Journal of - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

Islamic Medicine and Future Western biomedicine:
Potential Areas of Integration
Arthur SANIOTIS
Islamic Medicine and Western biomedicine: Ways to Integrate
Both Approaches
From the outset it may problematic to consider a future
integration between Islamic medicine and Western biomedicine.
While Islamic medicine is religious based and
Western biomedicine is non-religious this difference discounts
the similarities of both approaches. For example,
both medical approaches rely on empiricism and experimentation.
As suggested earlier, Islamic medicine heralded
an evidence based approach which still exists. Islamic medical
physicians have never been averse to evidence based
medicine since such an approach adheres to logic and precision,
both hallmarks of Islamic medicine. Second, Islamic
medicine like Western biomedicine is open to new medical
knowledge. Both approaches have borrowed from various
arenas of medical knowledge in the past, and this process
continues till the present. Western biomedicine is at a pioneering
stage in relation to new therapeutic interventions
such as gene therapy, stem cell therapy, nanotech medicine,
cosmetic neurology and brain-machine prosthetics. During
the next few decades there will be major improvements
in anti-aging and augmentation interventions which will
change common notions of the human body. On this note
Saniotis and Henneberg claim that current Western biomedicine
with its staunch mechanistic approach has shifted
to corrective medicine (43). The exponential growth of
cosmetic surgery and cosmetic neurology are indicative of
this shift towards corrective and augmentation procedures
in western countries. Transhumanists like Kurzweil (44)
(45), Bostrom (46), and Stock (47) claim that the human
body and mind are heading towards a singularity where
immortality will be possible as well as an eradication of disease.
Kurzweil even professes that in the future nanotech
brains will be engineered which will be superior to the organic
brain (44). For transhumanists humanity is moving
towards a post-human future where the body will be radically
transformed. Western biomedicine will presumably
be at the vanguard of this transformation. Nagamia asserts
that current Western biomedicine is becoming increasingly
commodified, a factor which has led to diminishing levels
of public respect for physicians (48). The popularisation
of alternative and complementary medicine in the West
may also be a protest against the Cartesian and atomistic
biomedical approach. Epperly contends that Western biomedicine
needs a radical shift from its Cartesian inspired
model, to include spiritual factors (49). A major dilemma
of Western biomedicine is its seeming failure to account for
patients’ personal beliefs and experiences which influence
one’s state of health or illness. Furthermore, Western biomedicine
is informed by various assumptions such as the
division between body and mind (Cartesianism), the belief
in the insentience of the human body, the dismissal of techniques
linked to non-local mind such as spiritual practices
(i.e. intercessory prayer), and Western biomedicine’s “denial
of the role of spirituality” (49).
There are a number of studies linking the benefits of
prayer with health and well being, thereby challenging
Western biomedicine’s rebuff of religious beliefs. The use
of intercessory prayer is a technique of non-local mind
which means the notion that an individual’s consciousness
can affect matter (i.e. a person’s body). In a 1996 American
national survey found that 82% of Americans believed in
prayer’s ability to heal, and that 64% believed that physicians
should pray for their patents upon request (50) (51).
A women’s survey of the American Cancer society found
that 88% of women found consolation in spiritual or religious
practice as a way of coping with their illness (50) (52).
Research of non-local mind started in the 1960s with
Bernard Grad’s seminal experiment using 300 mice which
had been given wounds. The mice were divided into three
groups; one hundred mice were given to students, one hundred
mice were given to a healer, and one hundred mice did
not receive any treatment. After two weeks the mice that
had been given to the healer had significantly faster healing
rates of their wounds than mice in the control and student
groups (53). In another study, Grad gave surgical incisions
on the backs of 48 mice. During this experiment one third
of the mice acted as a control group, one third of the mice
were given to a healer, and one third of the mice were left in
a cage with same temperature as the mice that were treated
by the healer. The healer’s group of mice were held by the
healer for fifteen minutes twice daily. After two weeks, the
healer’s group of mice showed significantly higher healing
rates than the other two groups of mice “with less than one
chance in a thousand that the results were due to chance”
(54) (55). Other studies have been conducted on distance
healing intention that were double blinded and randomised
on non-human life forms such as yeast, fungi, bacteria, enzymes
and cancer cells (50) (56) (57) (58). Further distance
healing intention (DHI) research has been conducted by
Watkins & Watkins (59), on anaesthetised animals rapid
recovery after receiving distance healing that was further
replicated by a study conducted by Schlitz (60). Other
animal studies include amyloidosis on hamsters, and rats
injected with ascites tumour cells and treated by distance
healing (61). Radin claims that over post war period there
have been approximately 900 experiments conducted on
non-local mind techniques and how observers may influence
matter (62). Collectively, these experiments provide
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