The following is excerpted from Green
Medicine: Challenging the Assumptions of Conventional Health Care, available from North Atlantic Books.
Normal Science
Perhaps the most disappointing and
disturbing realization that I came to after five years of medical school and
residency training was that almost no one was interested in discussing the
nature of health and illness, disease and cure, or the cutting edge of new
developments in the quest to heal the sick. There was virtually no interest, no
innovation — an intellectual vacuum. There was little desire to examine novel
ideas, and sometimes even contempt for anything other than the latest
state-of-the-art technological advancements within the confines of mainstream
medicine.
Not a moment was spent discussing medical
history or the history of scientific innovations, for that matter. It was as if
to say that all that had come before was essentially irrelevant to the practice
of medicine, or was only of value to the academician or the intellectually
curious. Imagine if you took all photos of departed loved ones, threw them
away, and resolved never to talk about them
with your family and friends ever again, because it was believed to be of no practical value to the present or
future. Likewise and
equally disturbing was the fact that not a moment of class time was spent on the philosophical
underpinnings of medical practice, or the philosophy of scientific ideas or methodologies; there was no
seeking to understand
what it was that we were doing or why we were doing it. Much to my dismay, even within the halls of the
psychiatry department there was a remarkable lack of interest in these pertinent and essential
topics.
I suppose I was naïve to expect that
medical scientists would be naturally curious about the historical and
philosophical origins of their profession. And yes, you can study the history
of science, the history of medicine, or the philosophy of science in the
rarified halls of academia, but do not be fooled into believing that these
fields of knowledge inform the average doctor pumped out by the assembly line
of conventional medical education. Like many successful industries, the end
product is guaranteed to be of the highest quality, pre-packaged with white
coats and stethoscopes, standardized and homogenized, ready to meet the needs
of the demanding consumer. Independent thought is not permitted to gum up the
works. And by extension, these cookie-cutter doctors are designed to serve
mainstream consumers and their cookie-cutter maladies. But there is one serious
glitch in the educational program. People and their ailments rarely conform to
the size or shape of the cookie-cutters that medical graduates acquire by
virtue of their long years of medical training.
In my initial enthusiasm as a newly
enrolled medical student, I initiated the formation of an alternative medicine
club. I went through the proper channels and obtained permission from the
administration to use classroom space for meetings. The wheels were set in
motion and flyers were made up to advertise the first meeting. But my
excitement was quickly dashed when I was called to the dean's office at the
last moment. I was informed that persons involved in accrediting the university
would soon be visiting the campus, and that the club posed too great a
potential threat to the status of the school. I remained undaunted and was
given permission, ironically, by the Unitarian church directly adjacent to the
university campus to hold meetings in their basement conference room. Our club
was ultimately a success, and many young minds were corrupted with ideas of
medical heresy that year. In fairness, that was almost twenty years ago, and I
do know firsthand that the average medical student nowadays is significantly
more receptive to green medical practices. However, the glacial speed with
which modern medical institutions are inclined to change remains a significant
impediment to progress.
Thomas Kuhn, the influential historian and
philosopher of science, would have said that my frustration revolves around the
nature and activities of "normal science." Normal science entails the everyday
activities of scientists who are engaged in research and practicing within the
framework of assumptions of the prevailing scientific paradigm. Kuhn also
popularized the term "paradigm" in relation to scientific pursuits to mean the
worldview, underlying assumptions, or set of rules regarding how a particular
branch of science is viewed, structured, and practiced. This means that persons
engaged in the activities of normal science within a given scientific paradigm
are busy studying and testing phenomena that fall within the parameters of that
branch of science. What they are not busy doing is questioning or
challenging the underlying assumptions of the consensus of the scientific
community and its cultural milieu.
