)physics has nowadays incorporated much of spirituality, but the biomedics still exclude the soul in line with with Descartes paradigm from 1650, now supported by the law. In a way this is not so much different from medieval times. Putting it strongly, it is prohibited by law to seriously practice anything other than the ruling traditional paradigm without the permission of these rulers, even if the patient demands it. Can we become any more conservative?

Source: www.spiralscience.net
Link: http://tinyurl.com/mbu83x