America's Doctor
As a physical scientist who spent three months in Andrew Weil's shop last winter, I must say that your article effectively illustrated why the allopathic medicine monopoly in the United States is a vanishing phenomenon. Arnold Relman and Marcia Angell sound like King Canute telling the waves to back off. They demonstrated repeatedly that allopathic medicine has assumed godlike power over the world with mantras like "scientific" and "peer-reviewed double blind" while getting elementary facts wrong (for example, Angell attributes the increase in longevity to allopathic medicine). But the American populace has voted: Visits to "alternative modalities" exceed visits to allopaths.
Relman and Angell simply don't get it. Whole Persons = Bodies + Minds + Spirits, which can be accessed, affected, and possibly healed if doctors keep that equation in mind and integrate 10,000 years of empirical experience with the highly effective reductionist interventions of modern technology.
Rustum Roy Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY PARK, PENN.
