"On one side is scientific inquiry, with its breathtaking record of achievement and understanding. On the other side is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term for remedies that are based on tradition and spiritualism, which receives heartfelt anecdotal support but little else to vouch for its efficacy. (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/565472_2)"
I am still amazed at this debate. On one hand we have a tradition that a short 150 years ago had their surgeons sharpening their knives on the bottoms of their boots (Western medicine) and on the other (CAM) there are treatises 3000 years old that describe the microscopic structures of virii and bacteria.
Medscape’s “Integrative Medicine Resource Center” (http://www.medscape.com/resource/integrativemed) has nothing on realEvidence Based Medicine (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/564560), the results for thousands of years of billions of people treated with Ayurveda. (http://ayurastro.com/ayurveda/?page_id=2)
Suspicious doctors scoff at small study sizes for Western CAM while minimizing their active scope of practice.
See my bibliography (/bibliography.html) for references to my attempts to bridge the two fields, CAM and science (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01greene.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin), that are not very far apart at all.
Neuroscientists tell us that children do science natively and naively. Adults do Ayurveda, globally and completely.