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Nature and medicine: always the twain should meet
Having studied medical anthropology and written about the issue of medical colonialism the case study of the indigenous women healers in mexico was very interesting to me.
Here's the case:
After bitter struggles with official associations of physicians, traditional medicine people, mostly women, finally were able to organize joint meetings in which they shared their experiences and set up plans for collaboration. As a direct result, indigenous women benefitted immensely. Their involvement has been a key factor in cataloguing the plants, herbs, and practices, and in promoting the conservation and availability of curative products and practices. With the support of the National Indigenist Institute, UNICEF, and NGOs, an overall health program has been established. Recognized medicine people and healers train interested indigenous villagers as health promoters through courses and workshops, focussing on the recovery of communal knowledge about medicinal plants and traditional healing practices. The status of indigenous women has been enhanced through the creation of a council of traditional medicine where their knowledge is recognized, and through the opening of community clinics. Not only can they make wide use of their traditional knowledge in medicine, but also the exercise of their practice has been greatly improved.
I think the lesson here is balance, the need to balance the old and the new, and the wisdom to recognize when the two are one and the same. I think the problem comes from the two sides of the medicinal coin being scared of each other.
The indigenous people have learned to fear modern medicine as in the past it has so often been used as a tool for oppression. Medical colonialism is the idea that medicine is used in order to better establish the rule and power of the colonists over the indigenous people. Modern medicine was represented as good, effective, right, spiritually pure, indigenous knowledge was represented as bad, useless, superstitious, wrong, harmful and evil. This was "proven" when a lot of the western medicines introduced to the indigenous population did indeed work. Of course, it was the colonialists who controlled this medicine and it was intentionally never accessible to indigenous people.
The fear on the part of Western medicine practioners is that their idea of natural/traditional medicines has been poisoned by hucksters in the Western world pushing "natural" medicine that just doesn't work. In particular homeopathy, which has time and time again proven to be completely useless, and yet it has a great foothold here in the West. Many a doctor has been frustrated to see patients who they have cared for for years put their confidence in the "magic water" principles of homeopathy and told they are the ones who don't know what they are doing, and some doctors must see their patients face tragic consequences.
So when they hear of traditional medicine they worry that patients are being put at risk and the scientifically tried tested and true methods they learned in school become all they wish to trust.
Of course, the influence of pharmaceutical companies is undeniable, and the old issue of those who control the medicine have the power comes up. The huge drug industry doesn't like anything that's not in pill form and definitely do not like the idea of something from which they cannot profit. So, they endeavour to widen the gap between traditional and western practices, or attempt to westernize traditional methods, trying to buy up all the medicinal plants, and stuff them into pill form. Some companies even attempt to patent plants in an attempt to monopolize nature.
If both western medicine practitioners and traditional healers can get out from under the pharmaceutical influence I think they can find the balance between the two methods, and as the last line of the case study suggests, both can benefit and improve because of the other.
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