Another great post by Dr Perman to share!
The 99th Monkey
We chiropractors are accustomed to differing with the mainstream viewpoint on health. “Things Natural” has been our battle cry — instead of responding allopathically, we seek and address causes from within, and slowly but surely, we’re beginning to see movement toward this worldview, illustrated by three current news stories.
I was watching NBC’s coverage of the Ebola outbreak, and Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, commented that Ebola does not always result in fatality – stronger, healthier people have a better shot at recovery, and common sense health and hygiene practices for avoidance offered a better overall approach than extensive treatment after infection.
My lovely wife Regina heard on CBS radio news that a police department report names prescription painkillers as the true gateway to heroin addiction, advising doctors to resist prescribing them.
And past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association Dr. Art LeVine circulated an article from the medical journal “Headache” and published on Medscape, forwarded by my brother Dr. Steve Perman, detailing the shift in consciousness of the typical patient.
In “CAM in the Real World: You May Practice Evidence-Based Medicine, But Your Patients Don’t,” migraine specialist Dr. Robert Cowan wrote, “As much as 82% of headache sufferers use complementary and alternative approaches. There is limited evidence suggesting the vast majority of these treatments are harmful (regardless of the evidence they are helpful), and most have withstood “the test of time,” having been handed down over hundreds, even thousands of years.”
He continues, “Perhaps it is time to reconsider whether we are acting in our patients’ best interests by discounting (or worse, dismissing) treatments not objectively evaluated. Perhaps, in the absence of these objective evaluations, it is time we gave weight to traditions and clinical experiences that, in some cases, span thousands of years and millions of clinical experiences in the hands of countless non-Western practitioners.”
While this is hardly a ringing endorsement, the begrudging acknowledgment of other philosophies outside drugs and surgery is refreshing, even revolutionary, and foreshadows significant progress.
So when the head of the CDC recognizes the role of host resistance and immunity (c’est le terrain, Pasteur concluded) and the cops in the trenches say prescription drugs lead people to narcotics dependency, and noted medical authorities are seeing that non-conventional techniques have value, even though they themselves may not understand why they work – well, as my brother quipped, “methinks I may be witnessing the 99th monkey!”
With these kinds of distinctions made by these kinds of prominent thought leaders, there’s a new brand of hope for millions of patients who are themselves already coming around to this inside-out way of thinking – and that can only be good for our profession and for our culture. It demonstrates Schopenhauer’s three stages of truth – first, we were ridiculed, then we were violently opposed, and finally, we’ll soon be accepted as self-evident. A sick humanity awaits us – please, let’s be ready.
Dennis Perman DC,
for The Masters Circle
