Media Blitz

Media Supports Harmful Alternative Therapies

This is a rather lengthy article but I think its a particularly excellent record of how the media supports the use of dangerous alternative therapies. This is a free  excerpt from Dr. Paul Reisser's article on The Christian Research Institute's website. It also contains information not included in "The Occult Invasion of Health Care" so read it as added bonus material!

A Time cover story entitled "Faith and Healing" (24 June 1996) painted its subject with broad strokes, encompassing traditional faith in God, meditative techniques, and biochemistry. It described "controlled studies" designed to determine whether patients who were the recipients of prayer — defined in a variety of ways — fared better than others.

A bumper crop of books on alternative therapies now line the shelves of the "Health and Medicine" section of the typical neighborhood bookstore. No longer limited to the off-label and self-published material that was once the staple of New Age outlets, the newer titles come from mainstream publishers, and place unconventional treatments on equal footing with Western medicine. One prominent example is The Medical Advisor: The Complete Book of Alternative and Conventional Treatment,2 published last year by Time-Life Books. This handsome volume describes health problems in encyclopedic detail, noting for each the conventional medical approach and then listing several alternatives: ancient Chinese, homeopathic, herbal, and so on.

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has repeatedly broadcast presentations of alternative healing. Bill Moyers’s 1993 series, Healing and the Mind, attracted almost twice the normal PBS viewing audience. Andrew Weil, M.D., a popular author who now teaches "Integrative Medicine" at the University of Arizona School of Medicine, has offered articulate distillations from his book Spontaneous Healing on a program of the same name. Deepak Chopra, M.D., a publishing hot-ticket and America’s foremost purveyor of India’s ancient healing system known as Ayurveda, captivated viewers in the PBS specials, "Body, Mind and Soul: The Mystery and the Magic" and "The Way of the Wizard."

Websites devoted to alternative therapies abound on the Internet. If one tells the Yahoo search engine to look for "alternative medicine," he or she will be escorted to more than 200 sites, many of which provide links to dozens of others. On the other hand, cautionary notices and critical analyses by organizations such as the National Council against Health Fraud and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, a humanist think tank that publishes Skeptical Inquirer) are few and far between.

Periodicals promoting alternative therapies are now available both for the general public (for example, Natural Health) and health care providers. The monthly journals Alternative and Complementary Therapies and Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine contain articles and studies of variable quality, which in some cases (unlike standard medical journals) freely wade into metaphysical and promotional material.

The most striking foray into the realm of conventional medicine occurred last November when American Family Physician, the official journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians (normally a reliable resource), published as its cover article, "Alternative Medicine and the Family Physician." Authored by James M. Gordon, M.D., who directs the Mind-Body Center in Washington, D.C., the article offered a bland overview of alternative care, admonished family physicians to "convey a sensitive acceptance and an openness to....their patients’ interest in alternative therapies," and encouraged practitioners to explore this realm themselves — starting with Gordon’s own book, Manifesto for a New Medicine. An accompanying editorial strongly endorsed physician involvement in alternative therapies, and a duplicable information sheet did likewise for patients. Nowhere in these materials was there a note of caution or concern about any of the approaches mentioned.

Paul Reisser, M.D., is a family physician in private practice in Southern California. He is the coauthor of several books, including New Age Medicine (InterVarsity Press, 1988) and the upcoming Focus on the Family Complete Book of Baby and Child Care (Tyndale). He is a member of the Focus on the Family Physicians Resource Council and medical commentator for the radio broadcast "Family News in Focus."