Where Are We Twenty Years later?
by Dr. Luc De Schepper
Call it coincidence, but twenty years ago is when I immigrated to
California from my native Belgium as a medical doctor, acupuncturist
and above all, in my heart and mind, a homeopath. I have been
fortunate to have encountered the most brilliant medical minds in
Europe and here in the US. New drugs, new vaccinations, new genetic
discoveries, new techniques to probe deeper and deeper in the human
body ... there seems to be no limit to the wonders we can expect from
allopathy. Most people believe that modern medicine has arrived at
the peak of scientific achievement, from which it will go from
triumph to triumph.
Yet there is disturbing news on the horizon. Since World War II we
have considered infectious diseases on the verge of eradication; in
fact Secretary of State George Marshall made a speech to that effect
in1948. Yet they are the number one cause of death in the world, and
old-fashioned diseases like whooping cough, TB and cholera are coming
back in record numbers. Microbes are becoming more and more
resistant, due in part to the flagrant overuse of antibiotics by
medical doctors and factory farms. These antibiotics, which we
thought would eradicate infectious diseases in our lifetime, are
becoming increasingly powerless against the new strains of resistant
bacteria. Diarrhea, which we think of as a relatively harmless
infectious disease, kills millions of children worldwide every year,
making it the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular
disease. TB, malaria, diarrhea, and sexually transmitted diseases are
the real silent epidemics. Our attention may be diverted by the
horror stories about AIDS and the Ebola virus, but these silent
epidemics affect far more people.
Nor is much said about the 600,000 new victims of cancer every year
in the US. In fact, in light of the newest genetic therapies,
allopathic scientists predict that cancer will be conquered by the
year 2010. As a medical doctor, I do pray that they are right, but as
a homeopath, I doubt it. There are too many risk factors in the
unhealthy American lifestyle and too many hereditary factors (which
in homeopathy we call miasms) which allopathic medicine cannot touch
with genetic therapy. Cancer is now the number two cause of death,
not a hopeful sign for the immediate future.
Medical practices outside of "official" medicine always have been an
important part of the public's health care. In fact, until the early
decades of this century, allopathic medicine coexisted with
homeopathic and herbal medicine in this country, as it still does in
nearly every other country in the world. In fact I know of no other
country in which one form of medicine has such a monopoly of legal
protection and insurance reimbursement as allopathic medicine does in
this country. Alternative healers, through the centuries, have
offered a multiplicity of ways to address the confusion and suffering
that accompany disease. The notion of alternative medicine as
quackery (a term originally applied to allopathic physicians for
using toxic doses of mercury to "cure" syphilis ) has been reinforced
by a once commonly heard definition of it as any treatment not taught
in an accredited medical school. This definition is no longer valid,
as most medical schools have added nontraditional courses in response
to growing public interest in alternative therapies. With this change
in attitude came a change in name to complementary or integrative
medicine, indicating that allopathy and alternative methods can be
used together to support each other.
At the same time that we see tremendous interest in complementary
medicine among the public-and a slow but increasing interest among
medical doctors-we also see tremendous ignorance. One mistake I see
among allopathic practitioners is to lump all the different forms of
non-allopathic healing into one basket. But certain forms-notably
acupuncture, homeopathy, and chiropractic- require years of study of
health sciences comparable to the years of training in conventional
medicine, and they should not be lumped together with psychic
healers, pendulum dowsers and tarot card readers. This does a
disservice to forms of healing which are based on scientific laws and
principles and which merit the serious inquiry of the open-minded allopath.
In my lectures about homeopathy at medical schools and hospitals,
certain lines of questioning keep coming up. One is the argument that
homeopathy, like herbal and other "eclectic" medicines, is an
old-fashioned form of healing, practiced by people with little to no
training, regulation of practice or standards for quality of care.
While it is true that in allopathic medicine we certainly would not
accept any drug or procedure from more than 50 years ago (and most
drugs are out of date within a few years), it is a strength of
homeopathy that we use the same remedies discovered when homeopathy
was founded nearly 200 years ago. When a new drug comes out, often
side effects and serious problems are discovered only when millions
of people start using it. It gives me confidence in homeopathy to
know that the remedies have already been used by millions of people
worldwide for many decades, and their effects are well-known. Our
knowledge in homeopathy keeps building and building on strong solid
scientific principles; we do not have to keep discarding what we know
as allopathic medicine does.
When we study the history of homeopathic medicine in this country, we
also see that in the nineteenth century, when homeopathy enjoyed such
widespread support especially among the educated classes, homeopathic
physicians received the same training as their allopathic colleagues
plus an additional two years of homeopathy. It was well known that
the most brilliant medical students would go on to become homeopaths.
Unfortunately the American Medical Association (formed two years
after the American Homeopathic Association, and with the express
purpose of rooting out homeopathy in this country) succeeded in using
legal and economic pressure to prevent homeopathic physicians from
practicing. Homeopathic medical schools were forced to convert to
allopathy or their graduates would not qualify for licensure exams;
homeopathic physicians were taken into court to have their licenses taken away.
The "dirty tricks" of the allopathic medical societies in the early
years of this century, plus the lure of the "magic bullet" of the new
antibiotic drugs, led to a decline in homeopathy in the middle of
this century, to the point that 20 years ago very few medical doctors
were practicing it. The old guard had almost all died off and very
few new doctors were joining. With the rise of interest in
alternative medicine a quarter-century ago, the gap was filled at
first with lay homeopaths. Now we have a tremendous interest in
homeopathy among MDs, osteopaths, naturopaths, veterinarians, nurse
practitioners, chiropractors, and acupuncturists. I can see this in
my own school, where dozens of health care professionals are learning
to incorporate homeopathy into their practices.
Another major change I see in the past 20 years is the research being
done in homeopathy, both in the US and abroad. So often we see in the
popular press-and even in medical journals, whose authors should know
better-that homeopathy is "unproven" and "there is no scientific
evidence to support it." The fact is that homeopathy does have good
scientific evidence to back it up. Unfortunately most of the research
has been done overseas and is not easily available here. Until
recently, the US government has not funded research in alternative
medicine, and it still has not committed funds in any way comparable
to the funding of drug research in this country. And some of the
research on homeopathy is faulty simply because it is difficult to
apply the double-blind method (in which normally one drug is tested
against a placebo) to homeopathy, which gives a different remedy to
almost every patient with the same diagnosis (due to homeopathy's
principle of individualizing) . Yet the meta-analyses (overviews of
all the studies on homeopathy) have shown that the better designed
the study, the more likely it was to demonstrate the effectiveness of
homeopathy. Within the past few years some good research on
homeopathy has been done in this country and published in mainstream
medical journals. With the government finally funding research, we
can look forward to more of it in the years to come.
I have no problem with my allopathic colleagues scrutinizing the
potential risks and benefits of alternative medicine. Let's examine
some of them and see if homeopathy can pass muster.
Quality of care is often the first argument brought up by my
colleagues. Homeopathy definitely has the potential to provide the
same (or better) quality of care as allopathic medicine. In the past,
as we mentioned, the most brilliant physicians were the homeopaths,
and homeopathic licensure had the same components as allopathic
licensure (in terms of the content and length of time of training,
testing and certification, a defined scope of practice, review and
audit and codified disciplinary action). The fact that homeopathy
does not currently have this licensure system is a reflection on the
political and economic forces at work in this country, not a
reflection on homeopathy itself. Licensure efforts for homeopathy are
underway in a number of states, at the same time that an increasing
number of already-licensed professionals are incorporating homeopathy
into their practices. In other words, this objection is only a
temporary one until the United States can catch up with Europe, the
former Soviet States and India in providing professional training and
licensure for homeopaths.
Quality of products is another potential argument against alternative
modalities. Random tests of supplements and herbs often show that the
contents do not measure up to what is on the label. And the labels do
not contain adequate warnings about the potentially toxic effects of
large overdoses of some supplements and herbs. But homeopathic
remedies are completely safe, non-toxic (in most potencies they don't
even contain one molecule) and very inexpensive. And a true homeopath
prescribes one single remedy at a time, therefore avoiding possible
interactions among multiple remedies. Allopathy would do well to
learn from this, since we physicians have the tendency to prescribe a
multitude of drugs for various symptoms. This has never worked before
and it never will, for it creates a jungle of side effects on top of
the symptoms of the disease itself. And we may not forget that
100,000 deaths a year in this country are caused by conventional drugs.
Quality of science is probably one of the main allopathic arguments.
Conventional medicine is touted as the leader in the management of
infectious and surgical diseases. But allopathic medicine still does
not have good weapons against cholera, for example. Yet homeopathy
was already successful against the great epidemic diseases of 150
years ago: cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever. In a
great flu epidemic earlier in this century, the statistics in London
hospitals showed the mortality rate at allopathic hospitals was 55%,
but less than 5% at homeopathic hospitals. Allopathic medicine claims
to be based on the double-blind method, and discredits any form of
alternative medicine which cannot fully support every remedy or
procedure with double-blind research studies. Yet allopathic medicine
itself violates this principle every day. Surgeries, for example, are
difficult to test by this method. When surgeries are assessed by
outcomes (how many people were doing better at the end of five years,
for example), millions of surgeries per year are shown to be futile
or unnecessary. And sadly enough, according to allopathic research,
67% of prescriptions are made based on the side-effects of drugs-in
other words, not according to the original double-blind protocol.
When we look at the last twenty years, homeopathy as a healing
modality has gained the attention of the public. Without any doubt,
homeopathy could be advanced by professional standards and greater
availability of instruction to interested health care professionals.
That the public has embraced alternative medicine has been proven by
the excellent 1998 study by David Eisenberg of Harvard Medical
School, which indicated that 70% of the population had consulted an
alternative practitioner. Because of its great results in the past
and present, homeopathy will undoubtedly catch the attention of
patients ready to embrace a scientific approach that has proven its
validity in the last two hundred years. I hope that allopathic
physicians will show a serious interest in this marvelous approach
before they reject it. Humankind will be the better for it!
Dr. Luc De Schepper
Renaissance Institute of Classical Homeopathy (RICH)
Full of Life Publishing (FLOP)
Mailing address:
P.O. Box 31025
Santa Fe, NM 87594
Email:
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