Discussion on the Position of Alternative Medicine in the 21st Century

Abstract

The article analyzes factors influencing the position of traditional, alternative and complementary medicine (T/CAM) in the 21st century. The author puts forward a hypothesis that the significance of T / CAM will be maintained, which will contribute to the negative health phenomena associated with the crisis of Western civilization, which conventional medicine cannot counteract. The author discusses in detail the mechanism of tanatosis postulated by him as the cause of negative health consequences.

Full text

Wasilewski, J Tradit Med Clin Natur 2018, 7:1
DOI: 10.4172/2573-4555.1000258
Open Access
Short Commentary
Volume 7 • Issue 1 • 1000258
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ISSN: 2573-4555
Journal of
Traditional Medicine & Clinical Naturopathy
J Tradit Med Clin Natur, an open access journal
ISSN: 2573-4555
Discussion on the Position of Alternative Medicine in the 21st Century
Bohdan W Wasilewski*
Psychosomatic Institute, Poleczki str. 40, 02-822 Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
The article analyzes factors inuencing the position of traditional, alternative and complementary medicine (T/CAM)
in the 21st century. The author puts forward a hypothesis that the signicance of T / CAM will be maintained, which
will contribute to the negative health phenomena associated with the crisis of Western civilization, which conventional
medicine cannot counteract. The author discusses in detail the mechanism of tanatosis postulated by him as the cause
of negative health consequences.
*Corresponding author: Bohdan W Wasilewski, Psychosomatic Institute, Poleczki
str. 40, 02-822 Warsaw, Poland, Tel: +48 22 33 27 522; E-mail: b.wasilewski@ips.pl
Received December 18, 2017; Accepted January 08, 2018; Published January 10, 2018
Citation: Wasilewski BW (2018) Discussion on the Position of Alternative Medicine
in the 21st Century. J Tradit Med Clin Natur 7: 258. doi: 10.4172/2573-4555.1000258
Copyright: © 2018 Wasilewski BW. This is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.
Keywords: Alternative Medicine; Anthropological Perspective;
anatosis; Crisis of Western Civilization
e aim of this article is to stimulate discussion on the place of
traditional, alternative and complementary medicine (T/CAM) in the
21st century, including in particular its relationship with conventional
medicine ( CM) which is usual in Western countries .
At the outset, it is necessary to distinguish between the dierent
socio-economic situation of auent countries where the position
CM is unassailable and poorer countries where T/CAM dominates.
e factors which inhibit CM’s expansion in less resourced countries
are not only economic, but include a number of others which
restrict its acceptance by the society. ese include the potential loss
of indigenous independence in covering the basic health needs of
citizens, the deepening technological and economic dependence of
the country and the destruction of natural resources for traditional
medicine leading to a reduced number of practitioners. ere is also
a progressive stratication of the population which results in variable
access to treatment and the promotion of Western cultural patterns.
Such factors encourage the emigration of technological and economic
experts which is detrimental to the country.
e contemporary direction of civilizational changes in the 21st
century which include climate change, uncontrolled population
growth and continuous political, economic and military tensions,
will maintain the above-described situation. is will facilitate the
continuity of the T/CAM model in large areas of our globe. Many
indicators suggest that the two models discussed will co-exist in the
21st century and mutually penetrate as predicted (and favored) by
the World Health Organization (WHO) [1]. However, the articially
sustained conict between CM and T/CAM which operates at several
levels may persist. Economic reasons are particularly signicant, as the
prots of the industry working on behalf of CM exceed those of other
industries on a massive scale. But there are also ideological and cultural
reasons for the persistence of this conict. CM, in pirate fashion
constantly penetrates the T/CAM landscape in its search for new drugs
and treatment methods. It reluctantly tolerates the practice of Chinese
and Indian medicine in its territory while at the same time more or less
openly resisting the encroachment of T/CAM medicine.
ere is an abundance of rigorous research and scientic opinion
conrming the rational premise for T/CAM and its achievements
over the centuries and the WHO unreservedly encourages academic
medicine to creatively cooperate with T/CAM. However the false
philosophy which is widely propagated suggests that only CM is based
on scientic evidence and the use of T/CAM methods has no rational
basis and indeed constitutes a threat to health. In summary T/CAM
has no scientic underpinning according to the advocates of CM. To
substantiate their claims, they quote literature in which the research
criteria and methodologies have been developed with the connivance
and nancial support of wealthy pharmaceutical and medical
technology companies. e narratives which compare both therapeutic
traditions, omit to state that CM uses complex research procedures and
medicinal preparations in actual medical practice, which are beyond
the research capacity and resources of T/CAM. e inated costs of
CM services, the high drug prices and the long waiting periods for
an appointment with a specialist, mean that a signicant number of
patients resort to uncontrolled self-treatment and medicines are oen
used irrationally. is phenomenon which is prot -based, results in
an increasing number of drugs used without medical supervision and
numerous pharmacological preparations sold as “food products” in
supermarkets. e outcome of such practices potentially threatens the
individual and indeed the community’s health.
A detailed list of scientic achievements regarding T/CAM includes
methodologically correct meta-analyses [2-4]. As a general rule when
reading research reports, the degree of independence and objectivity
of researchers and their institutions should be critically examined.
It should be recalled that nancial backing for the medical sciences ,
originates in the main from sources directly or indirectly related to CM.
Financial gain determines that CM is the only form of medicine
that is fully rational, scientically based and documented appropriately.
T/CAM on the other hand, diers in that there is less scientic
documentation available which reects low expenditure on research
and much lower prots. e vast quantities of material on CM are
derived mainly from research in the exact sciences and the linkage with
clinical medicine is tenuous as medical practice for the most part is
based on long term clinical observations. We rarely fully understand
how drugs work [5], especially the interactions when many drugs are
administered in parallel, which is a regular occurrence by CM. In reality
, CM practice does not operate on the basis of causes but rather by signs
and symptoms and it is noteworthy that many drugs and procedures
used by CM doctors do not have the scientic documentation which
they demand from T/CAM [6,7].
Modern CM technologies tend to reduce our natural defenses,
making us increasingly dependent on the constant application of

