Tanveer Ahmed has an article on the demand for alternative medicine. I'll highlight the paragraph that concerns me:
Most of my patients - the vast majority - will not admit to being religious. Most will, however, describe themselves as being ''spiritual''. When pressed on the nature of this spirituality, the dominant theme is being free from any institutional or political authority.
By this reckoning, the notion of being spiritual is removed from the taint of power. It is then free to pick up any lost forms of spirituality or any of the new varieties that seem to regularly spring up. In essence, it is a consumerist approach to religion.
The past decade has seen vicious academic assaults on organised religion. It is already on the canvas in secular Western democracies, and the likes of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and the dilettante journalist Christopher Hitchens have continued to intellectually beat it to a pulp.
Religion now hangs by certain proofs and demonstrables, such as the literal acceptance of texts, by which no great religion can ever flourish. Narrowing the definition of religion is increasing its frailty. It is being identified with its most extreme forms. Pushing religion out of the public sphere in the name of rationality has given more room to world views or practices that trivialise the ''felt life'' of human consciousness.
One arena of growth that I see as a doctor is the phenomenal increase in the use of alternative therapies. Estimates on the size of the market vary from $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year.
A survey in 2008 by Cardinal Health found 74 per cent of us had used a vitamin, mineral or herbal supplement in the past year. Companies like Blackmores are expanding around the globe.
Much of the time, the use of vitamins or supplements is unwarranted in healthy people. More often than not, the body will merely expel it. But this does not deter consumers, suggesting rationality has little to do with its use.
The fact many of the treatments have links with ancient Chinese or ayurvedic traditions of the subcontinent only increase its spiritual appeal to the Western consumer.
A session at a recent GP conference highlighted that most patients are concerned with health management and ''wellness'', suggesting there was a growing need to integrate the reality of alternative therapies into the business of being a medical doctor. This is driven by the consumer. It does not come from new developments in knowledge. Many GPs now advertise their credentials in alternative medicine.
While patients might be fleeing the rational reductionism of medicine and its apparent indifference to life's mysteries, organised religion appears to concentrate exclusively on the unknown. In alternative therapies, people have discovered a compromise. They attract patients disaffected by conventional medicine as well as those dissatisfied by religion's solutions.
Alternative therapies are not confined by the limits of testable knowledge, making their potential power of explanation enormous, and leaving patients thinking their troubles have real spiritual significance.
For example, a naturopath will diagnose problems with a mix of genuine biological and physiological terminology, adopting a sense of medical authority. But the problems will be addressed with questionable, untested treatments such as homeopathy or herbal products.
Patients are left reassured they are not dealing with a quack, but retain a link with nature and the spirit. They are told their condition is unique to them and the power to heal exists inside their own bodies.
The sector's influence is only likely to increase when medicine does not pretend to have a cure for a chronic illness. Medicine can only offer ''disease management'', an unsatisfying outcome for many patients.
Humans are not content with essentially material descriptions of reality, but want to know the nature of reality, whether there is meaning in it. We are fundamentally meaning-seeking machines.
As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said: "Without the transcendent we shall find ourselves unable, sooner or later, to make any sense of the full range of human self-awareness".
A growing number of health and dietary practices seem to be replacing the more profound philosophical and ethical traditions inherent in the major religions. It is unlikely to cure significant illnesses, but it remains to be seen whether the transcendence that religious leaders espouse can be found in such behaviours.
Medical doctors should not be considering alternative therapies, regardless of what the consumer wants. The patient can be wrong. Any responsible doctor would not use untested treatments on their patients, no matter how badly they believe it will work.
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