The Health Coach, Contributing Writer
Waking Times 

Once upon a time, before there were laboratories and test tubes and innocent animals to experiment on, there were anecdotes. Anecdotes were the stuff of stories. Stories reveal what is happening in the world in real time, with real people, in real living contexts.

Where it concerns healing and curing, health and wellness, these important stories took on great significance and special meaning. Why wouldn’t they? The wisdom that they contained was responsible for keeping the people alive and well and thriving.

Over millennia most of these anecdotes and stories were passed down through the culture via the Oral Tradition. Eventually many of these stories were written down and systematized so that the teachings could be accessed in a methodical and efficient way.

Whether we speak of East Indian Ayurveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine, Native American Shamanism or Unani Herbal Medicine, all of these venerable healing traditions began with powerful stories in the form of anecdotes, which contained indisputable health and wellness wisdom.

Up to this very day there exist rare and sacred manuscripts which contain massive volumes of authoritative knowledge, as well as wisdom refined in the crucible of actual life experience. Throughout the world we see an awakening regarding the treasure trove of healing systems which had been consistently relegated to a lower level of consideration by the allopathic model and the medical establishment.

Now, fast forward to the 20th century and what do we see. We see a biomedical research labscape littered with the carcasses of animals who have been used without their consent to scientifically prove and disprove a vast number of hypotheses.

Bear in mind that an animal is not a human being. And that a laboratory is not a home or business where we humanoids live most of our lives. Nor does a test tube or the scientific practice of vivisection in any way represent a real living story and felt experience which normally constitute an anecdote.

How can the repeated administration of some form of chemotherapy to a scared and victimized rabbit, in which cancer has been chemically induced, in any way replicate the lifelong circumstances under which a human being acquires cancer and is subsequently treated?

Simply put, such a clinical trial can’t even come close to the context of living life as a human being; therefore, the results will always be skewed and the interpretations distorted to varying degrees.

Have we lost anybody yet?

Contrast this methodology to the following:

In many of the ancient and venerated healing traditions around the world, entire systems of medicine came from stories about what works and what doesn’t. The people tried this and tried that, after being guided by the local sages and seers, shamans and storytellers, medicine men and medicine woman. When they followed this wise counsel, they were usually healed; when they didn’t ….

What we are obviously suggesting – very strongly – is that the better evidence between the two will always be anecdotal. That’s because it is what can be believed without concern that the experiment has been rigged. Whether wittingly or unwittingly most biomedical research conducted in labs has been rigged. Whether this rigging is due to the pharmaceutical companies who have sponsored and paid for the requested research studies or some other very calculated reason, the very nature of these studies is that they are often skewed as they are fatally flawed.

Therefore, the results and conclusions will always be distorted to some degree and necessarily biased, if none other than by the overly committed influence of the scientist observer himself.