Nuances of Alternative Medicine, Passions of Steve Allen - Brief Article

We offer four articles in this issue under the rubric "Issues in Alternative Medicine." Science journalist Barry F. Seidman begins with in-depth overview, "The Medicine Wars," based on reporting and interviews with leading experts representing a variety of responsible viewpoints. Articles on dangers of some herbal medicines and dietary supplements, the effects of four promising psychoactive herbal medications, and an examination of chiropractic follow. These articles strive to deal with the nuances and complexities of the issues. Together they complement our earlier special issue "Alternative Medicine in a Scientific World" (September/October 1997).

Steve Allen was one of the most extraordinary persons I've ever met. A true renaissance man. Talents in every direction. A giant in the early history of television. (Who can forger the characters and wild live skits on The Steve Allen Show or the literate Meeting of Minds history-reenactment series?) He was also an intellectual with a highly developed social conscience. He wrote books on humor and he wrote books on the Bible, religion, and morality. He wrote passionately on the need for critical thinking (his Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking came our in a new edition in 1998). He always had a tape recorder with him and every few minutes dictated his latest thought or idea. He died October 30. Just the day before, newspapers carried full-page ads announcing his campaign to get the entertainment media to raise their standards. The day of his death I received a catalogue announcing his next book, Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio, on that same concern about coarseness and incivility. He was a CSJ COP Fellow and a tireless supporter of the Center for Inquiry, CSICOP, and the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. He participated in (even starred in) many events for our organizations. He was also co-chairman of oar Council for Media Integrity and co-chairman of our Fund for the Future campaign. His last piece in SI, "Two Mind Sets," appeared in our July/August 1999 Science and Religion issue. See Paul Kurtx's tribute in this issue.

When American journalists write about what they surely know is pseudoscientific nonsense, they nevertheless try to retain a moderate, even-handed, objective tone- as though there's a chance there may be something to whatever the weird assertion is. Journalists elsewhere seem more prone to just tell it like it is, They forthrightly skewer nonsense. One example, from the London Evening Standard, is related in a letter to the editor, "Clued-Up TV Critic," in this issue. Another reader, in Australia, sent me The Canherra Times TV magazine "The Guide" with another example-a mini-review by Ian Warden of a Fox-like program called "The Reincarnation Experiments." A few excerpts: "Perhaps the fact that I object so strongly to having to write 250 words about a TV program full of New Age mumbo jumbo on reincarnation indicates that in a past life I was too important a journalist to have to do such menial, intelligence-insulting chores." Warden says the program's producer/narrator appears to be "one of those poor souls wh o believe in everything and who has fallen completely for every reincarnation story told to him.... Everything is grist to Mr. Ramsden's credulist mill." Warden ends with a witty final salvo: "When I was a reporter working with The Times of London in the 1860s I never had to write about rubbish like this. Our rating: An insult to the intelligence of my spaniel."

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