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From: wws@ukma.UUCP (Bill Stoll)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Purging Stoll and his kind
Message-ID: <2221@ukma.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 19:41:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ukma.2221
Posted: Thu Sep 19 19:41:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 00:51:21 EDT
References: <2172@ukma.UUCP> <813@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP> <272@bbncc5.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences, Lexington KY
Lines: 65
Keywords: (or giving net.med a high colonic)
Summary: 4 stages of societal response to great advances in thinking. Has Steve Dyer blown a fuse? 3 (9/19/85) med. articles support Holistic Medicine.


Poor Steve.  Sooo predictable!

There are four stages of societal response to the discovery of
radically new concepts (in this order):     
     #1  Ignore it and it will go away.
     #2  Ridicule
     #3  Attack 
     #4  Total acceptance:  "Well, that's obvious!  We knew that all
         the time!

Twice now, Steve has ridiculed something I have placed on the net;
only to have strong evidence to the contrary be published within a few
days of his unsupported position.  His response has been to regress
(like the child who reverts to bedwetting when the new baby is brought
home from the hospital) from the relatively advanced societal response
of ridicule to the relatively more primitive strategy of ignoring.

Sorry Steve,  you're going to have to work harder and harder to ignore
what is rushing, like an avalanche, into all our lives.  Just today,
in one of the many Medical Journals I read every day, in the special
section called Medical Ethics (appropriate, I think), Thomas Preston,
MD, Professor of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine
& Chief of Cardiology at Pacific Medical Center, joined my side.  In a
one page statement,"Palliative Care No Match for Prevention of
Disease", one more outstanding clinician points out exactly my
position: Reference--Medical World News/September 9, 1985 (page 19).

The same day two more articles in the same vein: Family Practice News/
September 1-14, 1985, page 16, "Medicare Asked to Take Part in
Promoting 'Wellness'" & page 18 (same issue) "Promoting Healthier
Life-Styles Challenging, Rewarding".

Even the AMA has already reached the last of the four societel
responses.  In American Medical News/September 13, 1985, the
announcement is made that the third special supplement to Newsweek by
the AMA appears in the Sept. 9th edition, titled: "To your health!
Building and keeping a healthy body."  The supplement covers such
topics as nutrition, exercise, and disease prevention.  The only
professional national medical organization that specializes in this
field is the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA).  For the
past 7 years, since the beginning of the AHMA, the AMA has done as
much as it legally could to stifle it.  The very things the AMA is now
claiming for its own has been practiced for many years by Holistic
Medical Practitioners.  Of course, the AHMA is now practicing an
advanced form of what was known 7 years ago.  It will be years before
the conventional medical practitioner catches up though catch up they
will eventually.  It should already be considered malpractice to offer
less than is known.  Eventually that may be what forces many MDs to go
back to learn all this new stuff.  

Trying to pitch the offerings to the net to satisfy the lowest common
denominator would be a sad thing for the rest of us.  Maybe we can
create a "special class for slow learners like the Steve Dyers".

-- 

cbosgd!ukma!wws(Walt Stoll)                       YOU

Walt Stoll, MD, ABFP
Founder & Medical Director                     ARE   MORE
Holistic Medical Centre 
1412 North Broadway
Lexington, Kentucky  40505                  THAN  YOU  THINK
(606) 233-4273