Summary
Title: 'Alternative' Healthcare: A Comprehensive Guide
Author: Jack Raso
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 0879758910
Pro:
• Specific, popular treatments critiqued
• Common philosophies critiqued
• Extensive Encyclopedia of terms, names and concepts
Con:
• None
Description:
• Many alternative treatments examined
• Reasons why treatments appeal to people also exmained
• Extensive Encyclopedia of terms, names and concepts
Book Review
Raso is in a particularly good position to write such a book, because he used to be a believer who followed a wide variety of alternative treatments and nutritional programs. Details of this were explained in his earlier book Mystical Diets, which this more recent work compliments. Raso doesn’t try to hide his disdain for these practices, stating early on:
Since I began studying mystical healing in 1989, I have reached four conclusions that strip ‘alternative’ healing of much of its allure:
- 1. Death entails the obliteration of an individual’s ability to think, feel, or function purposefully.
2. The word “god” refers to an array of mysterious conceptions-not to any active being.
3. Human beings are not interconnected by supernatural or paranormal forces.
4. “Alternative” healthcare enterprises blend selected scientific facts, banalities, and pop-psychological, parapsychological, and magico-religious notions.”
According to Raso, “supernaturalistic” medical beliefs are centered upon the premise that forces outside of nature which cannot be measured or observed are fundamentally responsible for human health, and that things like biology and chemistry play only secondary role at best. Putting these beliefs into practice requires two fundamental premises: radical empiricism and universal skepticism.
The former, radical empiricism, values knowledge derived from experience, but without the benefit of systematic organization, repeatable tests, falisfiable predictions, and tentative conclusions. All of these are important characteristics of science, because science cannot rely on trial and error alone. Personal, subjective experiences cannot validate a medical treatment, but they are the only path which mysticism really follows.
The latter premise, universal skepticism, ends up being just another excuse for avoiding genuine tests normal in science. The attitude of universal skepticism varies between asserting that nothing can really be known, or that humans’ inability to be sure of anything invalidates testing anyway, so why bother? Both positions are self-refuting, and substitute for the rational skepticism necessary when considering new ideas and claims.
