An interesting interview with an ultimate leader in holistic/alternative medicine—- a psychiatrist.

DR. BALLENTINE [FROM AN INTERVIEW] Transformational Medicine and Flower Essence Therapy (flowersociety.org)——– open also the link for the full interview if you wish.

Dr. Ballentine:
I think I had some kind of natural resonance with nature. It makes sense that nature has some integrity and what we need is found there. I think how I really became convinced was through using these healing tools in my practice and through studying the literature. There is a tremendous amount of research that validates the use of natural medicinals. A tremendous amount of research.

I had a student call me today from one of my kid’s classes in high school. He wanted to interview me. He said the teacher wanted to know if there was research to back up the use of natural medicinals. And I thought, what do people think? Do they think doctors like me are completely berserk? That we’re all doing something for which there is no evidence at all? The truth is there is more evidence for many of the “alternative” approaches than there is for the things that are being customarily done in hospitals. A lot of what regular medicine is doing has no research to back it up at all. A huge amount of it.

One of my roommates from medical school, along with one of the most respected teachers at Duke Medical School, wanted to do a project to investigate all of the many, many customary procedures and approaches and therapies used in conventional medicine that have never been researched, to see if they really work. Everyone agrees that this is something that needs to be done. But no one wanted to fund this project. He couldn’t raise money for it and he finally had to give up on the project.

So the very amusing and ironic thing is that a lot of what’s going on in hospitals and in conventional medicine is totally unproven, whereas the “alternative practitioners” have had to get on the ball and prove what they’re doing. The truth is not at all what the widely held perception is. In fact, holistic medicine is on a pretty firm basis now and getting much more solid all the time, whereas conventional medicine is on some pretty thin ice in a lot of places.