My humble input:
I am alternately enthralled with, and a times frustrated by present day medicine as practiced in western civilization.
The use of some of our technologies and medicines result in near miraculous improvements on almost a daily basis in my work. It is however a double edged sword.
There is no arguing that the practice of medicine is corrupted to some degree by pharmaceutical companies and their sizable budgets. As we have seen in the past and will surely see again, some medicines are not all they hyped to be, some even having side affects that may have been "brushed aside" during trials, some never quite living up to their claims. There are also some wonderful medicines that still do a great job but are now generic or even dietary supplements, and since they don't bring in vast quantities of money they fall by the wayside.
We as physicians and/or scientists must have some objective criteria by which to judge things and make decisions, that is after all the difference between science and faith. For many of us though the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Can I honesty say that thousands of years of Traditional Chinese Medicine are wrong or have no validity? Even I am not that pompous
. Can I say that therapeutic touch, acupuncture, and herbal remedies that provide relief to so many have no place in treatment? Of course not.
We all have to make our own decisions. I personally believe that we have been blessed with knowledge and technology and it is right and natural to avail ourselves to it. Would I use and "unproven" treatment such as shark cartilage, herbalism, or acupuncture as my mainstay of treatment if I had cancer , liver disease, heart disease etc.? Personally no, but I would definitely investigate them, and if my heart/soul/higher power guided me to proceed with them as an adjunct to treatment(and if they caused no obvious harm) I would proceed, as I have in the past.
I think we (physicians) would be fools to think we have a complete understanding of disease and healing; it is so complex, and there is no objective criteria to quantify or qualify the effect of faith, soul, and the spiritual nature of humans on overall health. We are however bound to some degree by the system we practice in...it does not require use to keep a closed mind though.