The Bigger Picture: I find it increasingly amazing how the orthodox medical system continues to have so very little belief that many illnesses can be cured.
This is despite the vast amounts of information medics have about how our bodies work, the tremendous studying they do to memorise symptoms and treatments, and the many resources they have supporting their pursuits for more knowledge.
Within their worldview, most ailments require intervention by way of drugs, cutting, stitching or artificial supports. They fill things in, clear things out, even remove and replace whole parts of our bodies. Yet, the best we can expect is to live with our pains and 'manage' our illness. There is, in fact, very little healing going on.
In our world today, a great number of people develop preventable diseases and come for treatment only when they are in crisis. However, some responsibility for this must also lie at the door of orthodox medicine.
Would things be so chronically bad if we focused less on invading the body and killing foreigners, and more on empowering our bodies and building up resources? Where would things be if orthodox medicine weren't married to the pharmaceutical industry - an aggressive project that aims more for sales and marketing than healing? What, in fact, is the impact of this 'counter the symptoms' approach in increasing the intensity of our ailments? Most importantly, why do they have so little faith in the body?
Their religion is wrong. As much as scientists once believed they could replicate the human brain with a computer - only to discover we were far more sophisticated than anyone fully contemplated - they still believe they can subject our bodies to incredibly dramatic invasions and understand all their impacts. As long as the current symptoms cease to be explicitly observable, the toxicity and disempowering effects of their treatments are rarely considered. Still, one might argue that this is not healing.
How can we trust a therapeutic mechanism that does not even expect its practitioners to be healthy? Our healthcare workers are expected to work ridiculously long hours, continuing without sleep or proper nutrition. More than any other social group, they normalise the routine use of drugs.
Nevertheless, it remains true that certain things are absolutely necessary for any human being to heal. Of these, love and attention are paramount. Despite the enormous amount of resources required by this healthcare, love and attention are not available.
Furthermore, the healing relationship must be an empowered one if the client is to do what is needed to repair themselves. They must have access to information, choice, responsibility and belief in themselves - all of which are optional in the orthodox medical model of healing.
It comes down to the point that our medics don't even feel empowered enough in themselves to be able to empower another who is struggling and suffering. The culture of the whole sector - beginning with medical school and carrying on right through the institutions - is first to demean and disempower their own people, and then burden them with unrealistic responsibilities and pressure. This inevitably kills any hope of actually generating healing.
There is no excuse whatsoever for an individual to be set up as solely responsible for the life of another, regardless of how much information or experience they have acquired. It is unrealistic, unnatural and demeaning to the person whose life is at risk.
Healing is a force of living and, as such, requires active participation in a powerful way. Being made impotent in that process will always halt healing. No matter what miracle drugs or surgery are undertaken on a body by a third party, the forces that allow it to repair and restart its well-designed mechanisms must come from within.
Finally, our acceptance of crisis illness and emergency responses is overwhelming. We have become complacent and naive about how disease develops, ignoring the long-term processes that bring us to such intense states of dysfunction and partaking in reactive treatments commonly and casually as if they have anything to do with good health. Rather, they are dramas at the end of a play that have become commonplace, and so are no longer even effective in enlightening those who might come after.
We do not have a society that fosters health. We disrespect ourselves routinely, accepting weak bodies and ill health. We need our healthcare professionals to step back, reflect and accept the role of their dominant system in getting it so badly wrong.
Ultimately, we need them to join patients and alternative practitioners as equals in working to set things right. At the centre of healing, there is always our common humanity. In realising this, we all have a contribution to make.
Shalini Sinha has worked as a life coach and counsellor and presents the intercultural programme, Mono, on RTÉ Television. She has a BA in comparative religion and anthropology and an MA in women's studies.