ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE A Dispute on Truth, Power or Money?

Abstract

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, a cultural transformation of modern medicine began to take place in the industrialised countries of the western world. On one hand scientific and technological development accelerated, surpassing its previous limits. On the other, unconventional medicine¹ reappeared after a long post-war period of silence, and its use has become more and more widespread during recent years (Eisenberg 1993 and 1998; Fisher 1994; Thomas 1991). Is it not strange that in an era of technological miracles and heroic medical performances people are again using either traditional or even exotic healing practices? Why do they do so if science advances in leaps and bounds, and applies its new techniques in practice? Is this a symptom of the fall of the rational world-view? What does it indicate? While Erich Fromm could still claim in 1973 that science is considered the highest value in industrial societies, that it is associated with moral correctness (Fromm 1997), at the beginning of the new millennium opinion is much more heterogeneous. In accordance with the sociological description of a postmodern society, different or even contradictory value systems coexist side by side and claim the right to their own existence. On the streets we are confronted with bizarre combinations of traditional and technological elements in human behaviour and appearance. To be individual in one’s style has become a new sort of cultural demand.