In the Name of Medicine

“In Medicine, as in statecraft and propaganda, words are sometimes the most powerful drugs we can use.”

Sara Murray Jordan

In the history of medicine, there has never been a time when one methodology, one paradigm, one hierarchical classification of healing has been uniformly accepted. Different approaches to healing have continually found themselves in conflict over methods and even over the basic tenets of their profession. Samuel J. Melzer, the first president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, founded in 1908, argued that clinical medicine has two components-science and art-and that they are separate, antagonistic, and incompatible. He warned his fellow physicians that “the simultaneous cultivation of both is detrimental to the progress of either” [1].

We are currently experiencing a health care revolution that is, arguably, less about health and more about money [2, 3]. We are also observing a growing interest in alternative medicine. A frequently quoted survey published in 1993 in The New England Journal of Medicine reported on the alternative health care practices of 1500 U.S. adults. Thirty-our percent of those surveyed had used at least one unconventional therapy in the preceding year [4].

On the level of national policy, the use of alternative methods is of increasing interest to the U.S. Congress. In the 1992 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Appropriation Bill, the language of the Congressional Appropriations Committee is clear:

“The Committee is not satisfied that the conventional medical community as symbolized by NIH has fully explored the potential that exists in unconventional medical practices. Many routine and effective medical procedures now considered commonplace were once considered unconventional and counter indicated … In order to more adequately explore these unconventional medical practices the Committee request that NIH establish within the Office of the Director an office to fully investigate and …