Some of us received the announcement a week ago of the Bravewell Collaborative’s planned conference on “Integrative Medicine” co-sponsored with the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, to take place in February, 2009. (Note: I like to cap slogans and commercial trademarks and such and enclose them in quotation marks. Especially when the terms have no consensus meaning or are intended to obscure and confuse. )
Several of us may blog on the announcement. I want to emphasize a few points that struck me as revealing.
The announcement also listed Friday’s Charlie Rose Pub TV interview program with Harvey Fineberg, MD, President of the “IOM,” Christy Mack, wife of the CEO of Morgan Stanley and the ideologue behind Bravewell and the project, and Ralph Snyderman, ubiquitous former dean of Duke University Medical School now vagabond “CAM” promoter and fund raiser.
First off was a significant disclosure. Charlie Rose had been married at one time to Christy Mack’s sister, and Christy and he were still dear friends. As if disclosure is enough to help a viewer distinguish between facts and views obscured by a haze of politeness, appreciation, and gooey mutual stroking.
So much for investigative, penetrating, and revealing journalism.
Snyderman, whose school was recipient also of large Templeton Foundation grants to ivestigate significance of spirituality and religion in “healing” revealed that he at one time was one of those straight arrow physicians who treated disease (instead of a person.) Until he experienced some of “the techniques” – unspecified – himself. In typical testimonial phrasing, he found it wondrous that something as intangible as hope could help heal. (Some of us also find that wondrous – even dubiousl.) And then the tried and trite criticisms of docs being too involved in details (like what works and how to use it) and losing sight of the “whole person.” “Health is a value and one can have impact…” Eyes roll at such platitudinous and vacuous language.
If that were not enough, Fineberg demonstrated his deep knowledge of “Integrative Medicine” by telling the difference between “healing” and “curing,” and his democratic outlook by wanting to test any methods that works – regardless of the origin. David G’s blog the other day and Kim Atwood’s previous words discussed that issue, which still befuddles the NCCAM, which seems to test anything whether it contains molecules or not, and whether the idea generated in a crucible of observation and experimentation, or descended in a 2 AM drug-induced revelation. He then used artemisinin (for resistant malaria) to illustrate the potential mining of miraculous natural drugs from traditional Chinese Medicine. I assume he assumed that TCM practitioners had had been using it for malaria for centuries…despite the fact that there was no description of infectious diseases in TCM. Finding artemisinin for malaria was a product of extraction and purification from plants, known as modern pharmacology.
Christy Mack tried to introduce new concepts, explaining that one of her new aims is to empower the patient to heal oneself…That is not only decades old, but a word-linkage that, as with all esoteric ideation , means a lot to her and her co-believers, but little to the uninitiated. Another concept was for each person to make a personal health plan for one’s life. Can’t I do that now if I want? Seems I already did, then chance and nature intervened…
When Snyderman let slip the term, “CAM”, Mack jumped in saying, “Integrative Medicine” is not “CAM”. Here was a clue to the joining of these otherwise poorly fitting edges of “IM” and the “IOM.” We just won’t talk about those inconvenient absurdities that “IOM” might shrink from. My take is that Mack and “CAM” advocacates want the blessings of as many System organizations as possible to fill their “CAM” CV as prelude to legitimization, licensing, and insurance reimbursement. “CAM” practitioners are using the Bravewell as internediary to using “IOM.” Morgan Stanley money being an efficient lubricant. Simple.
So “IOM,” in exchange for more $?millions as it did for the NCCAM committee, sells itself and its merit badge for “CAM”‘s CV sash. Fair exchange in this capitalist system, yes? Seems that the only factor nissing in this exchange that keeps it from illegality is a sexual act. The Quiet Revolution moves on.
Personal note: In 1993 when I awoke from 3 weeks of post-op unconsciousness in the ICU, the first things I recalled were on the overhead TV: the NCAA basketball finals, the Waco cult building complex on fire, and Charlie Rose interviewing another talking head with that ominous blacked-out background. The Quiet Revolution moves on as the Nightmare recurs. �