cannabisnews.com: Mainstream Medicine's Serene Rebel Mainstream Medicine's Serene Rebel Posted by FoM on October 22, 2000 at 10:02:52 PT By Susan Vaughn, Special To The Times Source: Los Angeles Times Andrew Weil's cherubic countenance is recognizable to millions. His kindly eyes, peaceful expression, fluffy beard and shining dome shout health and wellness, his twin passions. While more traditional--and far less famous--doctors grapple with managed-care strictures, insurance woes and declining public trust, Weil seems blissfully unaffected. In fact, with eight best-selling books under his belt, a citation as one of Time magazine's 25 most influential people, a Web site racking up an estimated 2 million hits a month and a clinic with a waiting list of 1,500 patients, Weil seems to have reached physician nirvana. But not all is well in Weilville. Like another rebel doctor before him--Benjamin Spock--the paterfamilias of alternative medicine has drawn the ire of peers who disagree with his medical philosophies. Ironically, Weil's staunchest and most media-ready nemesis is one of his former Harvard Medical School instructors: professor emeritus Arnold Relman, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "I taught that man physiology, and what he says about respiration will make me prematurely gray," said Relman about Weil, who wrote and recorded an audio CD, "Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healing" (Sounds True, 1999). Relman and other traditional medicos express irritation that Weil might consider alternative healing methods such as homeopathy, therapeutic touch and what Relman calls "that nonsense mind-body stuff" as potentially curative as traditional medicine. They chastise him for not publishing research in peer-reviewed journals to prove the modalities work. And they blanch at the thought of adding such subjects to medical-school curricula. "He had the advantage of a Harvard education," said Relman, who wrote a nearly 9,000-word jeremiad about Weil in the New Republic. "This is a guy who ought to know better." At the mention of his former teacher's name, Weil sighs. "It seems he is quite obsessed with me," he said. "And the only reason I can think of for it is that I'm an articulate, credentialed spokesperson." When prodded further, Weil confides, "I really think he's a dinosaur." Weil's decades-long refusal to conform to the American medical establishment's dogma has earned him considerable controversy. After completing studies in ethnobotany, Weil attended Harvard Medical School. While there, he explored marijuana's medicinal uses--and later drew public denunciation for having done so from Vice President Spiro Agnew. Upon graduating in 1968, Weil found himself disenchanted with his medicalschool training. He believed he had been taught to treat symptoms, rather than to look for underlying causes of disease, he later wrote in "Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself" (Knopf, 1995). He also had been trained to rely on pharmaceuticals and all but ignore the body's ability to heal itself. From 1969 to 1973, Weil traveled through Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, among other countries, to study medicinal plants, belief-based healing and shamanism. The world became his classroom, and he returned to the United States with new ideas: Altered consciousness--induced through trances, meditation, ritual magic, hypnosis and psychedelic drugs--could generate powerful insights and foster healing. The mind could cause sickness--or produce health. Perhaps if Weil had remained in South America, sampling psychoactive mushrooms and chewing yoco vines, his conservative foes could have ignored him. But Weil rankled them by declaring war on their medical practices and teachings. While churning out bestsellers and propounding alternative health treatments over the years, he concurrently announced that he intended to try to overhaul medical-school curricula and establish "integrative medicine"--the amalgamation of carefully selected conventional Western and alternative health treatments--as a new medical school discipline. A battle of words, mostly dauntingly polysyllabic and technical, ensued. Conservative physicians and researchers contended that Weil was attempting to mainstream quackery. Weil countered that his goal was to find better treatments for maladies that hadn't responded well to allopathic protocols. These include allergies, chronic skin problems, cancers, digestive ailments, autoimmune disorders, chronic degenerative disease and stress-related ailments. To accomplish this, he said, he would explore the efficacy of homeopathic, naturopathic, herbal and osteopathic remedies, among other nontraditional offerings. His aim is not to abolish conventional medical practices, he stressed, but to add to physicians' healing arsenals. "Twenty years ago, Andy wasn't