Citation: Wasilewski BW (2018) Discussion on the Position of Alternative Medicine in the 21st Century. J Tradit Med Clin Natur 7: 258. doi:
10.4172/2573-4555.1000258
Page 2 of 3
Volume 7 • Issue 1 • 1000258
J Tradit Med Clin Natur, an open access journal
ISSN: 2573-4555
CM procedures. In Western culture we have already largely lost the
freedom of an independent existence and we live seemingly attached
by an umbilical cord to CM. e costs of this attachment are increasing
exponentially and threaten to overwhelm the capacity of the richest
countries. Our western civilization has created the type of individual
who lives in a state of existential fear, drip fed with information about
symptoms and gene-based threats of deadly diseases [8,9]. In a state
approaching panic he is induced to undergo onerous and costly medical
procedures, including prophylactic removal of vital organs and long
term drug therapy. Lives are oen dominated by an endless struggle to
pay for medical expenses and are frequently crippled by the eort. e
change from an organism adapted to independent existence and self-
defense now mutates into one programmed for a specic specialized
function, unable to live independently and constantly supported by
CM. is is analogous to growing soil-free hydroponic plants or a space
ship existence which operates at the expense of independence and
individual freedom. Dependence on nancial institutions is increased
as the state generates huge inequalities in its implementation of the
right to health and oen forces poor people to struggle despairingly
for health at the expense of a dignied and comfortable existence.
Some critics of Western civilization from the so-called the third world
use this as an example of the so neo-colonialism which operates in
the relations between poor and rich countries. In well-resourced
countries an analogous relationship exists between the privileged and
impoverished layers of the society. However such interpretations are
not universally shared as many inhabitants of the underdeveloped
world are still attracted by the lure of western countries and culture.
Because of the breadth of the topic, this article focuses on selected
issues which determine the survival and development of T/CAM. It
therefore takes an anthropological perspective examining the dynamics
and direction of current civilizational changes [6-8]. In the medical
sciences, the dominant trope is that of a sick individual requesting help
to which the CM responds, but this” individual” is also a collective
being and his health and treatment depends on the state of the social
fabric of which he is an element [8-13].
e main health problems of the so-called developed world are
those of “civilization” and derive from pathology within the social fabric,
itself a signier of Western civilization. e main health problems of
the “West” are depression, anxiety disorders (and their psychosomatic
consequences) circulatory system disorders and neoplastic diseases.
e macro-social context of these conditions is unfortunately ignored,
although it constitutes the crisis of our Western civilization which is
on-going in spite of the accumulation of enormous wealth and material
assets. A relative poverty, manifested by a weak spiritual dimension
in life, exists within an exponentially growing population living in
permanent existential anxiety and depression. is is conrmed by
signicant variation in the incidence of depression between regions
representative of Western and Eastern civilizations. It ranges from 2.0
- 10.0% in the Far East, compared to 15 - 25% in the auent Western
culture countries [14,15]. e ongoing alienation of individuals and
the breakdown of traditional collective integrating units such as family,
local and tribal communities [16-18], triggers the mechanism of
thanatosis [19,20], which is one of the main sources of the crisis within
Western civilization [21].e phenomenon of thanatosis is analogous
to the cellular mechanism of apoptosis or auto-elimination of a cell
and is a programmable death process activated by the individual. In
undisturbed conditions, this mechanism was invoked originally to
relieve the social organism of permanent inecient individuals who
had fullled their task within the social fabric. anatosis protected
and aided a collective social organism consisting of human units,
just as apoptosis does in the individual organism, which in essence is
a community of cells. e mechanism of thanatosis fullled its role
within primary, small (and larger), mobile human communities. is
role refers to the mechanism by which close natural interaction between
individuals, shaped by evolution over millions of years, is disturbed by
the rapid change (within a very short period) in the functioning of the
human collective. is pathology is especially evident in the trajectory
of Western culture during which human individuals have undergone
extensive specialization, with simultaneous progressive alienation and
disruption of the traditional forms of collective existence. Individuals
largely lose the ability to co-exist in a group, resulting in a cascade of
incorrect signals which activate thanatosis. In the individual organism
this initiates auto-elimination through inhibition of biological and
psychological defense mechanisms. is occurs because of erroneous
and premature signaling which indicate failure of the individual to full
his or her societal or community role, now downgraded to functional
superuity. ere are many indications that the main health threats
in Western societies (the so-called diseases of civilization, including
chronic depressive syndromes) derive from activation of the thanatosis
mechanism. CM is not only ineective in combating this phenomenon
but actually triggers it. In Western culture as part of its adaptation to
the requirements of civilization, the individual from the moment of
conception is subjected to a gradual psychophysical formative process
which is exercised through CM and eectively overpowers his natural
defenses. Life then is a sequence of continuous and fruitless CM
interventions to combat the several crises disturbing the biological
and mental functioning of the individual. e intense disturbances
constraining the individual from fullling his or her community role
or function as suggested above, activates thanatosis and is followed
by frantic CM interventions to disable the mechanism. Conventional
medicine, primarily as a result of industrialization, distances itself
from the patient, who now is separated by machines and procedures.
Contact with the patient which would facilitate diagnosis is eectively
interrupted and contributory factors, informed by interaction and
cooperation with the family are mostly unknown. e therapeutic role
of family is absent which further lessens individual’s faith in recovery
and darkens his or her outlook on life.
T/CAM in contrast draws on the centuries-old traditions of older
civilizations and is more eective in the treatment and prevention
of health problems that are a consequence of social disorder [21].
Western civilization with its current social and political tensions is
associated with negative health consequences and tries to counter these
by conventional or “Western” medicine. For this reason, a substantive
discussion about CM oen becomes very dicult and changes factual
analysis into an ideological struggle. An example of such a situation
is the ideological oensive undertaken in recent years in Poland and
several other European countries against homeopathy and against other
forms of complementary and alternative medicine. e driving force
behind this oensive is the Catholic Church which posits alternative
medicine within the nexus of magic, occultism and unclean forces. e
Church does not deny that it regards T/CAM as competition for its
own agenda [22]. If T/CAM medicine eects an inexplicable cure, the
Church claims evil supernatural powers are responsible and it alone
has the right to invoke those supernatural powers which derive from
God. Such a position is supported by Catholic academicians “e devil
without cease, seeks to heal the body because he is interested in the soul
of man” [23,24].
is idea can be further developed in exploring “alternative
medicine” as so called natural forces and systems are not used and
emphasis instead is placed on the role of the “spirit”. e occult

