Word: weil
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...exceedingly familiar treatments like biofeedback and gingerroot, alternative medicine's universal solvents in which virtually all sickness is said to dissolve. No matter how many times consumers have been shown this shopping list of cures before, however, only a comparatively small percentage of them have expressed any interest. When Weil shows it to them, they tend to buy. Weil thinks he knows...
Many mainstream doctors aren't so sure, dismissing Weil as more huckster than healer. While this is almost certainly unfair, it's also true that for much of his life he has indeed had a perfect-pitch sense of how to attract attention to himself...
...Weil's first brush with demi-fame came in 1962, when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. Writing for the Harvard Crimson, he fell into an unlikely assignment: poke around the psychology department and investigate rumors that students and professors there were openly experimenting with illegal drugs. The substance of choice was the so far little-known hallucinogen LSD. The professors providing it were the so far little-known Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary...
...Weil recognized a scoop when he was handed one, and he struck a deal with the university administration: if the Crimson provided Harvard officials with enough information to help them get rid of Leary and Alpert, Harvard officials would keep the scandal quiet until Weil published his exclusive story. Harvard agreed, Weil went to work, and when he proved the rumors true, his subsequent Crimson articles caused such a stir that Look magazine commissioned him to write a similar piece for national publication. To the surprise of no one at Harvard, Leary and Alpert were soon forced...
...years later, when Weil had moved on to Harvard Medical School, he attracted public attention again--this time to the other side of the drug divide. Having earned his undergraduate degree in botany and having witnessed the growing frenzy over the popularity of marijuana on campus, Weil began to wonder just how much of a scourge the drug really was. Since one of his course requirements was to conduct an independent research project, he petitioned Harvard administrators to allow him to attempt the first-ever double-blind human experiments on the intoxicating powers of pot. Harvard agreed but reminded Weil...