Andrew Weil Interview (page: 6 / 7) Integrative Medicine	Print Interview

Are you finding a little bit of an opening?

Andrew Weil: Oh, it's a big, wide opening. Medicine is in incredible crisis and transformation at the moment. The health care system in our country is self-destructing. One observer has said it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Hospitals are going bankrupt, large academic medical centers -- such as the one where I work at the University of Arizona -- are laying off faculty. Doctors are miserable in the midst of this, because all the qualities of medicine that they went into for are disappearing. As this economic crisis has descended, the response has been a corporate take-over of medicine by people whose only interest is in getting whatever profit they can out of a sinking system. The fact is that medicine has become much too expensive. And the expense is directly related to its over-reliance and over-dependence on technology.

Technology is inherently expensive, there's no way around that. As long as it was business as usual in medicine, it was possible for everyone to ignore all the kinds of issues that I've raised. But now that medicine is in desperate trouble and doctors are so unhappy, they have to take notice, because the market is moving in another direction. What patients want, and what doctors are able to provide, are becoming very divergent.

It is very clear now I think, including to deans of medical schools, that medical schools are no longer graduating physicians who are satisfying the needs of patients. Now what I would say patients want, based on my talking to lots and lots of patients, are that they want physicians who have the time and can take the time to sit down them, listen to them, explain in a language that they can understand the nature of their problems. And go over with them their options for treatment, who won't just push drugs and surgery as the only way of doing it. Who are at least conversant with nutritional influences on health. Who can answer intelligently questions about use of dietary supplements. Who are sensitive to mind/body interactions. Who will not laugh in your face when you bring up topics like Chinese medicine. Who will look at you as not just a physical body.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Vision

I think all of those are very reasonable requests, and that's not how we're training physicians today. This is one of the reasons why so many people are seeking out other kinds of practitioners. The estimates are that between 30 and 40 percent of Americans are now going to alternative practitioners. Significantly, most of them are not telling their regular doctors that they're doing so. I think the reasons for that are obvious: people don't want to be laughed at, and that has been the standard response. But now that medicine is in so much economic trouble, and with this consumer demand for something else having reached some kind of critical mass, it is no longer possible for physicians to ignore all this. As a result, in the past year especially, there has been enormous interest on the part of both institutions and individual physicians in things that they never paid attention to before.

I now direct a program called Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, which is the first of its kind in the world, that is actively training physicians, as well as trying to develop new models of medical education that can be used in other schools. In this past year, the University of California San Francisco Medical Center has announced a program of integrative medicine. Duke University is doing the same. The University of Minnesota is active as well. Jefferson in Philadelphia, Stanford in California. This is the beginning of a trend. I would predict with confidence that this is the future. By integrative medicine, I mean medicine that works from the premise that the body can heal itself if you give it a chance. It emphasizes prevention. It looks at people as more than just physical bodies and makes sensible use of other modalities of treatment.

I think this is really the future. I also think that if this trend succeeds, as I think it will, that one day we'll be able to drop the word "integrative." This will just be what medicine is and should always have been.

There is some reason for concern that while there are alternative modalities that are well known and well tested, there are some that are on the market that have not been so well tested.

Andrew Weil: All the systems of medicine that I've looked at are rich mixtures of wisdom and foolishness. That's true of conventional medicine as well, by the way. There is a rather astonishing percentage of procedures used in conventional medicine that have never been rigorously tested. What we need to do is sort through all of this and to separate what's useful and what's true from what's not. I don't think there's any system of medicine that has all the answers. I am a scientist, I'm very much in favor of scientific method. I'm in favor of testing, and determining first what's harmful and eliminating that and warning people about that, and then trying to demonstrate the efficacy and cost efficacy of various approaches.

Would you be in favor of serious testing of health food and so on?

Andrew Weil: Of course. But the reason we don't have good research in this area has a lot to do with how we're training our physicians. For example, research in mind/body medicine is not great. The reason it's not great is that the people who do medical research have come out of an educational system that has not made them realize the importance of mind/body interactions and the practical usefulness of knowing about them. So I keep coming back to the fact that unless we train a new generation of physicians, we're going to be stuck with all these problems.

Do you get the sense that there is a new generation out there?

Andrew Weil: Yes. I think the demand for this kind of training is becoming overwhelming. We are really at the beginning of a genuine revolution and transformation of medicine. It's also important to realize that this is consumer-driven at the moment, but institutions are finally responding to it. It's happening all over the world, in different stages. It is not a fad, this is a genuine socio-cultural trend, with very deep historical and intellectual roots.

If it's consumer-driven, could that lead to some possible complications?

Andrew Weil: If it remains only consumer-driven, that's a problem. Unless there is a well thought out institutional response, I think it's a problem. Here's one example. If you're a hospital facing bankruptcy, as many are, or if you are a managed care facility in an intensely competitive market, the economic incentives to cater to the consumer demand for alternative medicine are so overwhelming that you would be scrambling to provide services. But where are you going to get physicians to provide those services, since our medical schools are not graduating them?

One of my fears is that all this is happening too fast. A lot of programs are going to get set up, and we'll see holistic clinics and alternative medicine programs that really aren't well thought out. I think that would be bad for the development of the movement that I'd like to see.

Andrew Weil Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7