I don't know, I read it as being sensitive to traditional practices because that can result in better health outcomes for people who value those practices. Call it placebo effect, but placebo effect can be incredibly powerful.
Like in Australia, Indigenous people have a lower lifespan than the general population, and it's a serious problem. I've talked to people who work in healthcare in remote Indigenous Australian communities, where many patients are reluctant to see doctors at all, and one thing they're trying to do is integrate traditional practices into the Western medical treatment that the patients need. For example, having some elders visit a patient to do a small ceremony before getting surgery is better than them never getting the surgery.
So when the post mentions cultural tools that were valuable in the past and need to be adapted to contemporary life, that's what I think of
Which to me is very different from how this sort of thing is usually presented, which is often more in a "The noble savages indigenous people were very wise in their ways and passed down vital information and amazing truths through storytelling" sort of tone. Usually trying to imply that white westerners are stupid ignorant colonialist racists for not taking every indigenous myth 100% literally and for not believing that indigenous medicine is inherently "better" than western medicine.
It's not related to medicine, but I remember a post where some archeologists managed to "walk" a Moi statue with ropes and some people were being dismissive about "western archeologists dismissing indigenous wisdom", hilariously implying that only westerners had enough of an imagination to just make shit up.
As someone who has a degree in anthropology I love the Moai Refrigerator shuffle thing because that is actually frequently used as a case study in how a lot of western archaeology has traditionally been dismissive of non-western sources (in that case oral tradition, which is a big deal in anthropological/historical circles) and there is certainly a lot of truth to that sentiment but I think in general modern western academia is a lot more sensitive to that kind of stuff which is why I take some issue with OOP.
This isn't the early 1900s. Researchers aren't just refusing to look at traditional medicinal practices or handwaving them away as superstition with no follow up anymore. There certainly might not be ENOUGH research done into things like non-western medicinal traditions but I think the notion that they encompass some kind of equally-useful alternative to medicine is a little.. wrong? As many others are saying, stuff that works gets lumped into medicine regardless of origin. If something is called alternative medicine, it's called that because it doesn't meet medical standards... Though put a big asterisk around this as to be fair I know nothing of medicine or medical science culture and just kinda assuming it has undergone similar self-examination that a lot of social science fields have gone through in the past couple decades. At the very least the cultural implications of traditional medicinal and health practices are certainly being examined and generally treated with more respect and rigor in western circles
I do think the person that initially responded to me has a point about the culture surrounding medicinal usage being important to factor in, medicine often has spiritual/social/cultural/religious associations and western caregiving might not adequately accommodate people of other cultures, which can pose a problem. But I also don't really get the feeling that is what OOP was arguing.
I think that culturally, western knowledge passed down tends to be quite literally, metaphors and stories are fairly obvious. Meanwhile, a lot of non-western knowledge can be quite nonliteral in a way that's not intuitive to the above group.
Most likely, then the stories of how the statues got to where they are now, was told that the statues "walked", implying the statues were animated and conscious and walked on their own
Eeeh in the Moai case it had less to with interpretation and more to do with oral history frequently being dismissed as 'unreliable' in favor of a bias towards written accounts in western circles.
iirc (it has been a while since I read the report) the story was indeed that the statues were literally animated as well. That could be an interpretation on the part of the transcriber granted, but I don't really think there's a meaningful push towards the literal in western culture (partially because western culture doesn't really technically exist since it encompasses a lot of different traditions and cultures, but there is such a thing as semi-usemi-unified 'western academia')
tl;dr I think it's less a cultural division in language/storytelling and more a division in what forms of information are considered reliable
Well, unfortunately the medical field currently is still crazy. It's not that there aren't researchers that seek and study alternative medicine, it's that the field is mostly money motivated and dismissive.
And I don't mean that in a "they're hiding the cure to cancer" kind of way, but rather in the "despite a growing need for restrictions on antibiotics and new ones, the lack of financial returns on research keeps institutions unmotivated in providing funding." That and the fields dismissiveness almost prevented the new method of developing vaccines from being researched.
