More holistic medicine

The article "Malignant Medicine" by Noemi Lopinto [June 22] was an irresponsible attack on holistic medicine and its practitioners. The article basically presented alternative remedies as snake oil and went on to quote an allopath who states that the "people who sell this stuff to desperately ill people... are criminals."

Such statements are erroneous and malicious. In the patient's case, alternative medicine was unsuccessful in treating her cancer. But one failure is not sufficient evidence to slander a form of medicine which benefits millions of people worldwide each year.

Meanwhile, medical mistakes made by allopathic practitioners have and will continue to kill thousands of people. The allopath who was interviewed does not mention the potentially fatal side effects of many pharmaceuticals, nor does he speak of the many cases where conventional medicine could offer no relief. Alternative and conventional viewpoints have been at odds for centuries--articles such as this do nothing to bridge the divide.

--Ella Wolowitz, herbalist

Regarding "Malignant Medicine," I would like to comment that all healing, holistic or traditional, is about love and love is about letting go of fear. The first thing any responsible holistic practitioner would have done in Francyne Caluori's case is to help her get over her fear of what should have been a simple surgical procedure. Unfortunately, the patient's fear of surgery drove her to flee not only the traditional medical doctor who made the original diagnosis, but also any holistic practitioners who also would have urged her to have her breast tumour removed surgically as a first step toward recovery.

The article seemed less about the potential risks of holistic medicine than about a small minority of its practitioners who see themselves as saviours and insist that their patients forgo traditional care. Fortunately, these extremists are few.

I invite you to take a closer (non-sensationalist) look at what various holistic practices can do for the prevention of serious illnesses and how small investments in natural diet, stress reduction and spirituality could save the government enough money to allow the Canadian health care system to get back on its feet.

--Beatrice Multhaupt, Reiki practitioner

Disturbing silence

You decided that Howard Galganov's protest of the OLF's inspection of the Holocaust Memorial merited a brief paragraph of slanderous coverage in your "Insect" feature ["Angels & Insects of the week," June 22]. Whatever.

What gets me is that the reprehensible, downright evil activities of our tax-funded "Language Police" at the Holocaust Memorial elicited nothing more from you than a brief, dismissive mention as being "disturbing."

The Mirror's virtual silence in the face of the unspeakable arrogance and deplorable, hateful activities of the OLF is stitched of the same thread that wove the veil of quiet acquiescence allowing so many to suffer and die during World War II. To call Galganov's retaliation against the OLF "exaggerated" shows a bigoted and embarrassing lack of understanding on your part of one of history's most brutal accounts of humankind's inhumanity towards itself. I wonder when you will see fit to take our government's ethnocentric and intolerant activities to task? Maybe when the OLF drops by your offices and demands that you change your English word-processing software to French. Maybe then you will be "disturbed" enough to spill a little ink on the matter. Until then, you will stoop to levels like trivializing the Holocaust and sanctifying the prejudiced and hateful ideals of our government so you can revel smugly in your petty, juvenile illusion of what you call a leftist political perspective. But remaining silent in the face of hatred is not a perspective, it is rueful cowardice. WAKE UP! Silence is the language of the weak. A language you, Mirror, speak disturbingly well.

--George Popovich

[Ed's reply: In fact, the OLF did pay a visit to the Mirror in 1996 demanding that the sign on the outside of the building be changed to Le Miroir. The Mirror, obviously, refused.]