Re:Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe
by borism on Friday February 04, 2011 @07:36PM
(#2182008)
There is only one class of medicine in the world, and is scientific.
what is considered scientific is very often defined by culture though.
I bet those tribes consider their shamans scientists, even though they won't pass our western scientific criteria.
Re:Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe
by burgerbrain on Friday February 04, 2011 @09:26PM
(#2182242)
"By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call Alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine."
--Tim Minchin
Re:Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe
by borism on Saturday February 05, 2011 @03:10AM
(#2182717)
Traditional medicine != Alternative medicine, it's the only medicine available for majority of people on Earth (about 80% of people in Asia are exposed almost exclusively to it). Chinese had their medicine when we europeans were still living in caves.
Re:Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe
by burgerbrain on Saturday February 05, 2011 @11:12AM
(#2183303)
For all intents and purposes, there are two types of "medicine". Modern science based medicine, and everything else. I put medicine in quotes there because the "everything else" isn't medicine. Traditional medicine is a form of alternative medicine, and it is bullshit.
"The American National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) cites examples including naturopathy, chiropractic medicine, herbalism, traditional CHINESE MEDICINE, Ayurveda, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture, and nutritional-based therapies, in addition to a range of other practices.[5]"
Capitalization for emphasis.
Re:Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe
by yaix on Saturday February 05, 2011 @09:15AM
(#2183101)
There is also a european traditional medicine, only that it has been largely forgotten because scientific medicine was so much more effective. In China they never developed any scientific approach to healing, so the traditional stuff was all they had. And no, its not "that" old.
There is only one class of medicine in the world, and is scientific. Your attempt to frame science-based medicine as a racial or cultural property ("Western") lies at the root of your reasoning fallacies: you reinterpret comparison between industrialized and tribal humans as cultural/racial, regardless of whether race or culture has anything to do with it. The superiority of empirical medicine is not cultural hegemony. The life-saving knowledge of microbe theory and hygiene is not a religious belief that be can relativized with shamanist "healing."