| Philosophy and Cancer
Treatment
By Simon Mitchell
Article Word Count: 1064
1000 years ago in Europe pre-Christian tribes originally
had a Goddess culture - a matriarchy where the earth and nature
and their cycles and secrets were revered. In pre-industrial
societies illness was not seen as a 'random assault from outside'
but as a deeply significant life event integral to the sufferer's
whole being - spiritual, moral, physical and life course -
past, present and future. Dis-ease was interpreted as packed
with moral, spiritual and religious messages as one of the
many ways through which 'God revealed his will to mankind'.
Other philosophies of medicine such as Ayurvedic or Tibetan
think similarly, in these, dis-ease has a karmic aspect.
Around the tenth century in Europe - after the so called
'Dark Ages' - women, the original stewards of the land (men
did ‘animal husbandry’), were dispossessed of
it by the new patriarchies of the Church and State. This male
hierarchy hid the things they were most afraid of, namely
the fact that it is women who hold the key to the processes
and powers of life. They took them as their own, decreeing
laws about how we should behave to impose control and inventing
'original sin'. Allied to this there came a prolonged persecution
of women, especially any of those involved in healing. Some
sources estimate about 5 - 9 million women were destroyed
across Europe during this persecution. Essentially the role
of women as healers and midwives was discouraged and ‘home-making’
and its many associated skills is still regarded as a ‘worthless’
career according to our primarily fiscal values based on GDP.
When a patriarchy takes over a matriarchy as a fundamental
paradigm shift, one of the main things that happens is that
'healing' and 'spirituality' are separated out as an instrument
of control. The world of spirit and physic were separated
and became even more so during the great male 'Age of Reason'
that began with Descartes and continued with Newton, the tail-end
of which many are presently clinging to in desperation and
a degree of applied self-interest.
Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) was a central influence on the
17th century revolution that began modern science and philosophy.
His ‘Method of Doubt’ was published in 1637: "I
resolved to reject as false everything in which I could imagine
the least doubt, in order to see if there afterwards remained
anything that was entirely indubitable".
The philosophy of ‘Cartesian dualism’ became
part of our science, where the mind and the body are seen
as essentially separate. The ‘self’, the conscious
being that is ‘me’ was seen as essentially non-physical.
Misguidedly (it was not Descartes intention) this philosophy
contributed to the mechanistic and rational philosophy of
the universe adopted by our culture. Descartes was one of
the first people to suggest that phenomena could be understood
by breaking them down into constituent parts and examining
each minutely. His view of the human body as a machine functioning
within a mechanistic universe took prevalence within the ‘Age
of Reason’.
"Consider the human body as a machine. My thought compares
a sick man and an ill-made clock with my idea of a healthy
man and a well made clock".
This attention to analytical detail is still at the heart
of our scientific research methodologies. As a result Western
medicine has produced ‘World saving’ vaccines
and antibiotics. It has created drugs and surgical techniques
that do utterly amazing things. It has virtually eliminated
all the serious communicable diseases (in the First World)
such as leprosy, plague, tuberculosis, tetanus, syphilis,
rheumatic fever, pneumonia, meningitis, polio, septicaemia.
There are very few women dying in childbirth compared to the
past. Western medicine has been, and is, a triumph in the
face of these problems which worried us back then the way
cancer and heart disease worry us today. Even the big medical
problems of the of 1930’s and 40’s have literally
vanished.
The age of infectious disease has given way to the age of
chronic disorders. The major killers today are heart and vascular
disease, chronic degenerative diseases and cancer, largely
incurable and increasing in incidence. The strategies that
worked so well for all but eliminating acute infectious diseases
just don’t seem to work for chronic and degenerative
conditions.
"The prevalence of asthma, multiple sclerosis, chronic
fatigue, immune deficiency syndrome, HIV and a host of other
debilitating conditions is increasing. Conventional biomedicine
- so strikingly successful in the treatment of overwhelming
infections, surgical and medical emergencies and congenital
defects, has been unable to stem the tide of these conditions".
James Gordon M.D., Washington, D.C.
Even during the time of Sir Isaac Newton the human body was
viewed as an intricate biological machine. The Universe was
an orderly, predictable but divine mechanism, a ‘grand
clockwork’. Although hundreds of years have passed,
Western scientific medicine still holds the same basic philosophy,
but are more sophisticated in studying biological mechanisms
at a molecular level.
The first Newtonian approaches were essentially surgical.
The body was seen as if it were a complex plumbing system.
If it went wrong the offending piece was removed or bypassed.
These days instead of using knives, drugs are often used to
do more or less the same things.
Humans though are far more than walking sacks of chemicals.
The animating life-force central to other medical systems
is an energy that is not addressed by modern scientific methodology
and there are no Western medical models that explain what
it is and what it does. It is misguided by the concept that
all illnesses are cured by physically repairing or eliminating
abnormal cells. This is partly due to a conflict between ‘Western’
and ‘Eastern’ philosophies and has its roots in
the division of science and religion along with the destruction
of folk medicine in both U.S. and Europe.
Cancer cannot be treated effectively under a philosophy of
reductionism. Scientific cancer research has failed to find
a cure because it is looking in the wrong places with the
wrong tools. Cancer needs to be understood as a ‘whole’
disease in relation to each individual’s experience
and the culture of which they are part. It has multiple causes
that vary with each patient. The strategies that worked so
well for tackling acute infectious diseases are inappropriate
for dealing with chronic and degenerative conditions. Cancer
patients can be at best increasingly ‘patched up’
by orthodox treatments but at spiralling health care costs.
This is an extract from 'Don't Get Cancer'a new ebook available
only at: http://www.simonthescribe.co.uk/don'tget1.html
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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