Breaking News! Mind-Body Connection

This evening on the 6:30 p.m. "NBC Nightly News" Brian Williams announced the teaser, "Hospitals that are embracing the idea that the body is indeed attached to the mind!" Turns out NBC Nightly News is kicking off their week of a series special of "The Mind-Body Connection" In bridging the subject of integrating non-traditional means of health and healing as opposed to "just traditional medicine" - a misnomer here - he's calling allopathic medicine - the infant of medicine, traditional. Homeopathy was the dominant form of medicine practiced in "civilized" America in the 19th century and was taught in medical schools alongside allopathy into the 1950s. This is an illustration of how irrational, unscientific bias creates ill-formed, widely held societal points of view. Williams then asks, "What about combining the two?" followed by "According to the NIH, 36% of American adults use some form of what's called 'complementary alternative medicine'." They progress to stills of a person meditating, then people lying on mats in yoga poses. Brian turns the audience over to NBC's Chief Science Correspondent - that Science in his title means his point of view is unquestionable and inherently accurate and superior. A waterfall of unscientific terms - meditation, massage, biofeedback, acupuncture, healthy meals and exercise, rain down on us. We are told that Duke's Integrated Medical Center supports and provide these practices because they have been "proven" acceptable, but they discourage patients from using "unproven" treatments - like herbal supplements. These new integrated medical center have become the proponents of a "system" of health.

In 1994, Philosopher Mary Midgley provided sound evidence supporting the insoluble relationship of mind and body in “The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom and Morality.”

I am impressed that 14 years after being published, her theories on the nature and origins of ethics have not been scientifically disproved. It is interesting to note, however, that the numerous competing theories espousing the dualistic nature of humans, the separation of mind and body, which Midgley rationally and soundly excised in her book, remain the culturally dominant accepted theory.

Hopefully, tonight's news will challenge viewers to question their points of view on the historically accepted, ill-conceived notion of mind-body separation. Perhaps it is a reflection of our society's progress towards what Midgley seeks, "to move us to a more integrated notion of ourselves.”