There is a tremendous amount of money to be made in so-called 'alternative' medicine today. Billions are spent every year and its popularity only seems to be increasing - but why? What is it about alternative medicine that causes people to eschew proven, scientific medical treatments?

The Winter 2002 Wilson Quarterly discusses “Science, Faith, and Alternative Medicine” by Ronald W. Dworkin, in Policy Review (Aug. & Sept. 2001):

“Patients are fleeing the medical profession because doctors concentrate on rational knowledge at the expense of life’s mysteries,” he writes. “Organized religion concentrates exclusively on the unknown, and therefore seems to know nothing. In alternative medicine, people have discovered a compromise.” [...]

Alternative therapies ... attract patients disaffected by conventional medicine as well as those dissatisfied by religion’s solutions. In Dworkin’s view, practitioners of alternative therapy appeal to patients because they synthesize the most attractive aspects of medical science and religion, “Because alternative medicine is not confined by the limits of rational or testable knowledge, its powers of explanation are enormous, and patients leave ... thinking that their troubles have real spiritual significance.” [...]

Instead of receiving cold, hard truths — or the indifference of assembly-line medicine — patients are told by their alternative practitioners that their condition is unique to them, and that the power to heal may exist inside their own bodies. The “boundless possibilities that suddenly appear on the horizon raise the spirits of these patients in the present. This is not a bad thing.”

Americans today put a great deal of confidence in both science and religion. America is the most religious and religiously devout of all Western industrialized nations. America is also heavily defined by it’s technological and scientific progress. Unfortunately, science and religion are more contradictory than compatible, so two of the principle values of Americans tend to come into conflict.

So-called “alternative” medicine offers something different, though. Alternative medical treatments give an impression of being scientific and rationalized like regular medicine, but at the same time they promote a vision of the world which is holistic, supernatural, and altogether consistent with common religious premises (though contradictory towards rationalized science).

So, in at least giving the impression of combining the “best” of both science and religion, alternative medicine ensures that it can attract a broad cross-section of America. This may not be the answer to why it is so popular, but it is certainly an important ingredient. It’s unlikely that these are factors which many customers of alternative medical practitioners consciously think about, but it’s implausible that they don’t play a role.

 

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