Citation: Wasilewski BW (2018) Discussion on the Position of Alternative Medicine in the 21st Century. J Tradit Med Clin Natur 7: 258. doi:
10.4172/2573-4555.1000258
Page 3 of 3
Volume 7 • Issue 1 • 1000258
J Tradit Med Clin Natur, an open access journal
ISSN: 2573-4555
impulse within homeopathy transfers to the patient and makes him
subject (conscious or not) to the Evil one and frequently to an actual
relationship with “Satan”. e argument is made that the harmful eect
of alternative medicine in such situations can be counteracted by the
healing power of prayer and in extreme cases by the use of exorcism.
is ritual should be conducted when the devil” possesses” the body
and then only by trained exorcists under the authority of a Bishop. In
Poland there are currently about 120 exorcists who have been educated
in special Catholic postgraduate schools founded to counteract the
current perceived inuence of “Satan”. During exorcisms the supposed
victim of Satan must oen be forcibly restrained by several men. e
malign spirit roars with an otherworldly voice, inexplicably shakes the
body violently and metal nails are oen spat from the throat of the
victim before exiting from his body. e Polish Church treats the threat
of “Satan’s oensive” very seriously due to growing interest in the T/
CAM and to what it claims as the signicant spiritual damage caused
by the bio-energo therapist Clive Harris. is individual who acted for
many years with the organizational support of the church and with
the co-operation of the health services, subjected 3 to 9 million Polish
citizens to his “healing” ceremonies in churches. ey trusted that the
ritual involved was merely the transference of “good energy” which
they considered to be a gi from God. However it was discovered
that many so-called “healings” by Harris who had gained access to the
Church through misrepresentation and deceit were the work of Satan.
e usually uncommunicative Clive Harris allegedly confessed to his
translator Maria P. (a Catholic Community activist) that he works with
the support of higher forces, which she interpreted as demons, and the
church ceased their relationship with him forthwith and proceeded
to the intensive training of many exorcist specialists. Simultaneously,
prompt and radical action was taken by state and parastatal institutions
to ban several forms of T/CAM. e state diktat was aimed at doctors
practicing it and steps were taken to ban the distribution of homeopathic
medicines in Poland, contrary to European law.
In summary, it should be said that T/CAM medicine will continue
to play a signicant role in the 21st century despite the ongoing eorts
to severely limit, if not to outlaw its practice.
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