Letter: Blinkered medicine

IT IS NOT gullibility, as Edzard Ernst suggests ("The power of believing", 16 August), that drives the public to seek alternative treatments, but a search for answers. Despite a huge deployment of human, financial and technical resources, pharmaceutically oriented orthodox medicine has proved completely powerless when faced with myriad conditions, including serious diseases such as cancer.

The increasing trend towards alternative medicine shows us that people are becoming more self-aware and more intent on achieving a satisfactory level of well-being, a concept not necessarily understood by orthodox medical practitioners. Achieving health is a holistic task with major psychological undertones.

Until modern medicine starts to broaden its horizons and becomes an integrated humanistic discipline, people will go on looking for all manner of alternative interventions.

MARTINE MONCEAU

London SW6