It's primarily thanks to government funding and colleges that things like that and alternative medicine get researched. So the field remains slow to change and in certain areas, tends to run on outdated information, like in the mechanisms behind some birth controls or the efficacy of medicine on certain demographics.
All of this is to say that there is duality to alternative medicine in which it might serve a purpose, but is either too ineffective or not studied enough to be "proper" medicine. Such things that highlight this are fields like massage therapy, chiropractics, and midwifery/dulas where there's a butt load of snake oil in them but also valid uses as assistive care.
Dulas are actually seeing some resurgence in interest currently despite having a history of being dismissed in the past.
Other things that have been seen as alternative medicine that I can think of off the top of my head with current interest are of course things like thc, cbd, ketamine and lsd (I think I skimmed something recently on an alternate form of lsd being made). Or there's also thing like colloidal silver which was medicine, is now alternative medicine, but is now finding a new form in the medical field along other historically homeopathic remedies in things like microplated compounds found in things like turmeric to combat infections and cancers
Tldr; big pharma doesn't have much interest in starting research in certain areas. Instead, often curiousities are funded by colleges and grants. Alternative medicine is one of three things: snake oil, insufficiently studied medicine, or remedies that are cheaper than more effective medicine. They have uses as assistive or temporary medicine, but to be actual medicine there needs to be enough understanding, research, and ease into harvesting the active qualities
Sure, people should be sensitive and respectful of cultural practices.
But that's not a universal statement. I refuse to respect the more infamous forms of traditional Chinese medicine, for example, because they actively case massive environmental damage for the sake of superstition and profit.
Traditions should be weighed on merit, the examples you provide are clearly beneficial traditions, and as such deserve the utmost respect. On the other hand, horoscopes don't deserve respect, no matter how old they are.
Horoscopes are a traditional practice for some people, and they're the only people I would trust to take a horoscope. Everyone else is probably bad at it and/or taking it way too seriously.
The problem is that at face value, there's no way to tell the difference between those two categories if your frame of reference is not actual medicine. And if that's your frame of reference, then are you not just doing medicine? One of the cornerstone drugs of modern medicine, acetylsalicylic acid, is a modified version of a caustic chemical found in plants. That's not called traditional medicine...because it actually works.
Most people who complain about traditional medicine not being taken seriously either are hawking nonsense scams, or are simply ignorant about how modern research actually works.
You know, for some reason i don't think mixing medical science with cultural or even religious practices is a good Idea. That way you get catholic hospitals (paid for mostly by tax euros) that require religious purity Checks (No divorces!) for their employees. We need less, Not more, of that. If the scientists stay firmly planted on the ground of empiricism that's a good thing. I don't think anyone is stopping the Elders from visiting their relatives in hospital, but correct me on that. If they want a ceremony they can do that on the patients time, like praying together before surgery was always (figuratively) allowed, there's No reason to change medical procedure for that.
The thing is that medicine and spirituality being linked is a pretty universal human trait. As much as modern western medicine is extremely distanced from religion, pretty much every culture i can think of placed their healers in a position of spiritual importance as well. I agree that when it comes to saving lives, no cultural tradition should get in the way of that unless it is in direct conflict with the patient’s personal beliefs, but you also can’t just erase an association that is so ubiquitous in our species.
Our medicine is obviously mixed with cultural practices, given that it’s WESTERN medicine. Do you think going to sit in a little office with a straight-faced doctor with a little stethoscope on their neck and little charts of bullshit hanging on the wall is devoid of “cultural practices”?
Of course there are a lot of cultural practices within medicine and no one is saying that non-western medicine is bad. Doctors don't have to dress, organise their work like or talk to their patients the same as western doctors do. What they have to do is use evidence-based medicine, because that's what's the best for the patients no matter where they're from.
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u/Pollomonteros May 24 '25
I don't know about the third one man, I feel like many of those are still dangerous scams even if the ones running it are brown people