EDITORIAL: The healing touch
Apr 30, 2006
News Straits Times

AT first glance, the Ministry of Health’s proposal to embrace "alternative medicine" was just asking to have the mickey taken out of it.

MP for Sri Gading Datuk Mohamed Aziz duly obliged on Thursday, conjuring a picture of smoking and spewing shamans in government hospitals to the delight of the Dewan Rakyat. Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek dourly attempted to kill off the laughing fit by stating that, "What we are trying to do is to integrate Western and traditional treatments, and it will not be like what was described in Parliament." What should it be like then? And why should the ministry be dabbling in snake-oil cures unproven by medical science?

The answer to the second question is simpler than the first: People want their acupuncturists, osteopaths, bomohs, sinsehs and what have you, whether their doctors like it or not. For every Mohamed Aziz, there is at least one true believer who swears by such potions and practices. What flummoxes sceptics is that these remedies are most sought after for very minor ailments, which don’t really require a trip to the clinic, or very major ones, such as AIDS, cancer, mental illness and drug addiction, whose treatment has largely eluded conventional medicine. Can a doctor refuse a patient’s wish to see a herbalist when he can’t do any more to help?

In the past, the attending physician would have simply washed his hands of the matter and sent the poor sufferer home. But the medical establishment is no longer the dictator of health services it once was. With today’s patient empowerment, hospitals are being increasingly put upon to provide unorthodox therapies on demand. Many of these, albeit with much resistance and controversy, are going mainstream. The United States has an Office of Alternative Medicine under its National Institutes of Health and Britain is setting up a Complementary Medical Council to separate fact, or whatever comes closest to it, from hocus-pocus.

Given the actual or placebo effects of alternative medicine, should the Kuala Lumpur Hospital employ a consultant pawang? Not until the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Act is in place, according to the ministry, which could take three years. Advocates, however, argue that statutory regulation is only necessary for therapies that can cause direct physical harm. So unless the Tok Dukun interferes or makes things worse, he should be allowed to ministrate to the sick and dying if they ask for him. Jokes aside, perhaps the sooner the better.