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The content of this booklet is not intended to be authoritative documentation of the risks or benefits of any particular complementary or alternative medicine ... the biomedical model itself is only one kind of world view ... is it reasonable to assume that the biomedical model of health care can respond to all of our questions about “health”? ... we can begin to bridge the communication gap by educating ourselves about [alternative medicine] and by learning to ask patients in a non-judgmental way about their use of unconventional ... therapies
"Non-judgmental" is the operative word in describing "Current Evidence". It's not necessary to know exactly what motivates the publication of "Between Heaven and Earth" to recognize the potential for confusion that "Current Evidence" creates.
Theories about magnetic treatment are presented without challenge; explanations of the mechanism by which magnetism is supposed to improve health are unchallenged, even claims of potential hazards of magnetic therapy are presented without challenge.
This is significant; if static magnets can create some risk for pregnant mothers, then that suggests the magnets do something.
The article tells us that "in humans, blood is thought to be an electrical conductor." We are left to wonder whether it's less of an electrical conductor in other species. Never mind that the conductivity of a material doesn't determine if the material is affected by magnetic fields.
The author has gone out of his way to avoid questioning the credibility of the explanations offered by the purveyors of these magical materials... and therein lies the potential for danger. The lay person, reading this article, is likely to accept that, even in the absence of peer-reviewed studes supporting such therapies, the theories behind these therapies are as credible as research being done with regard to more conventional therapies.
Toleration of such a non-judgmental perspective is a problem. Treatments like the application of static magnets may be benign, but the public acceptance of such nonsense is not.
It is not the case that the public should accept traditional medicine "on faith" .. there are certainly many questions that traditional medicine cannot answer, but that does not mean that we should be turning to "alternative" medicines that claim to provide an answer.
We can all be hopeful that miracles will come. whether from ordinary household items or high-tech drugs, but this doesn't mean that we should mindlessly accept unsupported, untested, unjustified, and essentially incredible claims that are made for many forms of alternative medicine. If we do choose to turn to these altnerative medicines based "on faith", we should recognize that's exactly what it is: the application of "religion" to treat our bodily ills.
Once it is recognized that the theories behind these alternative treatments are not based on science and that the purported claims of these benefits cannot be reliably repeated in scientific studies, and that they are nothing but the mutterings of witch doctors anxious to have people cross their palms with gold, then perhaps we won't have our future doctors suggesting that there is some need for doctors to become informed about these treatments, and we won't have our future doctors describing these treatments in non-judgmental terms as they have chosen to do in this particular article. Instead, we can have our future doctors suggest that these treatments, in many cases, can be expected to be as useful as going to a priest or rabbi for a cure, and we should treat a decision to use such treatments accordingly.
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