Interesting John Diamond quotes on some alternative medicine proponents
John Diamond was a journalist who sadly died of oral cancer in 2001. He wrote a book about his illness, 'C -Because Cowards Get Cancer Too', and was writing another, 'Snake Oil', when he died. What he had written was published, along with some of his other writings, as 'Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations' (Vintage, 2001).
As a well-known person with a serious illness, Diamond was contacted at various times, by a number of people wanting to promote quack cures, and the book deals harshly with such quackery. But one really interesting bit, which sums up some of my negative reactions to elements of the altie-med crowd, is:
'But then (the rise in alternative medicine promotion) was also the height of Thatcherism, and while I don't want to get too precious about the essential philosophy behind alternativism, and while I realize the average alternative and liberal-minded therapist would be horrified by the comparison, it's no coincidence that alternative medicine grew as Margaret Thatcher's Weltanschauung took hold. In many ways, it was where the fading hippiedom of the early Seventies was able to meet the new materialism of the Thatcherites head-on. Alternative medicine, like Thatcherism, tells us that our personal well-being is entirely in our own hands, that we can all have anything we want - perfect health, freedom from anxiety - if we want it enough and are willing to take the steps to make the thing happen. It is a libertarian concept: just as Thatcherism was going to dismantle the old monopolies and give citizens a choice of companies to provide their domestic gas or telephone services or schools, so alternativism masqueraded as another form of consumer liberation. No longer would we be tied to a single provider of health - the medical orthodoxy - but we would be free to choose.'
Diamond then goes on to demolish much quackery on more evidence-based grounds (I'd recommend the book to people interested in the subject!); but even just this paragraph strikes a chord with me.
Indeed, I find that many proponents of alternative medicine seem to marry this sort of Thatcherite right-libertarianism with an older sort of right-wing politics: the ultra-traditionalist attitude that there was once a Golden Age, which was superseded by a lot of new-fangled nonsense, and that we should go back to the days of Great-Great-Grandma.
This is not, of course, on its own a reason for rejecting a medicine that may work (evidence suggests that most of these medicines don't), but I do get upset when the right-wing viewpoints about health are actually and explicitly touted on DU, as happens sometimes.
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