Positive Health Online

I don't know if it is a sign of my advancing age, or simply my increased maturity and grasp of more nuanced meanings, but everything in the universe - finance, politics, international, science, healthcare - has become seriously more complicated during the past few decades.

As possibly the ultimate idealist and perhaps naïve individual, I have progressed through my various careers with fairly straightforward visions and goals:

However, as we have all progressed through the past five or more decades, polarized outcomes such as right or wrong, left or right, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, honest or crooked / hypocritical, have given way to the more complex world which we now inhabit. Hence events such as the current Arab democratic uprisings, expenses scandal, Wikileaks exposes, have become writ large on today's world stage and are seen through multiple prisms, depending upon your 'camp', religion, political or even health persuasion. Events which occurred twenty or thirty or sixty years ago, viewed with the help of released classified papers reveal the duplicity or even mendacity of the principles of their day.

How does this apply to health, complementary medicine and Positive Health PH Online? When this publication was launched 17 years ago, the almost universal consensus was that there was no research published about complementary and alternative medicine, and that the only treatment approaches to cancer were surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The launch of Positive Health PH Online with authoritative features and published research updates, was intended to dispel the myth that no research had been published in these areas and to build a significant body of knowledge demonstrating the clinical efficacy of many complementary therapeutic approaches.

Now, almost two decades later, we have finally unveiled our tenth or perhaps twelfth website, of which we are very proud, with some 2600 articles and 2800 research updates. Surely this is a veritable gold nugget of solid information about the myriads of disciplines under the umbrella of complementary and alternative medicine? www.positivehealth.com

This March 2011 Issue 180 features approaches to Alzheimer's, Statins, Linseed Oil, Hypnotherapy for Psoriasis, the function of Transverse Abdominis in lower back stability, Sound as a Medical Therapy and articles about Self-Esteem, Reiki Healing, the Half-Lived Life and All the Time in the World. The Research updates include Acupuncture, Ageing, Cancer, Headaches, Heart Disease, Herbal Medicine, Immune Function, Nutritional Status, Parkinson's Disease, Psoriasis and Weight Management.  Letters to the Editor discuss the Statutory Regulation of Herbal Medicine practitioners.
www.positivehealth.com/issue/issue-180-march-2011

So why is it that much of the media still appear to be in the time warp of 20 years ago, that many 'orthodox' medical practitioners are rabidly opposed to therapies especially homeopathy, and are totally convinced that there isn't an iota of evidence for its efficacy. There has been a serious body of research published regarding the clinical efficacy of homeopathy, even articles now demonstrating the molecular basis of how homeopathy does work.
www.positivehealth.com/article/homeopathy/molecular-genetic-discoveries-towards-a-better-understanding-of-homeopathy

This is where I return to the earlier thread, about the multiple prisms through which different people view the same events, the same research, etc. The medical doctors who are convinced that homeopathy is fraudulent and cannot work, genuinely hold this view because they contend that homeopathy cannot possibly work because there isn't a single molecule of the original undiluted substance in the remedy.

This makes sense from that point of view; however this rational view isn't a sufficient basis to completely set aside and dismiss the experiences of many tens of thousands (or more) of individuals and animals who have had clinical relief with homeopathy, or the research which points to clinical efficacy.

Where am I on this continuum? As a fully qualified scientist with impeccable rationalist credentials, and not a qualified homeopath, I too can't understand how taking homeopathic remedies could possibly work. However, as an individual with no particular 'belief' in homeopathy who has experienced quite dramatic improvements upon taking various remedies, and having read of other individuals who have recovered from medically proven intractable conditions such as multiple sclerosis with homeopathy, I cannot dismiss homeopathy as impossible or fraudulent.

It is a bit like belief in God, or not. None of us can prove unequivocally that there is an afterlife, or that there is a God, or the converse. Hence, we can keep an open mind and not be dismissive of others' beliefs.