LETTER: Alternative medical knowledge ignored

SIR – The limitations and restrictions placed on the practice of orthodox medicine is a factor in its output, and success. We have put too much emphasis on invasive procedures and drug practices to register an outcome and sometimes this practice does more damage to the patient than is medically required. 

The new approach should have alternative medicine practices available in tandem with the orthodox medicine on a co-location system on hospital grounds. The vast amount of knowledge available in alternative medicine, which is being ignored, is limiting the overall standard of the practice of medicine and this store of knowledge is pushed to the sidelines in the interests of powerful drug companies, who are in the business of making profit from people’s misfortune.

I would suggest that the availability of alternative medicine should be an option for patients, within the hospital grounds, and would provide a natural method of medical practice to the patient who could request it. I am not opening the gates to every quack in the country, but to invite those who fulfill a required standard of experience and knowledge to participate in the practice of medicine – natural and orthodox – on the one site.

Yours,

Liam Ó Conaire,

Bruff,

Co Limerick.