Will Aberdeen University give green light to anthroposophic medicine centre?
April 7, 2012
First, a quick update on my post on the Social Pedagogy BA at Aberdeen University. No doubt helped by the intervention of a prominent scientist, the University has confirmed that the course is now under review. It insists the review is routine – part of the “standard cycle of reviewing collaborative partnerships” – but says the concerns raised in my post will be considered. The findings of that review, and any action that will be taken as a result, should be published shortly.
While doing some background research on that post, I noticed that the Anthroposophic Health, Education and Social Care Movement (AHaSC) – based at the Camphill Medical Practice in Aberdeen – planned to open a new Centre for Integrative Health, Education and Social Care at the University.
According to the AHaSC’s fundraising materials, the Centre would be “the focus for anthroposophic medicine … in the English speaking world” and would “be key to furthering the anthroposophic healthcare approach worldwide.” It would not only carry out research into anthroposophic medicine, but also provide postgraduate degrees in it.
It said the Centre had been “agreed in principal [sic]” with the University, but I suspected this was just bluster. After all, the Social Pedagogy degree was acquired, along with several other courses, through a merger with a teaching college. It seemed far more likely that the University administration had never really taken much notice of the course, than that it was actively promoting anthroposophy.
But the internal correspondence disclosed to me through a separate freedom of information request suggests the University’s relationship with the anthroposophical movement is deeper and more extensive than I had imagined.
The documents reveal that Dr Stefan Geider, co-ordinator of the AHaSC and anthroposophical doctor at Camphill Abderdeen, first proposed that the University host a centre for anthroposophic medicine in late 2010.
For almost a year, Geider was in ongoing discussions with Professor Neva Haites, vice-principal and head of the College of Life Sciences and Medicine. Out of those discussions came a proposal for the Dunlop Centre for Integrative Health and Management comprising a Professor – the Dunlop Chair – and a senior lecturer, with administrative support. (Daniel Nicol Dunlop was a prominent anthroposophist who dedicated his life to the movement after meeting Steiner in 1922.)
The correspondence shows that millions of pounds has been pledged by anthroposophical organisations to fund the Centre’s work. The bulk (£1.5m) will come from the foundation of the Raphael Centre, a private anthroposophical clinic in Kent that works with those suffering from complex neurological disabilities and from cancer. The Centre’s treatments include eurythmy, chiropractic, mistletoe therapy, oil-dispersion bath therapy and therapeutic hyperthermia.
A further €1.5m has been pledged by the Software AG Foundation. The Foundation – the charitable arm of a German software firm – funds various anthroposophical projects around the world, including the Steiner Academy in Hereford. (See Alicia Hamberg’s blog for more on Software AG’s relationship with anthroposophy.)
However, donations of more than £1m – and those that are to establish a new area of work – must be considered by the University’s Governance and Nominations Committee. The Committee considers the benefits of the donation, and weighs them up against the reputational, ethical and financial risks in accepting the funds and pursuing the work. It met to consider the Centre in January, and received a paper which outlined the following risks:
“The association with the anthroposophic medical community which this Centre would formalise carries with it the possibility of the University’s scientific and medical research credibility being questioned due to commonly held perceptions about its beliefs and practices. For further information see http://ivaa.info/userfiles/file/System_AnthroposophicMedicine2011_online.pdf”
“Irrespective of the scientific rigour with which the Centre’s research is carried out, there remains the possibility that external observers would question its robustness due to the source of funding. This could create a conflict of interest, either real or perceived. Any complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) body must necessarily have a vested interest in trying to prove the effectiveness of its approach is supported by the scientific community. Therefore, if any such body was to provide 100% of the funding for a Centre with the stated aim of objectively investigating the efficacy of CAM approaches, this could potentially leave the scientific integrity of the University open to question as well as attracting negative publicity.”
This demonstrates that at least someone within the University understands the huge reputational damage that the Centre could cause.
But the College seems unperturbed. Professor Mike Greaves – who took over from Professor Haites as head of the College in September last year – submitted a revised paper to address the Committee’s concerns. In it he stressed Dr Geider’s medical credentials and the clinical reputation of the Raphael Centre and recommended that the donation be accepted.
Professor Greaves’s paper was emailed to the members of the Committee on March 29. They have been asked to indicate whether they consent to the donation – and therefore the establishment of the Centre – by Tuesday April 10.
You can download the key documents below:
- Starter paper and draft invitation to tender
- Draft job description for Dunlop Chair
- Governance and Nominations Committee paper
- Professor Mike Greaves’s response
Update, April 10
The University has emailed to point out that the redactions in the above documents are “not sufficient to obliterate the information which is exempt”. I’ve been asked to remove them until they send me new ones “with the same redactions but unreadable”.
