Ray said(in part):
"Two of those can best be shown with the following examples. The
first is about Medicine. We have a Medical Model that is basically
chemical intervention on a war footing against disease. A member
of my family that is now fifteen has, since birth, been a participant in
that belief system. Her health has steadily declined until this year
she missed a whole semester of school as the family took her from
the internist to the gastrointorologist, to the neurologist, to MRIs, to
various "oscopies" and she just got worse. Along the way she also
started psycho-therapy just in case. Actually, given the failure of
everyone to even help, the latter makes the most sense if she was
to survive the bungling of the rest. Finally we took her to a homeo-
pathist who works with a regular internist who ordered more tests."
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Ray, , I was just thinking similar thoughts about western medicine as I was
driving into work at lunch today. King Hussein's death was being talked
about on the news. They were mentioning all the high tech treatments he had
received in the US. I remember reading an article where a leading
researcher in chemotherapy developed cancer and chose not to go through the
standard chemo process. He said he knew too much.
Tony Hillerman has a beautiful section in one of his Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn
Navaho mystery novels. Chee tells a white friend that he would be doing a
healing ceremony over the weekend for an old Navaho women who was dying.
The white friend inquires on the following Monday if the healing ceremony
had been successful. Chee says yes. The white friend, somewhat bewildered,
asks if she wasn't going to die. Chee replies of course she is. The healing
ceremony was 'successful' because the old woman and her family found peace
and acceptance through the sacred ritual.
Helps me with Wittgenstein's aphorism: 'Ethics and Aesthetics are one'
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* Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator *
* Faculty of Education, Queen's University *
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* "Ethics and aesthetics are one" *
* Wittgenstein *
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