Meeting Offers Healing Alternatives

Orgo flashcards and periodic tables gave way to massages and workshops on relaxation techniques during a conference this weekend on alternative medicine in the Science Center.

More than 200 people attended the two-day Harvard-MIT Conference on Alternative Medicine, which included free massages by students at the Boston Shiatsu School and lectures by leaders in the field of alternative medicine.

"Our Western medicine, as powerful as it is, simply doesn't work very well for chronic illness," said keynote speaker James S. Gordon '62, a physician and chair of the Program Advisory Council at the National Institute of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine.

"In the last 25 years, having given bio-medicine a good shot, we've seen what it can do and we've seen what it can't do. People who have experienced this in their own body are the ones who are pushing for a new kind of medicine," he said.

According to conference speakers and organizers, current medical trends indicate a growing interest in from of medicine besides traditional Western practices.

"There is a major and profound change happening in medicine and health care in America today," Gordon said.

He specifically mentioned acupuncture, massage and special diets as techniques designed to help patients' mental, spiritual and physical health.

"Everything that goes on in the body affects the mind, and everything that goes on in the mind affects the body," Gordon said.

Gordon urged integrating alternative medicine into medical schools' curricula.

"Being a healer is a calling, and the calling is a calling that comes from within, that part of within that is connected to something outside, something which is greater than ourselves," Gordon said.

Medical students should also spend time in other countries, learning non-Western forms of medicine and making house-calls to patients, he said.

According to Joshua A. Jones '99-'00, a conference organizer, other speakers debated whether to use techniques based on personal experience, rather than scientific evidence.

Some scientists said that personal anecdotes, not laboratory studies, validate alternative medicine.

"I think, basically, there are some form of alternative medicine that could be considered quackery," Jones said. "But people need to learn what's out there and the make up their own mind about efficacy. It has to be based on personal decision."

The conference was jointly sponsored by the Harvard and MIT chapters of Hippocratic Society, and cosponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Tai-Chi Club.