Update, April 29
I’ve finally got round to uploading the properly redacted versions of the key documents. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Topics, individuals and organisations mentioned in this article:
anthroposophic health education and social care movement • anthroposophy • camphill • dunlop centre for integrative health and management • raphael centre • software AG foundation • stefan geider • steiner • university of aberdeen
Wow, as a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen (in Medical Sciences) and organiser of the local Skeptics in the Pub. I really hope that the University of Aberdeen isn’t blinded by the donation for this centre.
I would be also interested to know the reaction from staff at the Unviersity of Aberdeen about this.
The influence of peudoskeptics on medicqal science is too big.
Hapsi should study the difference between real skepticism and pseudoskepticism.
Yes, Jan believes we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that tigers reside in our kitchens until we’re ABSOLUTELY SURE. According to Jan, “real” skepticism leaves open the possibility for absolutely ANYTHING to be true… so for science not to rule anything out, it must rule everything IN. Sorry Jan, reality doesn’t work that way… but should I check my kitchen for tigers, just in case?
James Gray does not discuss the question whether it is a good idea to have an anthroposophical medicine centre at Aberdeen University. There is immediate rejection. This immediate rejection became understandable for me when I read that Melanie Byng, a known adversary of anthroposophy and pseudoskeptic, has helped to write his former post about Aberdeen.
This questions James Grays impartiality in this investigation.
The problem is that pseudoskeptics are thinking their belief system (skepticism, but in reality pseudoskepticism) is the same as science. What is pseudoskepticism? This concept was coined by Marcello Truzzi who was a skeptic himself. When you dogmatically deny the possibility of a supersensible world you are not taking a scientific position but you are proclaiming a belief. What pseudoskeptics are doing is only to provide this belief with a (for me questionable) rationalistic (not rational) basis. This has nothing to do with real science. Real science is open and impartial You can read more about pseudoskepticism here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism.
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We see that much of the criticism on anthroposophy is coming from this prejudiced pseudoskeptical scene, that is aggressively evangelizing their belief. They make a lot of noise when someone in their eyes is a “quack”, but are not questioning their own thinking. In practice they are functioning as a modern inquisition. When you follow them on Twitter you can pretty fast come to know who is belonging to this scene.
Yes, the fear that reductive materialistic science might just NOT tell the whole story is petrifying for some. It’s become a faith-based religion in it’s own right.
I am waiting and hoping for Science to discover that we all have an invisible energy field around us, demonstrated already by Kirlian photography, and that there are invisible forces available to us that can affect our health. Science can already measure so much that is beyond the physical senses, it just needs to take more steps in this direction. Eventually Science will discover the soul and the split between Science and the mystical will be healed. Anthroposophical medicine is something that leads in this direction, something we can explore and learn from if we are only courageous enough.
For most of my life I have been treated by Anthroposophical doctors and the picture that is presented in this article and in many of the comments that follow is completely contrary to anything I have experienced. The clinic I go to has been working and developing for about 90 years and has trained hundreds of doctors who have entered professional life all over the world. Each one, without exception, has first had a medical degree from a recognized university, the equivalent of Aberdeen or any of the degrees you commentators might have. How does that make them quacks? (http://www.wegmanklinik.ch/)
What I expect from an anthroposophical doctor is that he or she is conventionally qualified and in addition, has done a post-graduate training in anthroposophical medicine. I further expect that the doctor is interested in me as a person, not just in my illness, that they care about me and my health, think a bit about my case after having seen me and try to understand my needs and concerns. I expect this not because of any code I have read, but because that is the way I have always been treated.
My mother died of cancer. She did not have access to anthroposophical care at the time and so went the course of Chemotherapy and later also Radiation. The radiation inadvertently burnt holes into her bladder, which made her seem incontinent and caused a lot of discomfort until she was fitted with a bag to catch the urine. I fetched her in the hospital about 4 weeks before her death. I saw the doctor in charge. Neither she nor I blamed him for what had happened, but he could not get out of that room fast enough! He was obviously embarrassed, and our acceptance of the situation in no way put him at his ease. I felt sorry for him.
At the same time I cannot overlook the fact that his concern was with himself, with his own reputation, his sense of failure, and not with his patient, with her further care and treatment in preparation for her inevitable death. That was left up to us and to a kind hospice worker. It was humanly understandable, but not what I had come to expect from the role of a doctor in our lives. The man was a technician who felt he had failed to fix the damage. Humanly speaking, he could have been a mechanic and my mother a car.
I recently broke my shoulder in a road accident. I went to the abovementioned clinic, where the doctor recommended I have it operated and referred me to the local hospital, as the clinic specialises in internal medicine, not surgery. At the hospital they confirmed her diagnosis, operated, treated me with concern and kindness, taking my wishes seriously and at no time showed the slightest rudeness or disrespect for the anthroposophical treatment or the clinic that had referred me. On the contrary, it was a matter of qualified physicians working in harmony with one another, in recognition of Swiss legislation that accepts alternative medicine, including Anthroposophical medicine. That is only natural in a democracy – that the concerns and needs of the patients, students and practitioners all have an equal voice.
