Would the WHO, the World Health Organization, promote alternative medicine? The latter, criticized because of their ineffectiveness, even their dangerousness, are the subject of renewed interest on the part of the institution. The goal ? Expand access to healthcare for the world’s population… even if it has no scientific basis.
The very serious World Health OrganizationWorld Health Organization would she promote pseudo-science to inflate her figures? It seems so. Supporting evidence: a document dated 2023, denounced by the Office for Science and Society in an article translated by the French Association for Scientific Information and entitled “WHO benchmark criteria for training in anthroposophical medicine”. Anthroposophical medicine? a form of alternative medicine which finds its origins in the philosophy of anthroposophy developed by Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of the 20th century, and which considers – among other things – diseases as imbalances between the different dimensions of the human being, and seeks to restore harmony using various therapies that are not scientifically validated.
A glossary of pseudo-scientific terms that does not pass muster
The document as such is intended to be a continuation of the organization’s policy, which intends to legitimize traditional medicine as a complementary practice to conventional medicine whose effectiveness is scientifically proven. Inside, there is a glossary, offering the definition of various terms. For example, we can read that “the soul, in the anthroposophical conception, is closely linked to the astral organization and arises from it”but also that “According to the anthroposophical conception, life can be differentiated into seven processes: breathing, warming, nourishing, secreting, maintaining, growing and reproducing”or even that “in the anthroposophical conception, sensory perception is classified into twelve main modalities: touch, life, movementmovementbalance, smell, taste, sight, temperature and heatheathearing, speech and language, thought and sense of the inner individuality (“I”) of the other human being.”
Enough to make the scientist and popularizer Jonathan Jarry, author of the article on the AFIS website, jump, who is outraged by the presence of such a document in the resources of the absolute world reference in mattermatter health. While this may indeed be surprising, the explanation is nevertheless simple: one of the WHO’s objectives is to generalize access to care and health for the entire human population. An extremely ambitious and currently unattainable objective, since it would imply the presence of trained doctors in the most isolated regions of the world, whether because of their geographical position, their geopolitical situation or a lack of means and technologies.
“WHO wants to see these pre-scientific healing practices integrated into national health systems to contribute to the universal health coverage it promotes”, explains Jonathan Jarry in his article. However, these practices are, for many, criticized because their ineffectiveness has been demonstrated – this is for example the case of homeopathy – or even because they can present a danger to health – particularly when patients suffering from serious illnesses and in fragile situations turn to these pseudo-medicines to the detriment of treatments that could save their lives.
To this, the WHO responds that “The objective of this series of benchmarks for various systems and interventions in traditional, complementary and integrative medicine is to provide a reference point for the assessment of practice and practitioners. » In short: a guide to to distinguish the “real” practitioner from the charlatan. “It could be argued that the WHO seeks to improve the quality standards of these pseudo-scientific practices by requiring a minimum of regulation and standardization. But how can magic be regulated? », Jonathan Jarry rightly asks. A necessary implementation lightlight of a risky policy by an institution of major global importance, which recalls the dangers of promoting respect for ancestral traditions with disregard for health safety and denounces the maneuvers of practitioners of alternative medicine in their desire to acquire scientific legitimacy a priori impossible to obtain.