Kuhn's most significant contribution to
the field is his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is
a staple of almost every Philosophy of Science 101 course. Some excerpts
from this important work will help develop my theme:
Scientists work from
models acquired through education and through subsequent exposure to the
literature often without quite knowing or needing to know what characteristics
have given these models the status of community paradigms.23
They do not need to know because they are
occupied with working within, and not disputing, the set of rules they have
assimilated from their education and cultural environment. If an experimental
outcome does not conform to preconceived expectation, then the result is
commonly believed to be due to ineffective technique on the part of the
investigator and not to erroneous assumptions made by the paradigm the research
is conducted in. Kuhn also speaks of the peculiar colorblindness of the
scientific enterprise:
Closely examined, whether
historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems an
attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that
the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth
new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not
seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they
are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific
research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that
the paradigm already supplies.24
Resistance to new ideas and forcing the
natural world to conform to a predetermined framework is particularly egregious
in the field of orthodox medicine. Take, for example, the historical reluctance
to acknowledge the existence of an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
The rationale has been that, since CFS cannot be proven through examination or
testing, it can not exist. As we shall see later [in Green Medicine], the existence of all diagnostic entities can be
called into question because they are artificial, predetermined constructs of
modern medicine, but for now, I will frame the discussion in conventional
terms. In those terms, then, once all possibilities of "real" and "legitimate"
physical maladies that might account for the fatigue of the CFS sufferer, such
as anemia or hypothyroidism, are ruled out, it is, by default, assumed to be a
psychiatric condition. This demeaning assessment carries with it the
implication that the problem is "all in the head" of the complainant.
Science as Myth
Popular culture tends to equate science
with truth or objective fact, failing to understand that conventional science
does not have a corner on the market of potential lenses for viewing the
natural world. Each new pronouncement made by the scientific community is
assumed to be true and tends to be accepted by the mainstream with minimal, if
any, critical analysis. To recognize the extent of this wholesale yielding to
scientific authority one needs only to observe how popular news programs and
newspapers dutifully report the results of the latest scientific studies.
Predictably, for example, each new
nutritional "fact" supported by the research can trigger a cascade of food products making various
health claims, which is followed by a stampede of consumers all too willing to fall for each
dietary quick
fix-even while the next "fact" indicated by the latest data may well contradict the previous.
A levelheaded review of these trends in
medical science should make one wonder about the "scientific" nature of the
science that it claims to be. Scientific flip-flopping is commonly
characterized by research authorities as the price we pay for medical progress
as our knowledge grows through a process of trial and error. I would propose,
however, that it more closely resembles chaos, and the truth regarding its
ultimate value in terms of human health is a much more difficult thing to
discern. A full perspective required to make an accurate judgment is not
accessible to us through truncated studies that examine only pieces of a story
and parts of the human body.
There is something seriously askew in the
fickle way with which the scientific community makes its authoritative claims,
and the corresponding willingness of the gullible public to uncritically accept
whatever they are spoon-fed. This is the very same dynamic that causes some
hungering souls to accept in blind faith whatever their spiritual leaders
decree as truth. Dr. Edward Whitmont, in The Alchemy of Healing, his
powerful examination of the nature of health and illness, boldly draws little
distinction between modern science and myth:
We rarely stop to
consider that any truth is multifaceted and that the postulated validity and
claims of absolute truth of the current scientific ideas rest on a priori
metaphysical assumptions . . . these modes of belief, in their sweeping claims,
have become culturally dominant modes of thinking. As a priori ideas, they are mere
mythologems, the mythologems of the post Renaissance/Enlightenment period. As
mythologems, albeit contemporary ones, they have no more claim to absolute
truth than any other myths.25
Myth here does not mean untrue, but rather
denotes the stories produced by the human psyche that serve to impart meaning
to humankind's existence. In this sense, the myth of the tree of knowledge in
the Garden of Eden is a powerful metaphor for a psychic reality, but it is no
more or less true than the story of the rise of modern technological society,
whose abilities to travel to the moon and to unravel the secrets of DNA contain
within them the promise of someday solving humanity's problems. Just as in the
myth of Atlantis, where an advanced civilization was ultimately destroyed by
greater cosmic forces because its advanced state of high technology had come at
the expense of nature and soul, so too, twenty-first century technological
society flirts with self-destruction when it arrogantly presumes to be able to
master and control the forces of nature. According to some, the consequences of
ignoring the higher laws of the universe ultimately led to the downfall of
Atlantis through a karmic correction in the form of volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, and tidal waves.
