The Unreal Dr. Bjorn Nordenstrom

Orthodoxy in medicine is an area that seems to have come under increasing scrutiny. The quacks and mountebanks who typically challenge biomedical or more precisely biochemical hegemony are increasingly being joined by heretics within the biomedical ranks itself.

Any system of thought is comprised of more than rational processes. One must consider that interests coalesce around these systems that translate into careers, stocks, institutions, equipment, and perhaps most important, beliefs. Thought systems, consequently, take forms that make thought "real." That which lacks systems of interests to give form to thought is "unreal."

The phenomenon of the orthodox becoming unorthodox and vice verse is long. In recent history, the work of three-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling comes to mind. I can't help but appreciate the vilely unorthodox positions of prestigious National Academy of Science and Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg and independently minded Nobel laureate '92 Kerry Mullis on AIDS. Boy, if I hadn't heard that Canadian Broadcasting Company's program As It Happens, I would have never thunk it.

Anyway, in doing some reading on ions and acupuncture, I happened across a Dr. Nordenstrom, a Swede, whom you'll learn is of impeccable credentials, who has brazenly chosen to pursue electrically based therapies for tumors, instead of adhering to the biochemical dogma. One interesting observation about Nordenstrom and the other two: the brilliance that made them excel within real thought systems is the brilliance that made them vanish into the unreal.