part of mainstream medicine," said James Dalen, dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, where Weil runs the Center for Integrative Medicine. "But today he is. He hasn't lost touch with it. There are some who turn against it when they get involved in alternative medicine, but Andy's not that way." Weil said that during his continuing investigations he intends to adhere strictly to the Hippocratic oath's commandment "Above all, do no harm." "If I hear of a treatment based on a testimonial, my first concern is, will it hurt people?" he said. "Then I ask, is it plausible? Can it work? If I'm assured of these, I might be willing to experiment with it." Weil also hopes to foster greater understanding of the mind-body connection, something more than a few medicos dismiss as New Age hooey. Weil contends that this non-physical healing process has been demonstrated countless times to researchers in the form of the placebo effect: Test subjects, believing they have been given cures for their ailments, somehow improve in health, though no medicines have been administered to them. "It's the meat of medicine, a pure healing response," Weil said. "And yet they dismiss it." Weil founded the Center for Integrative Medicine in 1993. Years ago, he would have cited being ahead of his time as his bailiwick, but now, because the culture appears to be catching up with him in its appraisal of medicine, he names fund-raising for the center as his premier challenge. Meanwhile, he's making strides in his medical school reform campaign. Recently, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Minnesota, Harvard and the University of Maryland have followed the University of Arizona in establishing integrative centers and programs. Collectively, as the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, they are exploring ways to standardize curricula. "And we want to gradually bring other schools in," Weil said. Someday, Weil may retire to garden or run a cafe, he said. But until then, from his ranch at the foot of the Rincon mountains outside Tucson, he'll continue to lead the crusade for integrative medicine. Andrew Weil's Tips for Workplace Health: 1. Stay physically active. Take stairs instead of elevators. Park far from your office so you can enjoy brisk walks to and from work. 2. Learn about and use basic breathing techniques. I can't emphasize enough the value of this. 3. Educate yourself about nutrition. Teach yourself healthy eating habits. There are so many unhealthy food options at most workplaces. 4. Pay attention to your caffeine intake. Monitor its effects on you. Caffeine's effects vary tremendously among individuals. 5. Rally for better environmental health conditions in your workplace. Improve air circulation if possible. Have plants around. Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)Author: Susan Vaughn, Special To The TimesPublished: October 22, 2000Copyright: 2000 Los Angeles TimesAddress: Times Mirror SquareLos Angeles, CA 90053Fax: (213) 237-4712Contact: letters latimes.comWebsite: http://www.latimes.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Dr. Andrew Weilhttp://www.pathfinder.com/drweil/The New Face Of Medicinehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/4/thread4325.shtmlMedical Marijuana in the Mainstream? http://cannabisnews.com/news/1/thread1375.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #2 posted by FoM on October 24, 2000 at 09:55:54 PT I Agree mungojelly I agree mungojelly, I have heard Dr. Weil speak about marijuana. I asked him a question about marijuana a few years ago in an MSNBC news chat and he said he thought the laws were wrong. I am a person who uses herbs everyday and Dr. Weil said good things about St. John's Wort and I've taken that particular herb since 1996 and it sure helps me. PS: I left you an explanation about how I feel about minors on the other thread.Peace, FoM! [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by mungojelly on October 24, 2000 at 01:03:37 PT: Doctor Weil is a great man Doctor Weil is a great man, and also a great if soft-spoken advocate of legalization. I read his books -- as do many other people, some of them quite conservative -- for his advice on nutrition, which I have found both very educational and very useful. Yet while he is not outspoken on the issue of drug legalization (I've never seen him mention it once, in fact), he has published books about health and healing for a mainstream audience which include chapters on sacred psychoactive plants. Doctor Weil's attitude towards health care is one whose time has come, and I think that as doctors become more willing to experiment with natural medicines and accept alternative lifestyles, that we will increasingly see them coming out in support of the legalization of the sacred plants. mungojelly [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: