Word: weil
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Whether conventional medicine will ever extend such diplomatic recognition to breakaway practitioners like Weil is an open question. Part of the problem appears to be Weil himself. Even after 30 years, many of his mainstream colleagues still remember him mostly for his marijuana studies and persist in seeing him, at best, as a drug apologist and, at worst, as an advocate. Weil hasn't always helped his own cause: his third book, From Chocolate to Morphine (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), seemed to argue for the essential blamelessness of most mind-altering drugs and to make little distinction between plants like cocoa...
What disturbs Establishment doctors more about Weil, however, is his medicine. When you look behind all the miracle testimonials in Weil's books, they insist, the science that supports them--whether it's the science of homeopathy, osteopathy or ordinary herbs--looks just plain shabby. "Weil cites a lot of anecdotes," says Dr. James R. Allen, a vice president of the American Medical Association, "and while they can be instructive, that doesn't mean they are necessarily valid in terms of scientific proof...
...Allen and others, however, is that--if the testimonials in Weil's books are to be believed--many people who try these treatments do get better. A mainstream gynecologist may not be able to explain why raspberry and nettles could help cure endometriosis, and a traditional neurologist may be stumped at how breathing exercises could dramatically relieve the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. But the fact remains that in a number of cases these treatments appear to work. For many in mainstream medicine, of course, such a cause-and-effect disconnect sounds like nothing more than an elaborate placebo effect...
...surprisingly, conventional researchers see this as dancing away from the question. "Weil wants you to believe that you don't need the scientific approach, that you don't need to demand evidence," says Dr. Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and emeritus professor at Harvard Medical School. "I resent well-educated people exploiting irrational elements in our culture, and that's what he's doing...
...debate between alternative and mainstream medicine will not get settled anytime soon, but even if Andrew Weil the scientist does not prevail, it's clear that Andrew Weil the crusader has already made his impression. What's less clear--at least for now--is whether Weil and other alternative healers are selling real cures or, like the hypnotist, just casting good spells...