Customer Reviews

Modern Medicine: The New World Religion: How Beliefs Secretly Influence Medical Dogmas and Practices

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In simple, every-day language, Olivier Clerc challenges the dogma of Modern Medicine, and our often "religious" respect for it. As a Swiss-born popular philosopher and writer (now a long-time resident of France), Clerc offers a perspective an American writer might not be able to. Although sympathetic to Robert S. Mendelson's "Confessions of a Medical Heretic," Clerc approaches the question of medicine from a different angle. He explains how Louis Pasteur-commonly credited as the father of Modern Medicine-compromised his research and conclusions in order to accommodate his ardent Catholic faith, and then deliberately designed a medical practice that would parallel the Catholic Church structure, with Doctors acting as priests, nurses acting as "sisters," the check-up acting as the "confessional" etc.

For an American readership, I think Clerc's arguments would have been stronger had he addressed the financially-driven aspects of the multi-billion dollar medical complex. But Clerc doesn't go there--probably because European socialized medicine is less influenced by the bottom line than in the States-but also because he is avoiding easy blame and criticism. Instead, Clerc is interested in challenging paradigms. He wants us to examine our own attitudes toward medicine, and so he puts the responsibility on each of us to be more aware and independent regarding health-care choices. The book is written as an extended "essay," and reads almost as if Clerc is writing a letter to a friend. As he states clearly, it is not intended as a comprehensive anlysis of today's medical practices, nor an expose of its shortcomings. Rather, it exposes the social and psychological contradiction of why we don't think of modern medicine as a religion but we treat it like one, and what we need to do differently. This book opened my eyes to facts I had never read or even heard about before. A must read for all those interested in alternative and holistic health-care and the right to practice it.

Originally published in French as
Médecine, religion et peur: l'influence cachée des croyances
1999

The French title is better at capturing the essence of this book.

Clerc is by a long shot not the first to draw parallels between medicine and religion, which is fine, because it cannot be done often enough. He does lay the accent slightly differently. The only religion he has in mind is Catholicism.

Clerc sees both the church and medicine as authoritarian, pushing the believer/patient into an infantile role, dependent on the religious/medical practitioner for delivery from harm. He is rightly keen to point out that we, the masses, share the blame by being all too eager to sell our independence out to the church/medicine for relief of our fears of impending doom and death.

"The structures have changed, but the fundamental dynamics have not; the goals of the game are still power, control over the population, and financial gain. ... Dominant or dominated, both are playing the same game, whose rules are dictated by power and fear."

Surprising to me is the role this author assigns to Louis Pasteur as the father of modern medicine. Is he? Pasteur, mentioned frequently throughout the book, is the only representative of medicine named, leaving me to wonder whether he is the only one Clerc studied. Rather than shower praise on Pasteur, the author posits that his medical beliefs were distorted by his religion (Catholic). Pasteur's field, immunization, Clerc considers archetypical of medicine's religious-like promise of divine protection and salvation, like baptism.

To mature and break free of religion/medicine, Clerc proposes, we must shed our fears. So far so good, but how do we accomplish that? Clerc seems to believe that alternative forms of medicine like homeopathy, natural medicine, and holistic medicine will help us, because those practitioners teach their patients self-reliance. Really? Clerc further advocates upgrading the doctor/patient relationship to a loving one. But if educated and self-reliant, why does the patient need any relationship with a doctor at all? Loving is how I would characterize the ideal parent/child relationship, the one Clerc is urging us to discard.

In summary, Clerc's message is wise and insightful, but as with every author, we should not let down our guard for the occasional lapse in logic.

Copyright © MeTZelf

The abuse of medications, suppression of
dietary supplements, and the medical mon-
opoly, is the way to bad health and early
death. Reading this book, Tom Valentine's,
Lorraine Day's, Miss Dean's and those by
Pete Duesberg & the late, great John Yia-
mouyiannis are a vital step to solving a
lot of our healthy problems!