Modern humans are just now becoming aware
of how their quest for control over nature may be contributing to the
phenomenon of global warming. Will we heed the warning or will we plunge ahead
in reckless disregard? Medical science may be able to synthesize a drug that
reliably lowers a fever, but the assumption that it is desirable to lower a
fever is a highly debatable question whose answer has far-reaching consequences
and depends upon each individual situation. Shall we forge ahead and lower that
fever anyway, simply because pharmaceutical technology makes it possible? Our lack
of understanding and failure to heed the messages of nature have resulted in an
unprecedented degradation of the environment and a corresponding desecration of
the body-heart-mind-soul. Education of professional and layperson alike
regarding green medical philosophy and its holistic/ecological worldview will
be essential if we are ever to reverse this recent and rapid decline.
These materialistic and metaphysical
assumptions about the nature of a universe that science aims to study are no
less arbitrary than the assumptions that underpin disciplines that are not
considered "scientific" by scientists, such as parapsychology, numerology,
alchemy, or the study of the psycho-spiritual archetypes of Carl Jung's
collective unconscious. Because scientific endeavor is usually not concerned
with reflecting upon its own underlying assumptions, the vast majority of its
energy is directed toward deepening what it already does know rather than expanding
the breadth of knowledge into what it does not know.
This disposition toward increasing the
depth of knowledge within each specialized field is often accompanied by
science's tendency to overstep its bounds by making hypocritical judgments
regarding areas of human endeavor over which it has no authority. It will not
deign to allot scientific resources to the study of, say, astrology, which it
dismisses as pseudoscience, but it nevertheless reserves the right to pass
judgment upon it. The stereotype of the scientist as an egg-headed know-it-all
provides a suitable image to consider here-it's akin to Star Trek's Mr.
Spock expounding upon the irrationality and lack of utility of human emotion.
Similarly, in Planet Medicine, Richard Grossinger points out the way in
which medicine fails to recognize its own limitations:
We can summarily say that
the thing which is wrong with orthodox medicine is not the system itself, but
the way in which it presents itself as the only or most effective way to treat
sickness . . . Sometimes orthodox medicine is shockingly provincial. In order
to save its reputation, it gives people the illusion it is handling more than
it is and that the other methods for getting things done are either primitive,
untested, exotic, unscientific, or un-American.26
The point of this philosophical exploration
is to make clear that the conventional medical paradigm is grounded in an
underlying set of assumptions that prejudice one into believing that all health
problems are based in the physical body and therefore ultimately solvable
through material means. Quite to the contrary, truly effective green healing
will not be achievable until the left-brain of science welcomes the right-brain
of emotion, intuition, the subjective, and the intangibles of human nature back
into the equation of human health care. Good science knows its boundaries and
acknowledges what it does not know and cannot know due to the limitations of
its methodology.
Notes
23. Thomas
S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, second edition, enlarged, 1970, p. 46.
24. Thomas
S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 24.
25. Edward
C.Whitmont, MD, The Alchemy of Healing: Psyche and Soma, North Atlantic
Books, Berkeley, California, 1993, p. 39.
26. Richard Grossinger,
Planet Medicine (revised edition currently published by North Atlantic
Books, Berkeley, California), Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boulder, Colorado,
1980, pp. 23-24.
Copyright © 2010 by Larry
Malerba. Reprinted by permission of publisher.
Teaser image by takomabibelot, courtesy of Creative Commons license.