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Does Medicine<br />

Have a Bad<br />

Attitude<br />

James P. Carter<br />

"... And besides, looking through those spectacles<br />

gives me a headache."<br />

Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Cesare Cremonini in 1610,<br />

explaining why he would not look through Galileo's<br />

telescope at the moons <strong>of</strong> Jupiter.<br />

ARROGANT IGNORANCE<br />

The sort <strong>of</strong> excuse above has delayed medical discoveries for decades,<br />

even half-centuries. Canadian nutritionist Dr. David Rowl<strong>and</strong> describes<br />

this repression <strong>of</strong> medical innovation as a bad attitude which he termed<br />

"arrogant ignorance." This negative attitude toward many great discoveries<br />

represents a tremendous ego threat. Today such negativity is compounded<br />

with the industrialization <strong>of</strong> medicine, which has brought on that<br />

"greed is good (for me)" philosophy expressed in the recent movie Wall<br />

Street. Segments <strong>of</strong> the medical pr<strong>of</strong>ession take what they want when they<br />

can get it.<br />

Arrogant ignorance has followed science <strong>and</strong> medicine throughout history.<br />

Beginning with the learned colleagues <strong>of</strong> Galileo who refused to<br />

even look through the glass <strong>of</strong> his new invention, the telescope, because<br />

they believed they already knew all about the laws <strong>of</strong> physics, that notinvented-here<br />

attitude is alive <strong>and</strong> well at the dawn <strong>of</strong> the twenty-first<br />

century. Is it only a coincidence that "not invented here" shares initials<br />

with our government's National Institutes <strong>of</strong> Health<br />

Past suppressions—at least those safely back in past centuries—are readily<br />

admitted by contemporary medicine. French explorer Jacques Cartier,<br />

for example, in 1535 learned from the American Indians that pine-needle<br />

tea prevented <strong>and</strong> cured scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency disease. Upon his<br />

return to France, Cartier excitedly shared his discovery with French doc-

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