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By Don Bott |
My 84-year-old father-in-law used to be the village shaman [witch doctor] back in Ubol. He's Christian now, but his leathery skin bears arcane tattoos and he still mixes a salve from herbs and porkfat which clears up rash from poison ivy.
Pa's grease doesn't work against my cellulitis or the wife's trenchfoot, though. The remedy is a SPECIFIC, not a cure-all which some dishonest "doctors" claim of products produced commercially.
Alternative medicine appeals to a wider audience here nowadays because of at least three things. They are [1.]the high price of modern medical facilities, [2.]the current economic crisis, and [3.]advertising campaigns by quacks and hoaxers who promise much but deliver little.
DANGEROUS STUFF
A young Chula U. MD made a fortune in less than a year by marketing
a "skin lotion" which promised to clear complexions. He used his minor
wife, a 21-year-old student at another college, as the model. She didn't
use the stuff at all.
Good thing, too. One woman did, and her face, arms and back reacted violently: she was transformed from an attractive young lady with a slight case of acne to a crone with warts and welts. She sued.
The Thai Ministry of Public Health supported the suit. Though the organization has a reputation for corruption in profiting from drug company bribes, it's largely staffed by ethical persons. The doctor was forbidden to practice, and his gook was taken off shelves.
Of late, the Ministry has approved the introduction of alternative practices under carefully controlled conditions. Traditional Thai herbs are being used, and "macrobiotic diet" accompanies more mainstream techniques of healing.
This isn't just because currently there's a worldwide fad toward traditional and New Age cures, says a Ministry spokesman. He said patients would benefit if good points of both traditional and modern medicine can be combined.
FATAL
ENCOUNTERS
This ideal is still a dream in Thailand, though. Doctors aren't legally
allowed to use traditional treatments and shamans can thus practice
money saving folk medicine which doesn't do everything it claims.
Repeated countless times: rather than seek conventional treatment, a sufferer of cancer pays out close to a million baht over two years or so for spiritual healing through meditation and perhaps some placebo pills. A painful death, finally.
On the other hand, there's the happy tale of famous Thai artist Prueng Pliansaisueb. At 60 the doctors told him he's die in a few months. He's 66 now.
Prueng credits the Cheewajit system, a combination of macrobiotic diet, natural healing and affirmative thinking, for saving him from cancer. Dr. Sathit Intrakamhaeng, founder of the system, contrasts it with modern medicine.
While today's specialists use drugs and surgery to attack disease, such a holistic approach to healing as the Cheewajit system treats the cause of illnesses and builds up natural immunity, Dr. Sathit says.
These methods are cheaper. For instance, a chemotherapy patient has to pay 100,000 baht [about $2500] per session in Thailand. Several sessions are required, depending on the extent of the cancerous growth being treated.
Ministry of Health statistics this decade put cancer as Thailand's number three killer, with heart disease barely beating accidents as the leading causes of death. According to another Ministry official, these numbers call for more emphasis to be placed on prevention and health promotion.
Today's Thais live unhealthy lives that result in illnesses that could be prevented, say the proponents of alternative medicine here. Like everybody else in developed countries, they're also sick of costly pills and expensive hospital bills. # #
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