You can keep alternative medicine down, but that doesn't mean that it will disappear. Though the Soviet government once banned most forms of unconventional medicine, healers, physics, homeopathic clinics, and herbal therapists were back in action soon after perestroika lifted the regulations. CAM therapies are currently so popular in Russia that the allopathic medical community is feeling duly threatened - and concerned.

A survey of patients at Moscow's Gertsen Cancer Institute found that nine out of every 10 had used some form of "narodnaya meditsina," or people's medicine. "Conventional medicine often entails long examinations that can include biopsies and scans that cost time, money and some pain," said Natalya Bogdanova, a director at the institute. "People don't want this, so they go to specialists in non-traditional medicine, who simply say, `Pay me money, and I will cure you.'"

The worry comes in when the ill turn to alternative therapies alone - often delaying the conventional medical treatment that their sickness calls for. This is also motivated by many Russians' distrust of doctors. One woman, Svetlana Mustova, ignored her doctor's suggested treatment for breast cancer and instead chose to line her bra with cabbage leaves and sought out bio-resonance therapy. Mustova's tumor has swelled to twice it's normal size and she is to have a mastectomy this month. But she doesn't regret her decision to take an unconventional route. "My doctors told me I lost a great amount of time trying to cure myself, which I don't agree with," she said. "I don't think that those alternate methods are in vain. My aim was to find out the real cause for my disease, which conventional medicine cannot answer."

[via Chicago Tribune]

Image: A Russian Bioresonance Clinic, Bioresonance.ru