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Alternative medicine




The doctor and the law

 

All doctors occasionally become involved with the law. An obvious example is when a patient dies. The doctor writes a death certificate to confirm that the patient is indeed dead, and to state of which disease he died. The death certificate is a legal document. It is a criminal offence to write a death certificate without seeing the dead body. If the body is to be cremated, the doctor must also sign a certificate which says that the patient died of natural causes. (Burning the body will destroy the evidence of a suspicious death.) If the doctor suspects that the patient was poisoned by his relatives, for example, he must not sign the cremation certificate. A coroner is a doctor who is also a lawyer. He investigates any death where the cause is not obvious.

If the doctor suspects non-accidental injury, he must give medical evidence to the courts. The doctor is then called an expert witness.

Most doctors do not like appearing in court. A court hearing often takes several days or weeks, and the doctor cannot attend to his other patients during this time. It may involve an unpleasant confrontation between two people, which the doctor does not wish to see. The doctor’s legal duty to provide evidence is sometimes in conflict with his professional duty to care for the patient. But whether doctors like it or not, today’s society is increasingly “litigation-conscious”, and doctors will undoubtedly spend even more of their time in the role of expert witness in the future.

 

 

Many people do not go to a doctor when they are ill. They go to an alternative therapist. “Alternative medicine” is any form of health care that is not provided by conventional doctors and nurses—that is, those who are officially registered. In Third World countries, alternative medicine is the traditional, “old-fashioned” health care which is provided cheaply by local healers. Poor people use these healers while rich people usually travel to the towns to visit conventional doctors. In developed countries, the situation is the other way around. Conventional health care is usually free for poor people, while alternative health care (which has become very fashionable) can be expensive and is often the privilege of the rich.

There are hundreds of different alternative therapies. Some, like acupuncture, are based on ancient traditions. Others, like certain types of psychotherapy, are very new. Why are they becoming so fashionable? There are several reasons. First, patients are now questioning the usefulness of conventional medicine. A hundred years ago, physicians and surgeons had very high status. They could give any treatment they wished and the patient would not protest, even if the treatment made him worse. Today, patients are realizing that some treatments in conventional medicine do not work. Quite reasonably, they want to try other forms of treatment such as Alexander technique, manipulation, massage therapies, osteopathy, chiropracty, acupuncture, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, biofeedback, meditation, relaxation therapy, homeopathy and holism.

The Chinese concept of “ Qi,” which means vital energy or life force, has no equivalent in conventional medicine.

A final reason for the popularity of alternative medicine is that most alternative therapists give the patient more time than conventional doctors. In Britain, general practitioners see a new patient every ten minutes; in Germany the interval is twenty minutes. Today, when so many symptoms are due to overwork or stress, an important part of the treatment is for the patient to talk about his problems and learn to relax. Obviously, he cannot do this in ten minutes! Paradoxically, the conventional doctor’s surgery often reflects the patient’s own stressed lifestyle. Doctors themselves have very high stress levels, and a much higher suicide rate than the general population. Clearly, both doctor and patient would benefit if conventional medicine allowed more time for the consultation.

A few years ago, almost all conventional doctors thought that alternative medicine was illogical and ineffective. Most alternative therapists thought that conventional doctors were arrogant and insensitive. Most patients chose either conventional medicine or alternative medicine, but not both. In the past twenty years, doctors and alternative therapists have begun to see one another’s strengths. Today, they often work with, rather than against, one another. Many doctors now also train in homeopathy, osteopathy or acupuncture. Of course, some alternative therapies are useless, expensive and even harmful. Some alternative therapists are frauds. Perhaps this is an argument for all therapists to be registered with a central organization. Although this would cost both time and money, it would raise the general standard of alternative medicine and improve the credibility of all genuine alternatives.

 




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