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1 UOiN 1 IV1NVJW . . . Itl 11 dent Kennedy that he took America into Viet Nam because he wanted to prove to the ghost of Joe McCarthy that the Democratic Party was not soft on Communism. The understandable concern many have for survival in the face of potential social unrest and/or nuclear holocaust prompts another abberation of the question-answer dichotomy. It is one thing to develop rudimentary health care skills in anticipation of an emergency and it is another to rely on those survival techniques when more proven and professional services are still available within civilized society. More on that later. Finally, while we can hardly blame the advance of medical technology for the rise of stress in modern society, stress appears to play a critical role in disease. It is known, for example, that the death rate for widows and widowers is ten times higher in the first year of bereavement than it is for others of comparable age; in the year following divorce, the divorced persons have twelve times the disease that married persons have.15 Let me describe two examples of distortion of this otherwise desirable return to the art of medicine, a result in part of a disequilibrium between ignorance and knowledge. We have within us a resurgence of people who describe themselves as herbalists. It is not clear what the definition of an herbalist is, except generally it is someone who prefers to use so-called herbs in preference to scientific medicine or technology. Digitalis, our friend of heart disease, is an herb. Periwinkle, for the treatment of cancer, is an herb. Penicillin is the product of normal botanical processes, and other basic medicines have their origins in natural substances. Herbalists, in the words of Dr. Don Nelson on our faculty, are "Well meaning people who have found that modern medicine cannot cure everything (and) are too easily attracted to the 'testimonials' of other well meaning friends that there is a cure not known (or used) by conventional medical practitioners."16 As an aside, given the intense profit motive of our traditional pharmaceutical industry, it does seem highly unlikely, however, that a promising herb chemical would long be left unexploited by them. Incidentally, it is reported that 85 percent of the U.S. herbal packaging business occurs on our Wasatch Front. The second example involves the growing popularity in this state of lay midwifery. Obstetrical care has traditionally and overwhelmingly and perhaps unnecessarily been provided by white male medical doctors of obstetrics. In recent decades, nurse midwives have re-emerged to provide good care for many routine pregnancies. The lay midwife is something alltogether different. In distinction to |