When I read what is written in this article and in many of the comments, I feel insulted in my intelligence, as if I did not know the difference between good professional health care and voodoo. The kind of contempt, rudeness and conceit towards equally qualified colleagues and the public that speaks out of what is written here, based purely on hearsay information by anything I have been able to discern, in no way takes me seriously as a patient, a human being or a part of the democratic process. It scorns the democratic process by which a university is part of the general spectrum of public service for the sake of educating students and doing original research, and makes it into a kind of Old Boys Club which has a reputation to defend.
What reputation, pray tell?! Every person I speak to from the UK, the moment anything medical is mentioned, begins to rant about British health care. They could not be more scathing. With derision they tout that Britain has the highest rate of cancer patient deaths in Europe. Your reputation sucks! According to your patients, your Health Care seems like the medical equivalent of British Rail.
In Switzerland, where these sorts of services are accountable to a democratic electorate, they would never put up with British Rail. Consequently the trains arrive on time and take people where they want to go, and the Health Care actually cares.
So, far from having a reputation to defend, your system seems to be badly in need of reform and of new ideas. But no one in your Old Boys Club seems to have ever even considered that Software AG and the proposed chair for Anthroposophical Medicine might just have in mind to bring a few such ideas into the public arena where a reputable university can do some authoritative research and students can have a choice in the kind of medical education they wish to receive.
“I am waiting and hoping for Science to discover that we all have an invisible energy field around us, demonstrated already by Kirlian photography, and that there are invisible forces available to us that can affect our health. ”
Kirlian photography is as much evidence of a “life force” as a double exposure is evidence of “ghosts”. There is no “life force” demonstrated by Kirlian photography – but don’t let that interfere with your beliefs… just push them as if they’re science just waiting to be discovered. People who are actually doing science have already moved on. Have a peek at this: http://www.mediacollege.com/photography/types/kirlian/
I know, as a true skeptic, I should keep checking back to see if science has discovered some other way to photograph auras, but for some reason, I feel inclined to move on too, just as science has. In another example, the theory of gravity is just a “theory” after all… a true skeptic would have to leave open the possibility of “intelligent falling” (* nod to Dawkins).
Thank you for the link to Kirlian photography. Of course, just because Kirlian photography has a physical explanation, it does not mean that therefore the aura or ‘subtle body’ does not exist!
It is unfortunate that Kirlian photography is cited by some as a ‘proof’ of the soul body, the contention of which can lead some to dismiss the reality of the soul itself. I would really hope that whatever the new dept in aberdeen does it can afford to explore how we think about what the human being actually is: the poor impoverished worldview of our reductionist distorted sub-Aristotelian post-Cartesian inheritance needs redeeming!
The “aura” may very well exist. I’m sure lots of things exist that we don’t know about. But LACKING EVIDENCE of such existence, we must assume those things exist in imagination, not reality. In fact, I should be saying – lacking *refutable* evidence, because that’s what science is really based on – evidence that is tangible and that can be refuted (not someone’s experiences). When the very first apple falls UP, scientists will re-investigate the laws of gravity. Until then, there is no reason to. When some *refutable* evidence of auras surfaces, scientists will investigate it with great interest. Until then, science has its hands full with things that ACTUALLY DO exist… and for which evidence of their existence is tangible.
Of course, you could argue that Aberdeen already teaches belief in angelic beings, divine activity and miraculous healing through their Divinity faculty.
Seriously, the course “teaches belief” or do you mean teaches ABOUT belief? Because teaching belief in things that don’t exist would be pretty silly.
Dear Mr.Gray, I think its a good idea, to give anthroposophic medecine a chance to be reviewed by scientists. I am using nothing else than anthroposophic medicine since 40 years, and it has done much good to me.
The question of the aura is not to be ridiculed. No one says that the aura is a visible entity for the eyes, but it is something we all sense, if we observe a human being closely. Everybody makes an impression on us, which we describe in pictures. The impression is real, but the picture – as for instance : “he thibks in a pepper & salt way” – has influences of an earthly experience. The impression is nevertheless supersensible. Supersensible knowledge is an artistic event, not
Rolf Speckner, Hamburg
“No one says that the aura is a visible entity for the eyes, but it is something we all sense, if we observe a human being closely.”
So, you’re saying it’s invisible but observable? We can’t photograph it, measure it, see it… but we can *all* sense it? Really? Show of hands – how many people here have sensed an aura? This is the kind of stuff a class would be teaching I suppose? Assume something is real without evidence and then try to make your daily impressions fit your unfounded assumptions. Hey – why risk using traditional medicine on your children… just wrap their feet in lemon-soaked bandages to reduce high fevers. Anthroposophical medicine is dangerous nonsense… nothing to see here… move along.